"Flout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have pressed it openly and been repulsed," she replied in a low voice. "But if he could have carried me to some far fortress, how should I flout him there, that is, if I still lived? There, with no price to pay in gold or lands or power, he would have been my master, and I should have been his slave till such time as he wearied of me. That ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... combine to offer sacrifice; Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high; Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies;[64] The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory! The Foe, the Victim, and the fond Ally That fights for all, but ever fights in vain,[65] Are met—as if at home they could not die— To feed the crow ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... should and would like to swill more than they do, they spoil the wine with unwelcome and untimely disquisitions, and they cannot carry their liquor. The ordinary people who are present naturally flout them, and are revolted by the philosophy ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... this performance sufficiently binding, and binding no doubt it was from a moral point of view, so long as there was reasonably good behaviour on either side, or so long as neither Silius nor Marcia's father was prepared wantonly to flout general opinion or to offend a whole connection by simply changing his mind. On the other hand, there was no legal compulsion whatever to carry out the contract. The Roman world knew nothing of actions for breach of promise. If either party ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... things below, showing us how thin and of little substance they really are. Sometimes this breakage comes with the first gleams of morning light and I feel the chill of their passing as they sink slowly to the grass. They are beautiful in their eerie suggestions as they flout my three o'clock in the morning courage, but lovelier far when they sparkle on the grass and shrubs under the sudden flare of the rising sun. I fancy that with clearer light all our gorgons and chimeras dire will become but sparkling fairies, for these certainly do. Twig and leaf ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... was dumfoundered by this obstinacy. It was unheard of—absolutely without parallel in his domestic annals—that one of his children should actually flout him! yes! actually flout him with ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... shall not go!" the Baron exclaimed. "What right have you to the child? None at all! Her Highness wishes to be generous. It pleases you to flout her generosity. Mr. Arnold Greatson, you are a fool! Don't you see that you are a pigmy, who has stolen through the back door into the world where great things are dealt with? You have no place there. You cannot keep the child away ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in. "What does a man who loves as I do, care for the conventions of the sham world you and I have left so far behind. I adore you. And you flout me." ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... to keep him a true man in wit, and to pay for his lodging among the Muses! so God him help, he is driven to a most low estate! 'tis not unknown what service of words he hath been at; he lost his limbs in a late conflict of flout; a brave repulse and a hot assault it was, he doth protest, as ever he saw, since he knew what the report of a volley of jests were; he shall therefore desire you"—A plague upon it, each beadle disdained would whip him from ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... Then flout full high to their parent sky those circled stars of ours, Where'er the dark-hulled foeman floats, where'er his emblem towers! Speak for the right, for the truth and light, from the gun's unmuzzled mouth, And the fame of the Dane revive again, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Like children full of play designs That spring at once from schoolroom's form. Instead of all this angry storm, Another might have thanked you well For saving prey from that grim cell, That hollowed den 'neath journals great, Where editors who poets flout With their demoniac laughter shout. And I have scolded you! What fate For charming dwarfs who never meant To anger Hercules! And I Have frightened you!—My chair I sent Back to the wall, and then let fly A shower of words the envious use— "Get out," I said, with hard abuse, "Leave me alone—alone ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... is something in your attitude which I admit puzzles me. I ask you in all honor, I ask you on the hilt of that sword which I know you will never disgrace, why did you thus flout the Lady Catharine Knollys? Why did you scorn her and take up with this ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... attack us," our people cry. Our cohorts spread out in a crescent horn, Their path we bar in a steel scimitar, And their empty threats we flout with scorn. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... father's an honest man, a good fishmonger, and so forth: and now doth he creep and wriggle into acquaintance with all the brave gallants about the town, such as my guest is, (oh, my guest is a fine man!) and they flout him invincibly. He useth every day to a merchant's house, (where I serve water) one M. Thorello's; and here's the jest, he is in love with my master's sister, and calls her mistress: and there he ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... thou shalt not wrong good men so," interrupted Mary, her fair face coloring a little. "The leaders aye must lead, and the younger and simpler aye must follow in every community, and I mark not that those you flout for speaking so well fail of their share in the labor, nor do I think John Alden or the rest would do well to thrust their advice upon their betters. At all rates, yon boat had not slid down so merrily if John Alden had not put ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Punjab was marred by a spirit which prompted—not generally, but unfortunately not uncommonly—the enforcement of punishments and orders calculated, if not intended to humiliate Indians as a race, to cause unwarranted inconvenience amounting on occasions to injustice, and to flout the standards of propriety and humanity, which the inhabitants not only of India in particular but of the civilised world in general have a right to demand of those set in authority over them. It is a matter for regret that, notwithstanding the conduct of the majority, there should have ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... complete:— Did Lesbia find them half so sweet? A hundred kisses, said he?—hundreds more, And then confound the telltale score! So may we live and love, till life be out, And let the greybeards wag and flout. Yon failing sun shall rise another morn, And the thin moon round out her horn; But we, when once we lose our waning light,— Ah, Love, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight; For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey. When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress, alternately, Seem framed of ebon and ivory; When silver edges the imagery. And the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... thanes were cast into prison," Wulf said, "the count kept us to wait upon him; not for our services, but that he might flout and ill-treat us. We obtained possession of a rope, and let ourselves down at night from the battlements, and made our way on foot as far as Forges, where the good prior, learning from us that ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... and a subiect of nine dayes' wonder in euery barber's shop, and a mouthfull of pitty (that he had no better fortune) to midwiues and talkatiue gossips; and all the content that this transitory life can giue him seemes but to flout him, in respect the restraint of liberty barres the true vse. To his familiars hee is like a plague, whom they dare scarce come nigh for feare of infection, he is a monument ruined by those which raysed him, he spends the day with a hei mihi! ve miserum! and ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... me!" he cried, and made her laughter but part of a gay duet. "I know I have gone too fast, have said things I should have waited to say; but, ah! remember the small chance I have against the others who can see you when they like. Don't flout me because I try to make the most of a ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... it was his sincere conviction that it belonged there, ready to apprize him of the vibrations of the popular will. Roosevelt was the born leader with an innate instinct of command. He did not scorn or flout the popular will; he had too confirmed a conviction of the sovereign right of the people to rule for that. But he did not wait pusillanimously for the popular mind to make itself up; he had too high a conception of the duty of leadership for that. He esteemed it his peculiar function as the man ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... to visit her mamma, and though the Painted Lady had screamed in terror at the proposal, being afraid of doctors, Grizel would have ventured ere now, had it not been for her mistaken conviction that he was a hard man, who would only flout her. It had once come to her ears that he had said a woman like her mamma could demoralize a whole town, with other harsh remarks, doubtless exaggerated in the repetition, and so he was the last man she dared think of going ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... my master and my dame That doth such cheer afford; God bless them, that each Christmas they May furnish thus their board. My stomach having come to me, I mean to have a bout, Intending to eat most heartily; Good friends, I do not flout. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... from the moment when the officers dispersed. "Now will I confess, Wilder, a secret pleasure in the belief that yonder audacious fool carries the boasted commission of the German who wears the Crown of Britain. Should he prove more than man may dare attempt, I will flout him; though prudence shall check any further attempts; and, should he prove an equal, would it not gladden your eyes to see St. George come ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Ye flout me! Ye who will have for a husband, one whom thou canst not name!" She laughed derisively. That hurt Elsa very much because it was true. Ortrud had remained with her through the night, and had continued to say so many ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... of so rich a store May laugh at Croesus and esteem him poor; And with his smoky sceptre in his fist, Securely flout the toiling alchemist, Who daily labors with a vain expense In distillations of the quintessence, Not knowing that this golden herb alone Is ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... must break. Remember that a new order of things is beginning for you. Hitherto I have praised your frivolity, because it was opportune and in keeping with the rest of your nature. I thought it feminine for you to play with Fortune, to flout caution, to destroy whole masses of your life and environment. Now, however, there is something that you must always bear in mind, and regard above everything else. You must gradually train yourself—in the allegorical ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... whispered about that I owed money to the brewer, they presently left off all that kind of thing; and now, during the last three days, since the tale of my misfortune with the cocks has got wind, almost everybody has left off coming to the house, and the few who does, merely comes to insult and flout me. It was only last night that fellow, Hunter, called me an old fool in my own kitchen here. He wouldn't have called me a fool a fortnight ago; 'twas I called him fool then, and last night he called me old ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... a sneer on his face and his thin lips contemptuously curled, and flout the lad's ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... said he imperturbably. "This lad is your betrothed. He is at heart a good lad, an honourable and honest lad—at times haply over-honest and over-honourable; but let that be. To please a whim, a caprice, you set yourself to flout him, as is the way of your sex when you behold a man your utter slave. From this—being all unversed in the obliquity of woman—he conceives, poor boy, that he no longer finds favour in your eyes, and to win back this, the only thing that ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... traditions of the House of Commons, and audaciously, shamelessly—with a perky self-satisfaction painful to witness—he proceeded to violate the ruling of the chair—to trample on the order of Parliament, and to flout the Chairman. And then the waters of the great deep were loosed. A hurricane of shouts, yells, protests arose. Member got up after member—here, there, everywhere—always excepting the sternly silent Irish Bench, where sate the Irish leaders. A ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... taxes, some jury duty. You shirk fatherhood, and all its happy and sacred obligations! You deny posterity! You strike a blow at it! You flout it! You menace the future of this Republic! Your inertia is a crime against the people! Instead of pro bono publico your motto is pro bono tempo—for a good time! And, dog Latin or not, it's the ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... The Munitions Ministry in due course did splendid work. Chancellor of the Exchequer become lord-paramount of a great spending Department of State, its chief was on velvet. "Copper" turned footpad, he knew the ropes, he could flout the Treasury—and he did. But it is a pity that unwarrantable claims should have been put forward on behalf of the department in not irresponsible quarters at a time when they could not be denied, claims which have tended to bring the department as a whole into undeserved disrepute amongst ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... they met, and himself opened the topic of the Norwegian jaunt. Urquhart took up the ball. "I think you might come. Your wife and boy will love it, and you'll kindle at their joy. 'They for life only, you for life in them,' to flout the bard. Besides, you are not a fogey, if I'm not. I believe our ages tally. You shall climb mountains with me, Macartney, and improve the muscles of your calves. You don't fish, I think. Nor do I. I thought I should catch your brother-in-law with that bait—but no. As for mine, he'll ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... but none of us voyagers durst flout it. Did they not show us the identical spot where the idol fell? We descended into the hollow, now verdant. Questionless, Keevi himself would have vouched for the truth of the miracle, had he not been unfortunately dumb. But by far the most cogent, and ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... they say, And the circle - they will square it Some fine day; Then the little pigs they're teaching For to fly; And the niggers they'll be bleaching By-and-by! Each newly joined aspirant To the clan Must repudiate the tyrant Known as Man; They mock at him and flout him, For they do not care about him, And they're "going to do without him" ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Sovereign Will! But stranger and more mysterious and tragic still is it that we should choose to exercise that power and find pleasure, and fancy that we shall ever find advantage, in refusing to listen to His entreaties and choosing to flout His uttered will. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... he done with everything else. And nothing was a trouble. For a fortnight the man never slept, save a nod now and again in the house on wheels, where he dwelt in the valley among the ewes. And old shepherds, with all the will to flout him, was tongue-tied afore the man, because of his excellent ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... jeer and flout me in the teeth? Think'st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that. ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Caribbean Sea was a happy hunting-ground where he might indulge at his pleasure any propensities to lawless adventure. If in 1588 he had helped to scatter the Invincible Armada, he now pillaged treasure ships on the coasts of the Spanish Main; if he had been with Drake to flout his Catholic Majesty at Cadiz, he now closed with the Spaniards within their distant cities beyond the seas. Thus he lined his own pockets with Spanish doubloons, and incidentally curbed Philip's power ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... consciousness that it was not "all a matter of price." If it were he would never trust a man's face again. But Ventnor's well-balanced arguments swayed him. The course indicated was the only decent one. It was humanly impossible for a man to chide his daughter and flout her rescuer within an hour of ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... and let her bitterness have way in that word. "Right! Does any stay for that where I am concerned? Or ask my leave, or crave my will, sir? Right? You have the same right to flout and jeer and scorn me, the same right to watch and play the spy on me, to hearken at my door, and follow me, that they have! Ay, and the same right to bid me come and go, and answer at your will, that ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... he. "I will make no words about it. Neither will I shun her sight. I will face it out, and shame them who think to flout me thus." ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... to here put an argument in the favour of what do now be doubted and scorned by some. I will but say that I have seen and know that which hath been wrought by these hags o' the broom and of their power which they held at their beck and wink the which is not to be set on one side at the flip and flout of our young masters and misses, fresh from some teaching drove into their brain pans by some idiotick and skeptick French teacher. I therefore say no ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... would be a barer America. In spite of our brood of special magazines for the literati and the advanced, which Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer praises so warmly, we are not so well provided with the distributive machinery for a national culture as to flout a recognized agency with a gesture and a sneer. But the family magazine has undeniably lost its vigorous appeal, and must be reinvigorated. The malady is due to no slackening of literary virility in the country; indeed there has probably not been so much literary energy in the country since the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... at Cairo. The wealth and fashion of Bayswater, South Kensington, and even the bosky Wood of the Evangelist had sent their latest luxury and style to flout the tombs of the past with the ghastly flippancy of to-day. The cheap tripper was there—the latest example of the Darwinian theory—apelike, flea and curio hunting! Shamelessly inquisitive and always hungry, what did he know of the Sphinx ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... one here her birth do disdain, Her father is ready, with might and with main, To prove she is come of noble degree: Therefore never flout at pretty Bessee.' ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... me be most foolish myself, and one whom Democritus may not only laugh at but flout, if I go one foot further in the discovery of the follies and madnesses of the common people. I'll betake me to them that carry the reputation of wise men and hunt after that golden bough, as says the proverb. Among whom the grammarians hold the first place, a generation of men ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... has a tough Fibre which about While clings my Being;—let the Canine Flout Till his Bass Voice be pitched to such loud key It shall unlock ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten • Oliver Herford
... escaped so much better than many of her friends, that in time she seemed to forget it and didn't rebel at Malcolm's advent, or Elizabeth's, but by that time I had been practically ostracized from the nursery; governesses were empowered to flout and insult me; I scarcely saw my children, and what I did see made me furious, so I vetoed more orphans bearing my name, and gave up doing anything. Then came the tragedy of Elizabeth. Surely you understand 'just how' it was ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... make ourselves a place apart Behind light words that tease and flout, But oh, the agitated heart Till someone find us really out. 'Tis pity if the case require (Or so we say) that in the end We speak the literal to inspire The understanding of a friend. But so with all, from babes that play At hide-and-seek to God afar, So all who hide too well ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... a circle that shut me out Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win, We drew a circle that took ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... stayed at thy knees, Mother, go call them in— We that were bred overseas wait and would speak with our kin. Not in the dark do we fight—haggle and flout and gibe; Selling our love for a price, loaning our hearts for a bribe. Gifts have we only to-day—Love without promise or fee— Hear, for thy children speak, from the uttermost parts ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... disagreeable season in the country—the time when measles usually invades the village school, the dogs come slinking in guiltily to the fire, pasted with frozen mud, the boys have snuffle colds, in spite of father's precautions, and I grow desperate and flout the jonquils in my window garden, it seems so very long since summer, and longer yet to real budding spring. We arrived at home last night in the wildest snowstorm of the season, and this morning Evan, having smoothed out his mental wrinkles ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... time in attendance on the court at Versailles or other royal palaces could keep his purse equal to his pleasures only by constant demands on his feudal tenants, who dared no more refuse to obey his behests than he himself ventured to flout the royal will. ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... you do not love me and you have never loved me! What a poor fellow I must be to let you mock and flout me as you have done! Why did you give me every reason for hope, at Perros ... for honest hope, madam, for I am an honest man and I believed you to be an honest woman, when your only intention was to deceive me! Alas, you have deceived us all! ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... kind a man may be with fools, And nerve them but to flout him more; And Mischief oft may bring thee peace, When ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... learn Irish raillery. But thy merit is thy failing, And thy raillery is railing. Thus with talents well endued To be scurrilous and rude; When you pertly raise your snout, Fleer and gibe, and laugh and flout; This among Hibernian asses For sheer wit and humour passes. Thus indulgent Chloe, bit, Swears you ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... who in ancient song Was wont to flout her swain, I prithee be not always coy, But turn your face again. My heart is true, and it will rue, That ever you should doubt me, So sweet, be kind, and change your mind, And ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... about and he made some purchases of bric-a-brac for his house in Hartford, with a soul as far away from bric-a-brac as ever the soul of man was. He went home by an early train, and he lost no time in writing back to the three divine personalities which he had so involuntarily seemed to flout. They all wrote back to him, making it as light for him as they could. I have heard that Emerson was a good deal mystified, and in his sublime forgetfulness asked, Who was this gentleman who appeared to think he had offered him some sort of annoyance! But I am not sure that this is accurate. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... these Like thunderclouds outlightening, thrilling the air. With shattering trumpet-challenge, when the blasts Are locked in frenzied wrestle, with mad breath Rending the clouds, when Zeus is wroth with men Who travail with iniquity, and flout His law. So grappled they, as spear with spear Clashed, shield with shield, and man on ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... my son, come easily, when he That speaks is wise, and speaks but for the right. Else come they never! Swift are thine, and bright As though with thought, yet have no thought at all Lo this new God, whom thou dost flout withal, I cannot speak the greatness wherewith He In Hellas shall be great! Two spirits there be, Young Prince, that in man's world are first of worth. Demeter one is named; she is the Earth— Call her which name thou will!—who feeds man's frame With sustenance ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... head, And saw the monarch of the flood Lying half smothered in the mud. He calls the croaking race around: "A wooden king!" the banks resound. Fear once remov'd they swim about him, And gibe and jeer and mock and flout him; And messengers to Jove depute, Effectively to grant their suit. A hungry stork he sent them then, Who soon had swallow'd half the fen. Their woes scarce daring to reveal, To Mercury by night they steal, And beg him to entreat of Jove The direful tyrant ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... herring-mongers "for ready gold, so that it amounteth to a great sum of money, which money doth never come again into England." "We are daily scorned," he says, "by these Hollanders, for being so negligent of our Profit, and careless of our Fishing; and they do daily flout us that be the poor Fishermen of England, to our Faces at Sea, calling to us, and saying, 'Ya English, ya sall or oud scoue dragien;' which, in English, is this, 'You English, we will make you glad to wear our ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... know not what restraint it took To mind my etiquette, nor flout it By telling you I know that book, And asking what ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... a few, and Guido being between the columns of porphyry, that are there, and the tombs and the door of San Giovanni, which was locked, Messer Betto and his company came riding on to the piazza of Santa Reparata, and seeing him among the tombs, said:—"Go we and flout him." So they set spurs to their horses, and making a mock onset, were upon him almost before he saw them. Whereupon:—"Guido," they began, "thou wilt be none of our company; but, lo now, when thou hast proved that God does not exist, what ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and scout her, But true to her colours are WE, The learned may mock her and flout her, But surely we'll rally about her, In the College ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... encouraged lightly. "In Benton as in Rome, you know. There is no disgrace attached to laying down a dollar here and there—we all do it. That is part of our amusement, in Benton." She halted. "You are game, sir? What is life but a series of chances? Are you disposed to win a little and flout the danger ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... contumely, affront, dishonor, insult, indignity, outrage, discourtesy &c. 895; practical joking; scurrility, scoffing, sibilance, hissing, sibilation; irrision[obs3]; derision; mockery; irony &c. (ridicule) 856; sarcasm. hiss, hoot, boo, gibe, flout, jeer, scoff, gleek|, taunt, sneer, quip, fling, wipe, slap in the face. V. hold in disrespect &c. (despise) 930; misprize, disregard, slight, trifle with, set at naught, pass by, push aside, overlook, turn ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... its dark and solid grandeur protects and fosters the tenderest of green carpets. See the moss of palest green, its long fronds appearing like ferns, or note those real ferns and coarser bracken fighting the brambles for supremacy or trying to flout that little wild rose ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... a little longer the sweet bliss of betrothal, with its promise of unknown yet deeper joys to come—resisted Hugh's attempts to induce her to defy Eleanor, flout her wrongful claim to authority, and wed him without obtaining the Royal sanction. Steeped in the bliss of having taken one step into an unimagined state of happiness, she felt no necessity or inclination hurriedly ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... a knight. Nay, stay not gazing thus: it is Garcia, Whose name hath reach'd thee long ere now, I trow; Whom thou hast met in deadly fight full oft, When France and Spain join'd in the battle field. Beyond the Pyrenean boundary That guards thy land, are forty thousand men: Their unfurl'd pennons flout fair France's sun, And wanton in the breezes of her sky: Impatient halt they there; their foaming steeds, Pawing the huge and rock-built barrier, That bars their further course—they wait for thee: For thee whom France ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... what dirty clo'es May kiver up a poet; What fires may burn an' flout an' skurn, An' no ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... flout this 'gold materialism,' For what you call the 'gold of evening skies:' But let me tell you, boy, for you 'tis well My lands are broad and bankers true, or else Your maiden, she, poor girl, I often think, Would want ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... says she. Oh, that 'are fact was wal known! Wal, that was the reason why Jeff Sullivan couldn't come it round Ruth tho' he was silkier than a milkweed-pod, and jest about as patient as a spider in his hole a watchin' to get his grip on a fly. Ruth wouldn't argue with him, and she wouldn't flout him; but she jest shut herself up in herself, and kept a lookout on him; but she told your Aunt Lois jest what ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... represented him. There was no compulsion, however, to believe the story if a man did the acts or took part in them. As to his private beliefs no one inquired; if he took part in the proper acts of worship he counted as a religious man, unless he went so far as openly to flout the current opinions ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... tender or the fierce and bright, Youth's rosy blush or Passion's pearly bite? You hardly know perhaps; but Chloe knows, And pours you out the necessary dose, Meticulously measuring to scale, The cup of Circe or the Holy Grail— An actress she at home in every role, Can flout or flatter, bully or cajole, And on occasion by a stretch of art Can even speak the language of the heart, Can lisp and sigh and make confused replies, With baby lips and complicated eyes, Indifferently apt to weep or wink, Primly pursue, provocatively shrink, Brazen or bashful, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... cultivated grand passions for actors, authors, musicians, and even for professors. Sometimes she played to select audiences with all her old ravishing skill, but this happened more and more rarely, until at last she utterly declined, and even went so far as to flout H.S.H. the Duke of KALBSKOPF, who had been specially ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... discourse ought to be as a field, without coming home to any man. I knew two noblemen, of the west part of England, whereof the one was given to scoff, but kept ever royal cheer in his house; the other would ask of those that had been at the other's table, "Tell truly, was there never a flout or dry blow given?" To which the guest would answer, "Such and such a thing passed." The lord would say, "I thought he would mar a good dinner." Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... of the force of public opinion is a recent affair. In former years they were totally indifferent to it, if indeed they did not openly flout it. Even now their appeal to public sentiment is mainly a special plea for defensive purposes, and has little or no educational value. Brewers have opposed practically every effort to effect a change in excise ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... Vanderschoffeldt flout, And swear and rave for sour krout; Nay kick his frow with solemn phiz, To make her feel how goot it ish. Yet after he has gorg'd his maw With puttermilks and goot olt slaw, Let him remember times are such, The French have Holland, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... of early leaves, and thrilling lays, And ceaseless chime of song (that never cloys, Altho' the winds be redolent of praise.) Wakes not in man that stupor of amaze, Bird, beast, and plant, in universal choir, Pay to Almighty in a thousand ways, That sterner reason's votaries would flout, Giving their tardy homage in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... pity— For mother and wife toiling on till she dies, Or the frivolous butterfly child of the city, All blind to the glory of earth and of skies? Is it fate, or ill fortune, hath woven about you Strong meshes which ye are too helpless to break? Shall we scornfully wonder, or angrily flout you, Or strive from their torpor your minds ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... new critics, who never heard Thalberg, have the impertinence to flout him, to make merry at his fantasias. Just compare the Don Juan of Liszt and the Don Juan of Thalberg! See which is the more musical, the more pianistic. Liszt, after running through the gamut of operatic extravagance, began to paraphrase movements from ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... English minister came forward from the town to flout us with an address of welcome in which he used not our incognitos but ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... know there's neither flout nor frown That we now for him bear, But will add to our heavenly crown, When he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... know: there is a Charm about The quiet State of Golf, tho' fools may flout, That with its magic has unlock'd the Door Of ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... their ignorance until it leads them to place the evening star within the arc of the crescent moon, when they are annoyed to be told that the moon does not grow from this shape to the full orb once a month. But ofttimes, though the artist may not flout the universe, he shows his carelessness of natural fact and needs the snubbing. It is in this range that the little critic walks triumphantly posing as a shrewd and a discerning one. He holds up inconsistencies with his deft thumb and finger and cries, "what a smart boy am I." And yet in ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... were in their graves. As it did not appear till 1621, the men of his own time were not able to enjoy the shout of laughter over his discomfiture which would surely have gone up from Paris and Strasburg and Basel and Zurich. Estienne and Gessner would hardly have felt acute sorrow at a flout put upon Julius Caesar Scaliger. Crooked-tempered as he was, Cardan, compared with Scaliger, was as a rose to a thistle, but there were reasons altogether unconnected with the personalities of the disputants which swayed ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... attitude? Nay, not a bit of it! Like JOAN'S true DARBY I'm "always the same." Parties may flout, but I can't see the wit of it; Surely they ought to be fly to my game. Such "disquisitions" are strangely unfortunate, Pain us extremely, delighting our foes; Worry one too, like a busy, importunate ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... gasped. "By heaven, this is too much! For thirty years, I have been factor in this district, and kept the hunters in line. But, now, there's a brotherhood of free-traders. They'll flout the Company, will they? They'll flout me, eh? I'll show them, by ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... count her teardrops as they fall; I flout my daytime fears; I mumble thanks to God for all These gibes and happy jeers. But, when the warning dawn awakes, Begins my wandering; With stealthy strokes through tangled ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... to-day, her husband came, And moaned, "Why did you flout her? Well could I do without her! For both our burdens you ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... the early days you scorned them, And with many a flip and flout Said "These battles are the white man's, And the whites will fight them out." Up the hills you fought and faltered, In the vales you strove and bled, While your ears still heard the thunder ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... to miracles, Lahiri Mahasaya often said, "The operation of subtle laws which are unknown to people in general should not be publicly discussed or published without due discrimination." If in these pages I have appeared to flout his cautionary words, it is because he has given me an inward reassurance. Also, in recording the lives of Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Sri Yukteswar, I have thought it advisable to omit many true miraculous stories, which could hardly have been included without writing, also, an explanatory ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... is this that rises to my touch, So like a cushion? Can it be a cabbage? It is, it is that deeply injured flower, Which boys do flout us with;—but yet I love thee, Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout. Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; But now ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... for perfection, the ardent desire to draw near to God, sometimes takes the form of an unhappy perversion of reason and common sense. The popular soul knows no hesitation when laying its offerings upon the Altar of the Good. It dares not only to flout the principles of patriotism, of family love, and of respect for the power and the dogmas of the established church, but, taking a step further, will even trample underfoot man's deepest organic needs, and actually ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... shouted, thumping the table with his fist: "You are the limit!... The take-the-cake limit!... You flout me! You practise on my credulity!... Now you would steal a march on me! Try it on—will you?... Ah! You are not Corporal Vinson!... No?... You are a journalist!... You have got to prove that!... Even if you do prove it, you have ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... study, the whole vast world of living creatures is ours, throughout all zones and all lands. It is not ours to flout, to abuse, or to exterminate as we please. While for practical reasons we do not here address ourselves to the invertebrates, nor even to the sea-rovers, we can not keep them out of the background of our thoughts. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... here, To be thine haughty paramour's meek slave. Freeborn am I, yet see! mine arms are chained!— Through the long, troubled nights, upon my couch I lie and weep; each morn, as the bright sun Returns, I curse my gray hairs and my weight Of years. All scorn me, flout me. All I had Is gone, save heavy heart and scalding tears.— Nay, I will speak, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of which the title is a sufficient clue to its purpose, permits a boy to refuse to go to school, and, as a young man, to flout his father's advice in regard to matrimony, only to bring him to the bottom rung of miserable drudgery and servitude under a scolding wife. Of some interest is the lad's report of a schoolboy's life, voicing, as it possibly does, a needed criticism ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... kind of lunacy, an everlasting opium dream without the opium; but I am grateful to him for living such a life, since it has bequeathed us some exquisite poetry,' said Lesbia, who had been too carefully cultured to fleer or flout ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Vine had struck a Fibre; which about It clings my Being—let the Sufi flout; Of my Base Metal may be filed a Key, That shall unlock ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... foolishness. He had realized that the essence of successful rule in the China of the Twentieth Century was to support the foreign point of view—nominally at least—because foreigners disposed of unlimited monetary resources, and had science on their side. He knew that so long as he did not openly flout foreign opinion by indulging in barefaced assassinations, he would be supported owing to the international reputation he had established in 1900. Arguing from these premises, his instinct also told him that ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Asad watched his departure. On the point of commanding him to return, he checked, fearing lest in his present mood Sakr-el-Bahr should flout his authority and under the eyes of all refuse him the obedience due. He knew that it is not good to command where we are not sure of being obeyed or of being able to enforce obedience, that an authority once successfully ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... done me so great wrong already, and that you hold me, your lawful Lord, here a prisoner and in chains! Ye know well, as I cannot doubt, that you are doing an evil and a wicked thing, so I pray you go your way, and cease to flout me." "Good my Lord Argon," said Boga, "be assured we are not mocking you, but are speaking in sober earnest, and we will swear it on our Law." Then all the Barons swore fealty to him as their Lord, and Argon too swore that he would never reckon it against ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... heart hard and my knees unworn. Enough you have of jester, player, priest: I as the skeleton attend your feast, In the mad revelry to make a lull With shaken finger and with bobbing skull. However you my services may flout, Philosophy disdain and reason doubt, I mean to hold in customary state, My dismal revelry and celebrate My yearly rite until the crack o' doom, Ignore the cheerful season's warmth and bloom And cultivate an oasis ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... whose name you flout, Slip of the tree you fain would fell; Your colleagues own, I cannot doubt, Your plan, George Russell, likes them well, "What will regain," you heard them cry, "That popular praise we once enjoyed?" And instant was your smart reply, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the transcendent manifestation of that power which ordains life and all its privileges and abolishes all the noisesomeness of death. Alive, he nourishes, comforts, consoles, corrects us. Dead, all that is mortal he transforms into ethereal and vital gases. Obey him, and he blesses; flout him, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... not let me rouse your phlegmatic blood, my Britons; sit down, with your thumbs in your mouths, my masters, and allow a coterie to flout you at will, whilst the Frenchmen, the Germans, the Russians alternately laugh at and pity you. Pity you, the sons of the men who chased their fathers half over Europe at the point of the blood-red bayonet! Have you grown tame, have you waxed fat and foolish during these long years of peace? Is the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... in Latin, as Ainsworth elaborately explains, "a mocking by grimaces, mows, a flout, a frump, a gibe, a scoff, a banter;" and Sannio is "a fool in a play." The Italians change the S into Z, for they say Zmyrna and Zambuco, for Smyrna and Sambuco; and thus they turned Sannio into Zanno, and then into Zanni, and we caught the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... persons and the rest follows." Does he glory in the present? he reverently bows before the past also. Does he sound the call of battle for the Union? but he nourishes the sick and wounded of the enemy as well. Does he flout at the old religions? but he offers a larger religion in their stead. He is never merely negative, he is never fanatical, he is never narrow. He sees all and ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... but now, whose life may yet in one day be of more service to the world than an hundred thousand of thy like could be what while the world endureth. I will teach thee, then, by means of this annoy that thou sufferest, what it is to flout men of sense, and particularly scholars, and will give thee cause never more, an thou comest off alive, to fall into such a folly. But, an thou have so great a wish to descend, why dost thou not cast thyself down? On this wise, with God's help, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight. For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild but to flout the ruins gray: When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress alternately Seem ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... proud man. The Gentiles, who are neither proud nor intellectual, spit upon him and flout him. One of them beguiles his daughter and teaches her to rob him. Another of them signs a mad bond to help an extravagant friend to live in idleness. Bitter, lonely brooding upon these things strengthen the Jew's obsession, till the words, "I can cut out ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... who must supply the leisure, the independence, the setting, the background for the women. All Europe says that our women are spoiled, that they are tyrants, that they treat us men badly, that they flout us, do not do their duty by us, and finally divorce us. We can afford to let them say it! We have given our women an independence that many of them abuse, it is true. We perhaps give them more than their share to spend, and more of luxury than is good for them; ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... at that time to the pope and being governed by a vice-legate, was considered as foreign territory. There he found his daughter, Madame d'Urban, who did all she could to induce him to stay with her; but to do so would have been to flout Louis XIV's orders too publicly, and the marquis was afraid to remain so much in evidence lest evil should befall him; he accordingly retired to the little village of l'Isle, built in a charming spot near the fountain of Vaucluse; there he was lost sight of; none ever heard him spoken of again, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... quiet man. 'And that,' he said at length, 'that's only half the story. The cream of it is this: the way I myself felt, sitting there among all those soft, easily lived people. That's the cream of it. To flout them, to sting them, to laugh at them, to know you had more courage than all of them put together, you who were once so afraid of them! To feel that—even if they knew it was about yourself you were talking—that even then they ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... strength, and march unto him straight: Let him perceive how ill we brook his treason. And what offence it is to flout ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... march, Footman standing stiff as starch; Savans, lorettes, deputies, Arch- Bishops, and there together range Sous-lieutenants and cent-gardes (strange Way these soldier-chaps make change), Mixed with black-eyed Polish dames, With unpronounceable awful names; Laces tremble and ribbons flout, Coachmen wrangle and gendarmes shout— Bless us! what is the row about? Ah! here comes Rosy's new turnout! Smart! You bet your life 'twas that! Nifty! (short for magnificat). Mulberry panels,—heraldic spread,— Ebony ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... hard with him if he attempts to flout the King's authority. And though he should dare attempt it, be sure that his own officers will not dare to do other ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... escape the responsibility of her success. Who does? My dear Charmian, who wrote the successful novel of last year, do you not already repent your rash act? If you do not write a better novel this year, will not the public flout you and jeer you for a pretender? Did the public overpraise you at first? Its mistaken partiality becomes now your presumption. Last year the press said you were the rival of Hawthorne. This year it is, "that Miss Charmian who set herself up as a second Hawthorne." When the new house was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... marry 'most any girl you wanted me to. But if Columbine were to flout me as she used to—why, I'd buck sure enough.... Dad, are you sure she knows nothing, suspects nothing ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... all mankind I never saw A man like you, Sordell', I wis, For he who woman does adore Will never flout her love and kiss. And what to others is a prize You surely ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... Thoreau, and we should devoutly thank the gods of New England for the precious gift. Thoreau's work lives and will continue to live because, in the first place, the world loves a writer who can flout it and turn his back upon it and yet make good; and again because the books which he gave to the world have many and very high literary and ethical values. They are fresh, original, and stimulating. He drew a gospel out of the wild; he ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... you shall not be, Unless ye go with me. But shall I tell them so? O, no, sir, no, no, no. The man hath many a foe, As far as I do know: You do not flout me, I hope. See how this liquor fumes, And how my force presumes. You would know where Lord Anthony is? I perceive you. Shall I say he is in yond farmhouse? I deceive you. Shall I tell you this wine is for him? The gods ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... wonder Tory landlords flout "Fix'd Duty," for 'tis plain, With them the Anti-Corn-Law Bill Must go ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... its own in the public prints. Furthermore, Lady Diantha Mainwaring was moderately the talk of the town, in those prim, remotely ante-bellum days—thanks to high spirits and a whimsical tendency to flout the late Victorian proprieties; something which, however, had yet to lead her into any prank perilous ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... in the Dutch, making them subject to the slight derision of the nations who hold themselves to be more romantic, and, as it were, more slender. We English, once upon a time, did especially flout the little nation then acting a history that proved worth the writing. It may be no more than a brief perversity that has set a number of our writers to cheer the memory of Charles II. Perhaps, even, it is no more than another rehearsal ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... policy no man flout, The wisest Kings have all some folly; Nor let his piety any doubt; Charles, like a Sov'reign, wise and holy, Makes young men judges of the bench, And bishops, those that ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... watched her with reluctant admiration. The child had all the thoroughbred points of a Ludlow. All the same she should be shown that, even in the twentieth century, young girls could not break away from discipline and flout authority without punishment. The smile became almost gleeful at the thought of the little surprise that was in ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... manners, and association with vivisection led these dignitaries and editors to flout and insult a man whose shoe strings they were not worthy to tie. Time is merciful and their very ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... gotten himself killed in some way and the man who stepped into his shoes, out of some spite, has refused Teboen's gold. And as for her object—I wonder at you, lord of my heart! What kind of a lover are you that you cannot guess that?" Feigning to flout him, she drew away; then feigning to relent, turned back and laughed it into his ear. "It is a love-token! To hold him to the fair promises he made at its giving, and to remind him of her, and to win her a crown, and to do so many strange wonders that no tongue can number them! Are you ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... self-control. I shall have to answer for it to my God—" He stretched out his arms and looked haggardly at Paul. "But it is God's will. It is God's will that I should voice His message to the Empire. Paul, Paul, my beloved son—you cannot flout Almighty God." ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... with horses was remarkable. No animal that man has broken to his use is keener to recognize a master and flout a coward than the horse. No coward has ever been able to do anything ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... need a friend about thee To cheer and comfort when she flout thee. So, an thou wilt a-wooing wend, I'll follow thee like trusty friend. In love or fight thou shalt not lack A sturdy arm to 'fend thy back. I'll follow thee in light or dark, Through good or ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... "Memphis is the lure of all Egypt, and he who hath been transplanted to her would flout the favor of the gods, did he make homesick moan ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... can always flout your father, too—he's dead, but never mind; He and all who dream as he did are much better in their graves. And you cross the sea to Osborne, and, if Grandmamma be kind, You become a British Admiral, and help to rule the waves; With Jack Tars to say "Ay, Ay, Sir!" To this nautical young Kaiser, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... him deeply in the eyes, caught him by the ear, and with a twist made him wince, pushed him on the shoulders and made his knees bend. Then he released him with a flout of contempt. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... unreality; voluble people issuing from a cafe, the queue at theatre doors, Sunday cabfuls of second-rate pleasure-seekers, the bedizened ladies of the pavement, the show in the jewellers' windows—all the familiar sights contributing to flout his own unhappiness, want, and isolation. At the same time, if he be at all after my pattern, he is perhaps supported by a childish satisfaction: this is life at last, he may tell himself, this is the real thing; the bladders ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne |
