"Gibe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... except his Cockney accent would have noticed nothing about Simon de Montfort except his French accent. The man who jeers at Jones for having dropped an "h" might have jeered at Nelson for having dropped an arm. Scorn springs easily to the essentially vulgar-minded, and it is as easy to gibe at Montfort as a foreigner or at Nelson as a cripple, as to gibe at the struggling speech and the maimed bodies of the mass of our comic and tragic race. If I shrink faintly from this affair of tourists and tombs, it is certainly not because I am so profane as to think lightly either of ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... expecting Brick to consent to this on the ground that in all likelihood Bill's claim would last but a few years, anyway. It seemed too good an opening for Brick to lose; but instead of refreshing himself with his customary gibe, the huge fellow sat dark and glowering, his eyes staring upward at the crevice in the rock roof, the lantern-light showing his forehead deeply rutted in ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... Bigot, passionately. "Why do you utter his name, Varin, to sour our wine? I hope one day to pull down the Dog, as well as the whole kennel of the insolent Bourgeois." Then, as was his wont, concealing his feelings under a mocking gibe, "Varin," said he, "they say that it is your marrow bone the Golden Dog is gnawing—ha! ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sharply, "is it you who fling such a taunt to shame your own kin? If there is aught of impropriety in what this man Sir John has done, is it not our affair with him in place of a silly gibe at Dorothy?" ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... parrot, with such appropriateness that even Hope had to join feebly in the woman's jolly laughter, while Faith plucked up strength to gibe a little in return for ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... of this gibe, but as soon as he thought wise brought the conversation round to the object of ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... continue. Pao-y was in Tai y's apartments relating about the rat-elves, when Pao-ch'ai entered unannounced, and began to gibe Pao-y, with trenchant irony: how that on the fifteenth of the first moon, he had shown ignorance of the allusion to the green wax; and the three of them then indulged in that room in mutual poignant satire, for the sake of fun. Pao-y had been giving way to solicitude ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... seafaring men is pretty general. It is usually 'Hail, fellow, well met!' with us, for we endeavour to get all the fun we can out of life, because we know that whenever he gets the chance, Death will have his gibe at us. A sailor must, of necessity, often face death, and therefore his motto is, 'Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die'; and death does come to him frequently when least he expects it. I'll tell you an instance of this in which I and some ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... a pretty wit and I admire it as I admire most of his brilliant qualities, but I fail to see the aptness of this last gibe. At the club this afternoon I picked up an entertaining French novel called En felons des Perles. On the illustrated cover was a row of undraped damsels sitting in oyster-shells, and the text of the book went to show how it was the hero's ambition to ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... It makes ragged Lazarus doubly hungry to see Dives feasting in cloth-of-gold; and so if I were a beauteous duchess . . . Silence, vain man! Can the Queen herself make you a duchess? Be content, then, nor gibe at thy betters of "the Duke ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a happy country life with manual labour as an equally necessary part of a completely healthy and rounded human existence, and in this experiment he practised what he preached. The experiment caused no little stir in Oxford, and even the London newspapers had their gibe at the "Amateur Navvies of Oxford"; to walk over to Hinksey and laugh at the diggers ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Of the gibe I took little heed. What imported was her warning. And I did not doubt that she had good cause to warn me. I remembered with a shudder her old-time habit of listening at doors. It was very probable that in like manner had she now gathered information ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... I was one morning playing at marbles in the village ball alley, with a light heart and lighter pocket. The gibe and the jest went gaily round, when suddenly there appeared amongst us a stranger, of a very remarkable and very cheerful aspect; his intrusion was not the least restraint upon our merry little assemblage, on the contrary, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... reason or other Bagshaw was always very decent to me, and when he heard that Ward, Dennison, Collier, Lambert and I were going to finish the evening at The Reindeer he asked me to come home in the brake, but that gibe of Dennison's was heavy upon me and I had determined to stick to my promise and do whatever came my way. I did not expect that the evening was going to be anything but a rowdy one, for when Lambert did undertake a thing ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... as is this reply to the oft-repeated gibe to which we have referred, it is also true that nowhere does the square man in the round hole do quite as great and as lasting injury as he does from the pulpit. The right man for the work—that must be the ideal of the Church, that man and no other, whatever ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... when Oxford normally is at its loveliest and fullest, brimming over with young life, the streets crowded with caps and gowns, the river and towing-path alive with the "flannelled fools," who have indeed flung back Rudyard Kipling's gibe—if it ever applied to them—with interest. For they had all disappeared. They were in the trenches, landing at Suvla, garrisoning Egypt, pushing up to Baghdad. The colleges contained a few forlorn remnants—under age, or medically unfit. ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he was making progress with them. The hated gibe "white slave" was less frequently heard. Sam, passionately bent on making good in the community, weighed every shade of the men's manner toward him, ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Then thy spruce citizen, washed artisan, And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air: Thy coach of hackney, whiskey,[87] one-horse chair, And humblest gig through sundry suburbs whirl,[da] To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow make repair; Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl, Provoking envious gibe from each ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... should mention one detail which Harry was too modest to mention. He was—or is—unusually good-looking. I don't mean to claim that he possessed any Greek-god beauty; such wouldn't gibe with a height of five foot seven. No; his good looks were due to the simple outward expression, through his features, of a certain noble inward quality which would have made the homeliest face attractive. Selfishness ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... mounted and formed up on the quay, the mob, which consisted of about two hundred wharf labourers, with a small sprinkling of half-breed women and fifty or sixty boys, gave back sullenly and scowlingly with a few low-muttered threats and an occasional hissing gibe of hereticos! But there was no attempt at violence except when some half-dozen boys began to throw stones. But the stringing of the Englishmen's bows, and the fitting of a few arrows to the strings, sent the mischievous young urchins to the right-about ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... up the people's mockery, for they know that it is based upon a falsehood; but they scoff at His miracles, which they assume to be disproved by His crucifixion. Their venomous gibe is profoundly true, and goes to the very heart of the gospel. Precisely because 'He saved others,' therefore 'Himself He cannot save'—not, as they thought, for want of power, but because His will was fixed to obey the Father and to redeem ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... his opponent to pay his flippant gibe the honor of repartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect in his slender grace, was moved to a slight, disdainful smile, but it evidenced scarcely the appreciation that ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... rose up before him the stern faces of Mr Hippetts and Mr Sibery, with the jeering crowd of schoolfellows, who could laugh at and gibe him for his downfall, and be sure to call him Gentleman Coleby, as long as they were together, the name, under the ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... the citizens, who were ever willing to give handsome tribute to a potential foe. On occasion the Ragusans could be nobly firm, refusing to deliver a political refugee to the Turks, and so forth. In such tempestuous times the little State was forced to trim its sails; there was the gibe that they were prepared to pay lip service to anyone, and that the letters S.B. on the flag (for Sanctus Blasius, their patron saint) indicated the seven flags, sette bandiere, which they were ready to fly. But the Republic of Dubrovnik—a truly oligarchic republic, until the great ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... Here is no gibe at the physical sciences. To sneer at them were just as foolish as to sneer at religion. What we could do on this expedition in a "scientific" way we did laboriously and zealously. We would never have thought of attempting the ascent of the mountain without bringing ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... able to say, Ich bin ruhig ("I am at peace"). Yet, in spite of the difficulties and impediments besetting him at every step, his promise of greatness and usefulness was not belied. In the Introduction to his commentary on Maimuni's Guide to the Perplexed (Gibe'at ha-Moreh), in which he attempted to reconcile his master's system with that of modern philosophy—even as the master had tried to reconcile Judaism with Aristotelianism—he gave a brief sketch of the development of modern thought. This part of his work was assiduously studied ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... spears upheld Flashing through thickets green. These kept not line, For Alp was still recounting battles old, Aodh of wizards sang, and Ir of love; While bald-pate Conan, sharpening from his eye The sneering light, shot from his plastic mouth Shrill taunt and biting gibe. The younger sort Eyed the dense copse and launched full many a shaft Through it at flying beast. From ledge to ledge Clomb Angus, keen of sight, with hand o'er brow, Forth gazing on some far blue ridge of war With nostril wide ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... returned Wilhelm Schwab, taking Schmucke's quaint inquiry for a gibe, of which that ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... was one thing to hold up their heads at the shanty, and quite another to hold them up on the noisy, swarming campus where they knew nobody, and where the ill-bred bullies of the school felt free to jeer and gibe at their poor clothing and their shy, ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... The fates that gibe have lessoned us; There sups to-night on earth No madder crew of wastrels than This fellowship of mirth.... (Of mirth ... drink, fools!—nor let it flag Lest from the outer mist Creep in that other company ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... gebogen; sieden, to seethe siude s[o]t suten gesoten. III. binden, to bind binde bant bunden gebunden; h[e:]lfen, to help hilfe half hulfen geholfen. IV. n[e:]men, to take nime nam n[a]men genomen. V. g[e:]ben, to give gibe gap g[a]ben geg[e:]ben. VI. graben, to dig grabe gruop ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... voice—the gibe at her own poor ruins of love fallen about her—was lost on him. He was in total ignorance of her friendship with Quarrington. But the plain significance of her words came home to him clearly enough. He did not speak for a minute or two. Then: "You've been playing with ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... tragedy of which few men know the existence and certainly no man in these woman-ridden isles can ever have experienced. Men always treat with derision the woman anxious for matrimony, and gibe equally at the spinster who fails to attain it. Heaven alone knows why, since by men's laws and traditions the married state has been made to mean everything desirable for a woman, and the unmarried condition everything undesirable. 'People think women ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... and open. In the act of mounting the steps the condemned craned his head sidewise, and at the sight of those coffins stretching along six in a row on the gravelled courtyard, he made a cheap and sorry gibe. But when he stood beneath the cross-arm to be pinioned, his legs played him traitor. Those craven knees of his gave way under him, so that trusties had to hold the weakening ruffian upright while the executioner snugged ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... imply that Panwar women behave in this manner, but the passage is interesting as a sidelight on the joint family system. It concludes by advising the girl, if she cannot detach her husband from his family, to poison him and return as a widow. This last counsel is a gibe at the custom which the caste have of taking large sums of money for a widow on her second marriage. As such a woman is usually adult, and able at once to perform the duties of a wife and to work in the fields, she is highly valued, and her price ranges from Rs. 25 ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... friends—our Lady of Sorrows forgive 'em! But for all hurt that Titian did him he might have been living, Greater than any living, and lord of renown and such glory As would have left you both dull as yon withered moon in the sunshine." Loud laughed the listening group at the insolent gibe of the poet, Stirring the gall to its depths in the bitter soul of their master, Who with his tremulous fingers tapped the hilt of his poniard, Answering naught as yet. Anon the glance of the ribald, ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... American address on Numbers by quoting Dr. Johnson's saying, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." We must admit that to certain forms of it the gibe is pertinent. But in its essence, patriotism is that most useful of human possessions, an emotion that turns a duty into a joy. It is necessary for men, however burdensome they may find the obligation, to be ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... of that Stentorian sound, Rose Belcour, dressed, and soon the lobby found. About the door a throng of varlets stood, A grinning and ill-favoured brotherhood, That scoff and gibe at every wight that wears Linen less black, or better coat than theirs. For these, young Belcour was too fair a mark; 'Make way,' cries one, 'he's going to the Park: His horses wait; he's going for a ride.' 'Fool, 'tis his tilbury,' another cried; 'D'ye think his lordship rides without ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... honeymoon. How many sweet and tremulous illusions I folded into it on that first night and how soon afterwards did three-fourths of the world look like ashes to me. Dreams are harder to give up than realities, because they come back and gibe us even after they are dead and buried, while tangible realities stay fairly well hidden when we screw down the lid. I suppose you think that I talk like Old Man Solomon, but you know that the only serious thoughts I have are mushrooms of one ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... went so far as to use the poisoned weapons of savages—in this warfare the advantages of wit and delicate irony lay on the side of the nobles. But it should never be forgotten that the wounds made by the tongue and the eyes, by gibe or slight, are the last of all to heal. When the Chevalier turned his back on mixed society and entrenched himself on the Mons Sacer of the aristocracy, his witticisms thenceforward were directed at du Croisier's salon; he stirred up the fires of war, not knowing how far the spirit ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... The gibe, with all the hurtful, stinging quality that only truth possesses, struck his anger from him, leaving him limp and pale. Then ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... joyful faces; but the appearance of a stranger blunted many a gibe which had been prepared on Hobbie's lack of success in the deer-stalking. There was a little bustle among three handsome young women, each endeavouring to devolve upon another the task of ushering the stranger into the apartment, while ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... been difficult for a less practised rider to keep her seat in the saddle. This time the docile animals had refused to obey their mistress, and the duchess expressed the suspicion that she had not intended to call them off; for, though she had carelessly apologised, she asked, as if the words were a gibe, if there was anything more delightful than to curb a refractory steed. She had an answer ready for Cordula, however, and retorted that the disobedience of her dogs proved that, if she understood how to obtain from horses what she called the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... some, who, vain and proud, May ape the manners of the crowd, Lisp French, and lame it at each word, And jest and gibe to all afford:— But we, as in long ages past, Will still be poets to ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... they make their appearance on the deck of the world with their book; if truth has been victorious, then has truth the hurrah! but if truth is pinioned against the mast, then is their fist thrust against the nose of truth, and their gibe and their insult spirted in her face. The strongest party had the sailor, and the strongest party has almost invariably the writer of the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... comment and talk Minky served the requirements of his customers, wrapped in sphinx-like reserve. His geniality never failed him. He had a pleasant word for everybody. And at every gibe, at every warning, he beamed and nodded, but otherwise could not be drawn into controversy. One remark, and one only, had he for all and sundry who chose him as ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... they starve the little frightened child Till it weeps both night and day: And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool, And gibe the old and grey, And some grow mad, and all grow bad, And none ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... austere Savonarola, the other by the splendour-loving Lorenzo. Savonarola's influence upon the young Machiavelli must have been slight, for although at one time he wielded immense power over the fortunes of Florence, he only furnished Machiavelli with a subject of a gibe in "The Prince," where he is cited as an example of an unarmed prophet who came to a bad end. Whereas the magnificence of the Medicean rule during the life of Lorenzo appeared to have impressed Machiavelli strongly, for he frequently recurs to it in his writings, and it is to Lorenzo's grandson ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... scared, friends! Call me fool and coward, but nothing worse! Jeer at the fool and gibe at the coward! 'Twas ever the coward's curse That fear breeds fancies in such: such take their shadow for substance still, —A fiend at their back. I liked poor Parkes,—loved Vincent, if ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen; but as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... his astonishment, Laurette did not seem to hear him. She was casting quick glances of anger and disappointment in the direction of Jim Reddin, who leaned on a sled-stake and appeared to take no interest in the proceedings. Goodine flushed with jealous wrath, and was about to fling some gibe at ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... you When rioting in Alexandria; you Did pocket up my letters, and with taunts Did gibe my missive ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... who scarcely once speaks to the King without an insult, or to Polonius without a gibe; the Hamlet who storms at Ophelia and speaks daggers to his mother; the Hamlet who, hearing a cry behind the arras, whips out his sword in an instant and runs the eavesdropper through; the Hamlet who sends his 'school-fellows' ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... good patron; that is, he was a bad friend. The aristocratic bristles rose on the skin that had seemed so smooth. At first he expressed mild wonder at Marius's resolution—the wonder that is more contemptuous than a gibe—and exhorted him in words, the professedly friendly tone of which must have been peculiarly irritating, not to let a distorted ambition get the better of him; every one should see that his desires were appropriate and limit them when they passed this stage; Marius ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... visible, however, from the entrance. He took out a roll of paper, as if he were going to write, put the pen to his mouth, and bit it, as was his habit in composing. Then he threw his head back, and drew his cloak over it. The Thracian spearmen, who were watching him from the door, began to gibe at his cowardice. Archias went in to him, encouraged him to rise, repeated his old arguments, talked to him of reconciliation with Antipater. By this time Demosthenes felt that the poison which he had sucked from the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... away with a scornful laugh and a gibe; but the arrow had hit its mark. But, indeed, what Thomas Bradly said was true. Broken hearts and dislocated families had been set to rights in that room. There would appointments be kept by wretched used-up sots, who would never have been persuaded to ask for Bradly at the ordinary ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... jury-stumps. Old Joe pulled rather the better oar, and called his son "a one-legged fiddler" when he missed the dip of wave; while Mordacks stood with his leg's apart, and playing the easy part of critic, had his sneers at both of them. But they let him gibe to his liking; because they knew their work, and he did not. And, upon the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... clothed him like armour, and he never really emerged from it save when a fiendish sense of humour tempted him. This, and this alone, so it seemed to Babbacombe, had any power to draw him out. And the instant he had flung his gibe at the object thereof, he would retreat again into that impenetrable shell of silence. He never once spoke of his past life, never once referred ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... children and the lords of his council, all wrought in fine gold. 'I will have that golden emperor,' said Richard, 'having just made one out of clay. Let him be sent to me.' He spoke carelessly, as they all thought, simply to get in his gibe at the new Emperor of the Romans, his nephew, whom he had caused to be chosen; and seeing that that was not the treasure he craved, it is like enough. But somebody took his word into Languedoc, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... commonly means that the habitee has quit worrying about it. And yet since the dawn of time when Adam poked fun at Eve's way of wearing her fig-leaf and on down through the centuries until the present day and date it has ever been the custom of men to gibe at the garments worn by women. Take our humorous publications, which I scarcely need point out are edited by men. Hardly could our comic weeklies manage to come out if the jokes about the things which women wear were denied to them as fountain-sources of ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... of his opportunities,—when, Do what he will, he cannot avert the Black Storm,—when Ruin seems impending, and Catastrophe is on the cards,—when he is Down, in a word, and the despiteful are getting ready to gibe at him in his Misfortune, and to administer unto him the last Kick. These times of Trial and Bitter Travail ofttimes strike one who has just attained Middle age,—the Halfway-House of Life; and then, 'tis the merest chance in the world whether he will be enabled to pick himself up again, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... a 'mute inglorious Milton' is nothing to me. Nature has created me a lover of the picturesque. In heart and soul I am an artist, I dabble in colours, I dream of lights and shades and glorious effects; but the power of working out my ideas is denied me. If I try to paint a tree my friends gibe at me. I am a poor literary hack; but I give you my word, my dear old Philistine, that I would willingly change places with you." Anna smiled, she was accustomed to this sort of talk; but to her surprise Verity, who had ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... restless and disappointed. He knew, and Dick knew, that they had come to the end of the road, and that nothing lay beyond. In his own unpleasant way Fred Gregory had made a case for his sister that tied their hands, and the crux of the matter had lain in his final gibe: "As a man sows, Clark, so shall he reap." The moral issue ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... as he came Home that Evening she Accused him and said she knew All. Instead of Countering with the usual Gibe, he told her that she was the Only Woman he had ever Loved and would she go to a Show that Evening? She went, thinking that perhaps the Other Woman might be there and she could detect some Signal passing between them. While at the Theater he fanned her and explained the Plot, and ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... the well-worn platitudes of the Nationalist platform. When these evoked the usual enthusiasm he waxed bolder, and shot out some almost original epigrams directed against the Government, working up to a really new gibe about officials who sat like spiders spinning murderous webs in Dublin Castle. The audience were delighted with this, but their joy reached its height when someone shouted: 'You might speak better of the men who tore down the placard on Wednesday.' ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... is open spoken, and no respecter of persons; and a woman may forgive an injury, but never a scornful gibe. It is this that has brought both France and Russia on him. Madame Pompadour, who is all powerful, hates Frederick for having made disrespectful remarks concerning her. The Empress of Russia detests him, for the same reason. She ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... troubled him, I conceive, was the fear of being ridiculous. The position of a poor tutor aspiring to the favours of the heiress destined for his master invites the unkind gibe. And Harry could not be sure that Alison herself was free from the desire to make him a figure of scorn. Such a suspicion might disconcert the most ardent of lovers. Harry Boyce, whatever his abilities in the profession, was not that yet. But the very fact that he had come to feel an ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... of his throwing-knife, and the rules did not permit the substitution of fresh weapons. The crowd laughed ironically as the situation dawned upon them, and the discomfited players were compelled to submit to many a gibe. The bull remained master of the field, and the spectators, grown tired of waiting, began to express ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... that have 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
... This homely and non-committal gibe satisfied most of the audience, and I was about to proceed to the next question when my interlocutor, a litigious-looking man with blue spectacles, rose in the ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... supper; a boy and girl I left to wait on them, seeing the table set With all supplies myself, and then retired. But such their confidence; their talk so loud And free, I could not help but hear some words That raised suspicion; then I listened close And heard, 'mid gibe and jest, the enterprise That was to flout us; make the Loyalist A cringing slave to sneering rebels; make The British lion gnash his teeth with rage;— The Yankee, hand-on-hip, guffawing loud The while. At once, my British blood was up, Nor had I borne their hated ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... such a clash of discordant "Divine Voices," where shall sure guidance be found? One recalls the bitter gibe of Laud to the Puritan, who urged that he must follow his conscience: "Yea, verily; but take heed that thy conscience be not the ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... which the manliest of human voices is heard sounding throughout the order of it; it is a play stuffed to its fool's gibe, with the soberest, deepest, maturest human sense; and 'the tears of it,' as we who have tested it know, 'the tears of it are wet.' It is a play where the choicest seats, the seats in which those who see it all must sit, are 'reserved;' and there is a price to be paid ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... jeer and gibe if you saw a man sinking in the waves time after time in spite o' rafts and life-preservers thrown out to him from ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... course it held. Borso's court found him much to its taste. The men, however tall, of looks however terrible, bent their height and unbent their scowls to him; he was the pet of all the women; the very Fool, saturnine as he was (with a bite in every jest), had no gibe to put him to the blush withal. He made money, or money's worth, as fast as friends. A gold chain with a peregrine in enamel and jewels came to him by the hands of the Chamberlain; nothing was said, but he knew it was ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... might begin to receive the benefit. The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER excused the delay in publishing the Economy Committee's reports on the ground that the MINISTER OF MUNITIONS was "at sea," and elicited the inevitable gibe that he was not the only one. Sir ERIC GEDDES, with a judicious compliment to the motorists for setting "an extraordinary example of voluntary taxation," got a Second Reading for his Roads Bill; and Sir GORDON HEWART with some difficulty ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... the tamed girls at once heartily corroborated this statement, whereupon the newcomers ceased to gibe and consented to silence. Ramsey leaned forth over the edge of the overhanging bank, a dirt precipice five feet above the water, and peered into the indeterminable depths below. The pool had been stirred, partly by the ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... face with an air of well-feigned alarm. "You don't think the sprain has gone to your head, Fanny?" he asked, and walked away, leaving Mr. Arbuton to the ladies. Mrs. Ellison did not care for this or any other gibe, if she but served her own purposes; and now, having made everybody laugh and given the conversation a lively turn, she was as perfectly content as if she had not been herself an offering to the cause of cheerfulness. ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... you not set him as guard to your prisoner?" and then, her heart smiting her for the gibe, "Miss Bidwell lets no one meddle with her milk pans, and I knew best which were last night's milk," and she went up the hall with a naughty little throb of mingled mischief and triumph, as she thought how she had outwitted him, while the unsuspecting Oliver seated himself ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... began. "I was just thinking if they could only see me now—the crowd down at Morrison for instance. They used to gibe me. They called me the immaculate Garry, once. Aren't you a lot heavier than ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... house calls not to me, "Here, but for fate, were thou and she—" Its gibe for once is checked. To-night Silence is queen in grief's despite, And even the longing of my soul Is silent 'neath ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... shirt-sleeves?" It was a scornful gibe from Bessie in the hammock. "I don't notice any of the rest of the men around ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... Nemesis. The Italian hubris expressed itself in the familiar Greek distinction between barbarian and home-born; and the many nations from beyond the Alps found themselves united in a common bond which they were not eager to share. We have seen the kind of gibe with which Agricola's eloquence was greeted at Pavia. The more such insults are deserved, the more they sting. We may be sure that in many cases they were not forgotten. Celtis returning from Italy to Ingolstadt ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... gentleman should imagine that he was on the edge of a proposal for his daughter's hand. He thought that all the world must know of it, and he blushed like a girl at the thought of its being laid bare for Pendragon to laugh and gibe it. It was so precious, so wonderful, that he kept it, like a rich piece of jewellery, deep in a secret drawer, over which he watched delightedly, almost humorously, secure in the delicious knowledge that he alone had the key. He wandered out at night, like a foolish ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... creature come before Troy with the sons of Atreus. Drop this chatter about kings, and neither revile them nor keep harping about going home. We do not yet know how things are going to be, nor whether the Achaeans are to return with good success or evil. How dare you gibe at Agamemnon because the Danaans have awarded him so many prizes? I tell you, therefore—and it shall surely be—that if I again catch you talking such nonsense, I will either forfeit my own head ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... taunt, imitate, gibe, ridicule, jeer, schout; balk, disappoint, delude, tantalize, elude; defy, disregard; ape, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... tapers might be lighted. His fingers were more deft at this business, it would seem, than in the making of arrows. Fitzooth, in the intervals of his eating, took up Robin's arrows one by one and had some shrewd gibe ready for most of them. Of the score only five were allowed to pass; the rest were tossed contemptuously into the black hearth on to the little ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... letter? She could almost fancy that she smelled brandy, but it was so easy to fancy what one wanted to. She read it through again—this time, she felt almost sure that it had been dictated to him. If he had composed the wording himself, he would never have resisted a gibe at the law, or a gibe at himself for thus safeguarding her virtue. It was Rosek's doing. Her anger flamed up anew. Since they used such mean, cruel ways, why need she herself be scrupulous? She sprang out of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... time that evening, and, feeling wonderfully well satisfied with the way in which he had played his cards generally, could not resist another gibe at the crestfallen mate. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... great strength and physical endurance had pulled him out of the arms of violent death. There had been no shot fired from the shops. The strikers saw the utter futility of forcing armed men, so they had hung about with gibe and ribald jeer, waiting for some one careless enough to pass them alone. This Bennington did. His men had forgotten him. Bennington's injuries had been rather trivial; it had been his personal appearance that had terrified the ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... Domremy, In thine innocence only strong, Thou seest not the treason before thee, The gibe and the curse of the throng,— The furnace-pile in the market That licks out its flames to take thee;— For He who loves thee in heaven On ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... lines fixed themselves, and from amongst them the panic-stricken eyes made a dumb appeal to the griffins and crowns of his dark green hangings, for they were afraid to turn to the King. Henry retained his heavy look of jocularity: he jumped at a weighty gibe— ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... that "the pilgrims did find no answer to the riddle, and the Clerk of Oxenford thought that the Prioress had been deceived in the matter thereof; whereupon the lady was sore vexed, though the gentle knight did flout and gibe at the poor clerk because of his lack of understanding over other of the riddles, which did fill him with shame and make ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... of these letters, the constant comparison between the two peoples, with many a gibe at the English, but always turning to their advantage, the preference given to the philosophical system of Newton over that of Descartes, lastly the attacks upon religion concealed beneath the cloak of banter—all this ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a distinct gibe in this, and Grange at once retreated to a less exposed position. "I am quite willing to wait for her," he ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... and whenever some famous Conservative minister referred in parliament to a "revolutionary hydra" or a "hotbed of anarchy," they pictured to themselves a barbershop like that of Cupido, but much larger perhaps, scattering a poisonous atmosphere of cruel gibe and perverse effrontery ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... profitable yet. Their author's unfailing capacity for saying things worth heeding and remembering is proved in every one of them. It is not easy to open either of Mr. Kebbel's volumes without lighting upon something—a string of epigrams, a polished gibe, a burst of rhetoric, an effective collocation of words—that proclaims the artist. In this connection the perorations are especially instructive, even if you consider them simply as arrangements of sonorous and suggestive words: as oratorical impressions carefully prepared, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... right,—pray an' praise. Beliebe on de delibrin (delivering) Sabior. Trus' Him. He lead yuh. He show yuh de way. Dat all yuh got tuh do. Beliebe—pray—praise. Ebery night befo' I lay on my bed I git on my knees an' look up tuh Him. Soon I wake in de mornin' I gibe Him t'anks. Eben sometime in de day I git on my knees an' pray. He been good to me all dese years. He aint forget me. I aint been sick for ober twenty-five years. Good t'ing too, nobody left tuh tek care of me. Dey all gone. But I don't ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... thing, we ole niggers wus raised right an' de young niggers ain't. Iffen I had my say-so dey'd burn down de nigger schools, gibe dem pickanninies a good spankin' an' put 'em in de patch ter wuck, ain't no nigger got no business ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Elaine would read his speech in her morning paper, and he knew in advance that it was not going to be one of his worst efforts. He knew almost exactly where the punctuations of laughter and applause would burst in, he knew that nimble fingers in the Press Gallery would be taking down each gibe and argument as he flung it at the impassive Minister confronting him, and that the fair lady of his desire would be able to judge what manner of young man this was who spent his afternoon in her garden, lazily chaffing ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... remarked that his wife became silent, and looked eagerly towards him whenever he ventured to speak. She blundered, her eyes filled with tears; the little wit she had left her in her husband's presence: he grew angry, and tried to hide his anger with a sneer, or broke out with gibe and an oath, when he lost patience, and Clara, whimpering, would leave the room. Everybody at Newcome knew that Barnes ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... however, she was obliged to allow that they were mixed. Though the prospect of settling down at Seaton filled her with dismay, Percy's gibe at her probable failure touched her pride. Winona had always been counted as the clever member of the family. It would be too ignominious to be sent home labeled unfit. She set her teeth and clenched her fists at ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... could do he could no longer bear himself carelessly. Pallid and troubled, he watched, biting his lip; and though he longed to say something cutting, he could think of nothing. Nay, if it came to that, he could not trust his voice, and while he still faltered, seeking for a gibe and finding none, the two combatants had crossed their foils again. Their tense features, plain through the masks, as well as their wary movements, made it clear that they played for a victory of which neither ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... Mr. Healy's stale gibe at "Carson's Army," however inappropriate to the occasion, was a venial offence. Carson himself replied in a gentle and conciliatory tone ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... to lose their actual means of livelihood. Perhaps the truth in the final summing up can best be gotten from those who have made no vows that they will not change their opinions, and have nothing to lose if they fail occasionally to gibe with ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... not worth answering: indeed, I knew it was not meant for an answer; it was a palpable gibe. I held my tongue, but now I knew I should get no information out of this soft-voiced ruffian until it suited him to give it. Our fate was still a mystery—if we were beaten in the struggle that ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... spright Fill'd her pure mind with awe and dread, Stalk'd round the room, put out the light, And shook the curtains round her bed. No cruel uncle kept her land, No tyrant father forced her hand; She had no vixen virgin-aunt, Without whose aid she could not eat, And yet who poison'd all her meat, With gibe and sneer and taunt. Yet of the heroine she'd a share, - She saved a lover from despair, And granted all his wish in spite Of what she knew and felt was right: But, heroine then no more, She own'd the fault, and wept and pray'd And humbly took the ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... when it isn't where it might be," Hugh amended, taking no notice of Dick's gibe. "It's what Papa calls the process of elimination. You've got to do it with almost everything worth having really. You've only got to look at this river bed to see there's pretty sure to be something worth having there—in fact ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... under this gibe, but before he could set his retort in order Tom had turned to Wilson, and was saying, with placid indifference ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the grass in Heaven's Meadow, They tore the flowers about, And flung them on the earth beyond the paling, With gibe, and jeer, and shout. ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... talk about Him vexes Prospero! And it is good to cheat the pair [Miranda and Prospero], and gibe, Letting the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... kind of miraculous old pet, the plaything of people seventy or eighty years younger than herself, who talked and laughed with her as if she were a child, finding great delight in her wayward and strangely playful responses, into some of which she cunningly conveyed a gibe that caused their ears to tingle a little. She had done getting out of bed in this world, and lay there to be waited upon like a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in the salon as usual after dinner when M. Vergniaud was announced. The little princess was radiant. She had never been merrier in a school-girl frolic or more ready with gibe and jest and laughter. She sang her best songs, putting her whole soul into them—"Si tu savais comme je l'aime." Rene Vergniaud was so dazed that he came near bidding farewell to his senses for ever. He evidently thought that all this brilliancy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... Not that I cared for the gibe; but because I disliked that one there should hear me called by ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... all," said the archbishop; "let not the gibe and jest go round; there be matters of graver import that should occupy us this night. To-morrow, let the elements be propitious, and the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby |
