"Ironical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sourish smile, and he bowed ironical thanks for the compliment. Lifting his head, he shot a glance of reproachful interrogation at the consul. Was his friend doing this humorously, to tease him, or was the man simply ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... brows lifted into a straight line over his high nose. A grimly ironical smile drew up the corners of his mouth. He made a gesture of resignation. His humorously twinkling eyes met the consternation in Miss Beaver's but he appeared pleased and unmoved at the prospect of the dog's remaining with the boy. He rose from ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... at best only a presumption. It is one of life's ironical adjustments that the creature who fits so harmoniously into the family group should be alien to its influences, and independent of its cramping conditions. She seems made for the fireside she adorns, and where she has played ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... neither alarming nor unfamiliar. The master at once recognized it as Ben Dabney, otherwise known as "Uncle Ben," a good-humored but not over-bright miner, who occupied a small cabin on an unambitious claim in the outskirts of Indian Spring. His avuncular title was evidently only an ironical tribute to his amiable incompetency and heavy good-nature, for he was still a young man with no family ties, and by reason of his singular shyness not even a visitor in the few families of the neighborhood. As the master looked up, he had an irritating recollection ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... was born in Murcia. A writer on the staff of the satirical and humorous journal, El Padre Cobos, Selgas won the attention of the public by his ironical and reactionary articles and was elevated to an important political office by Martinez Campos. He is the author of two volumes of verses, La ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... common sense regarding the unseen, oftentimes regain what they may have lost, in a man's allegiance. It is a sort of madness, he begins to think, to differ from the received opinions thereon. Not that he is insincere or ironical, but that he tends, in the [55] sum of probabilities, to dwell on their more peaceful side; to sit quiet, for the short remaining time, in the reflexion of the more cheerfully lighted side of things; and what ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... VALENTINE (with ironical haste to disclaim such a weakness). No, no, no. Not love: we know better than that. Let's call it chemistry. You can't deny that there is such a thing as chemical action, chemical affinity, chemical combination—-the most irresistible of all natural forces. Well, ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... a light nod, untied his dogs, shouldered his tools, and slouched away down the path, to sleep under his accustomed tree that night and be off again, next day, travelling amongst men and watching them with his weary ironical smile. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... settled as Secretary of State, when he resigned the office to become Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois. Abigail wrote me a most amusing and ironical letter on this sudden shift of his activities. "What do you think now?" was her query. "I think he is as well fitted to be judge as to be Secretary of State, which is ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... fixed her with an ironical and melancholy smile: "Now, Lydia, I did think you had it in you to realize that your health and the strength of your child ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... compositions of the greatest masters. This passage is suddenly interrupted by a SCENE CHAMPETRE, a MAZOURKA in the style of an Idyl, full of the perfume of lavender and sweet marjoram; but which, far from effacing the memory of the profound sorrow which had before been awakened, only augments, by its ironical and bitter contrast, our emotions of pain to such a degree, that we feel almost solaced when the first phrase returns; and, free from the disturbing contradiction of a naive, simple, and inglorious happiness, we may again sympathize with the noble and imposing woe of a high, yet fatal struggle. ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... gaze at me—at least, I think she did so. I know that the fixity of her scrutiny and her ironical "Mr." made me feel peculiarly uncomfortable. But she was extremely kind and attentive to me, though perhaps her kindness and attention showed up more vividly against her complete neglect of Seaton. Only one remark that I have any ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... church, which had been demolished in the civil wars, and was rebuilt but left unfinished by Bishop Hacket. At the time he wrote the dedication, Woods had not turned a single stone, and it is said, that much against his will he did something, from having been so publicly reminded of it by this ironical dedication. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... animadverted on the conduct of the ministry in the most acrimonious terms, stigmatized some great names with all the virulence of censure, and even assaulted the throne itself with oblique insinuation and ironical satire. The ministry, incensed at the boldness, and still more enraged at the success of this author, whose writings were bought with avidity by the public, determined to punish him severely for his arrogance and abuse, and he was apprehended by a warrant from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... was educated first at home, like his younger brother, and afterwards in the Corps of Pages. From childhood he was distinguished by remarkable beauty; moreover he was self-confident, somewhat ironical, and had a rather biting humour; he could not fail to please. He began to be seen everywhere, directly he had received his commission as an officer. He was much admired in society, and he indulged every whim, even ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... He simply insists upon the recognition of the law of mutual dependence all round. This is observable in his dealing with the vexed question of domestic service. The prime trouble of housekeeping comes in frequently for a share of his attention; and underneath ironical counsels, you may trace, quietly insinuating itself into graphic sketches, the genial intent fairly to adjust the relations between life above and life below stairs. Accordingly, Punch sees no reason why Angelina may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... chestnut tree the swarthy auctioneer with his amiable countenance and ironical smile acquired through years of dispassionate observation of the follies of human emotion, the mutability of human affairs, the brevity of human endeavour, that brought everything at last under his hammer—there by the chestnut tree the auctioneer ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... conscience, mon ami," she said, gently ironical. "Your code is meshed in the cobwebs of antiquity. One kisses in the moonlight—or one doesn't kiss. What is the difference? It is a pastime—not a tragedy. Je M'amusais. I fished for minnows and caught a Tartar—voilˆ ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... perplexed him, as if in penetrating Elena's soul he had penetrated his own, and in the woman's perfidy had seen a reflection of his own. There was much affinity between their two natures. Therefore he understood, and little by little, his contempt changed to ironical indulgence. He was so thoroughly conversant with his ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... at his ancient friend. The wrinkles about the brow were deeply ironical now, and the grey eyes of the master armourer twinkled with ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Fantomas, but you swore to me that it is impossible to arrest Naarboveck. You still assert this: nevertheless, you now declare that we are going to arrest Fantomas! What the deuce do you mean?... I've had more than enough of your ironical mockery, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the ranchman left the office, paying no attention to the ironical "Good night," which Moran ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... are we to say of the second and far more important passage, the conclusion of the tragedy, the 'unhappy ending,' as it is called, though the word 'unhappy' sounds almost ironical in its weakness? Is this too a blot upon King Lear as a stage-play? The question is not so easily answered as might appear. Doubtless we are right when we turn with disgust from Tate's sentimental alterations, from his marriage of Edgar and Cordelia, and from that cheap ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... these ironical exposures of the fatuity and recklessness and inconsistency of popular verdicts are wholesome enough in their degree in all societies, yet it has been, and still remains, a defect of some of the greatest French ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... of drainage; forcing with nitrogenous fertilizer; fertilizing young trees too much; birds breaking off top growth. It had been the intention to confine this question to young trees, but it was not so phrased, so we shall let the answers stand as they are. It is a bit ironical that some found their chief source of failure exactly where others had made their best success. The explanation must lie in differences in technique, in soil or in some other local condition. Skill, knowledge, and persistence must ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... lunch in his mess, and was ironical with war correspondents, and censors, and the British public, and new theories of training, and many things in which he saw no sense. There was a smoldering passion in him which glowed in his ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... of wood or paper, and pulled or jerked with wire or thread, to make sudden and surprising motions, without meaning, grace, or nature in them. By far the best of his works are some of his shorter personal compositions, in which there is an ironical mixture of the quaint and serious, such as his lines on a picture of Gaspar Poussin, the fine tale of Gualberto, his Description of a Pig, and the Holly-tree, which is an affecting, beautiful, and modest retrospect on his own character. May the aspiration with ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... forget the sleepers, who declare for Vatia. By the way, who were these friends of sleep? Perhaps they were citizens who disliked noise; perhaps, too, some association of nocturnal revellers thus disguised under an ironical and reassuring title. Sometimes the candidate is recommended by a eulogistic epithet indicated by seals, a style of abbreviation much in use among the ancients. The person recommended is always a good man, a man of probity, an excellent ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... ironical in our Ali Baba's cave to see sheer everydayness and hardness upon the screen, the audience dragged back to the street they have escaped. One of the inventions to bring the twilight of the gathering into brotherhood ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... one cannot help "reading into it" the poet's after-life of disappointment and disillusion—estrangement from the "beloved woman" in whose affection he was then reposing; decay and disappearance of those "flitting phantasies" with which he was then so joyously trifling, and the bitterly ironical scholia which fate was ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... than half a mile of shore-line at the most. What we had been doing all the time I was unable to figure out. I thought we had been rowing. I could have sworn we had been rowing, but apparently we had not. I looked up from my meditation in time to catch the ironical gaze of the coxswain upon me, and I involuntarily braced myself ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man in ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... a life of action as an hour-old duckling is to water, and this ironical upset of all my plans left me helpless. The very last man whom I wanted to see Mistress Waynflete was here, his plumed hat sweeping to the floor, triumph on his handsome face and in his easy, languid tones. Indeed, more astonishing than his being here, was his manner and bearing. At Master Dobson's, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... feet seemed to say to him that he must on no account stand in the schoolmaster's way with Sue. Phillotson was perhaps twenty years her senior, but many a happy marriage had been made in such conditions of age. The ironical clinch to his sorrow was given by the thought that the intimacy between his cousin and the schoolmaster had been brought about entirely ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... been most allied with Sir Rupert in the old T.T. party, Sidney Blenheim. Something like a frown passed over Sir Rupert's face as Blenheim rose; then he sat immovable, expressionless, while Blenheim made his speech. It was a very clever speech, delicately ironical, sharply cutting, tinged all through with an intolerable condescension, with a gallingly gracious recognition of Langley's merits, an irritating regret for his errors. There was a certain languidness in Blenheim's deportment, a certain ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... morocco was fatal in such a cold rainy climate; in fact, catarrhs, sometimes developing to galloping consumption, were frequently caught from cold feet. But long before the poor old man finished his diatribe against morocco, his daughters burst in with such ironical laughter, and sarcastic speeches that he was ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... the first half of the century following upon Kant is quite plain: and still the Germans boast of their talent for philosophy in comparison with foreigners, especially since an English writer has been so maliciously ironical as to call ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... and good-nature, the depth and constancy of his friendship, his glow of admiration for the brave deed, the pure heart, and the steadfast purpose, his patient endurance of ill, his delight in men and things, his affection for what is simple and sincere, his charity for human weakness, his mildly ironical mood, as of one who is aware that he himself is not undeserving of the good-humored censure he passes on others, his clear vision of the sources of happiness, his reposeful acquiescence, and his elusive humor, which never bursts into laughter and yet is never ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... of the maid who sat at the far end of the room ceased to caress the silver vase; her hands were tightly clasped together; in her dark eyes was an ironical light, as her gaze passed from the jester to her mistress. Almost motionless stood the princess until he had finished; motionless it would have seemed but for the chain on her breast, which rose and fell with her breathing. From the jeweled ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... approached the dignity, without sharing the power, of the emperor. In the same person the claims of primogeniture and merit were fortunately united; his swarthy complexion, harsh features, and diminutive stature, had suggested the ironical surname of Calo-Johannes, or John the Handsome, which his grateful subjects more seriously applied to the beauties of his mind. After the discovery of her treason, the life and fortune of Anne were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... With an ironical bow, the Governor then turned toward the door, his fingers seeking the pocket where he had ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... you call the apprentices so, young shaver," said Mr Capstan with an ironical grin which did not improve his rather ugly face. "There are two more of you; and the lazy young hounds must be snoozing below, for they haven't shown a leg yet. However, I'll soon rouse ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... found afterwards that she privately worshipped a shark. The chief himself was somewhat of a freethinker; at the least, a latitudinarian: he was a man, besides, filled with European knowledge and accomplishments; of an impassive, ironical habit; and I should as soon have expected superstition in Mr. Herbert Spencer. Hear the sequel. I had discovered by unmistakable signs that they buried too shallow in the village graveyard, and I took my friend, as the responsible authority, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... took our seats in the car, but the drive can hardly be described as a triumphal progress. Soldiers walked in front, and soldiers walked at the side, till we arrived at the Hotel of the Angel—of all ironical names! Six women, including the searchers, joined us, and were very pleasant and kindly while our hand luggage was being examined sufficiently for us to get out some things for the night. They had a beautiful time, reading all the letters that lay ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... seems to indicate that to shine is not the aim of this young man, although his execution conquered difficulties the overcoming of which even here, in the home of pianoforte virtuosos, could not fail to cause astonishment; nay, with almost ironical naivete he takes it into his head to entertain a large audience with music as music. And lo, he succeeded in this. The unprejudiced public rewarded him with lavish applause. His touch, although neat and sure, has little of that brilliance by which our virtuosos announce themselves ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... were repugnant to her order-loving, peace-loving nature. He had to recognize when he was with her that they had a way of upholding the best of causes which sometimes provoked a desire in the best of people to declare themselves hostile to it. They were ironical and aggressive, in criticism harsh to the point of insult, even with people whom they had no desire to hurt. Having reached the sphere of publication before they had come to maturity, they passed with equal intolerance from one infatuation to another. Passionately sincere, giving themselves ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... accomplished it lightly, searching out a ford. There were high grasses, and on the other side of them a grove of very tall cottonwoods, clean as a park. First of all we cooked things; then we spread things; then we lay on our backs and smoked things, our hands clasped back of our heads. We cocked ironical eyes at the sheer cliff of old Mount Tunemah, very much as a man would cock his eye at a ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... colds and one bad headache," he said, with ironical politeness. "I don't know how your wives agree, gentlemen, when they are well. But when they are ill, ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... have brought with it.'[1] It is difficult to know which to admire most, the superstition of Gianpaolo, or the cynicism of the commentary, the spurious piety which made the tyrant miss his opportunity, or the false standard of moral sublimity by which the half-ironical critic measures his mistake. In combination they produce a lively impression of the truth of what I have attempted to establish—that in Italy at this period religion survived as superstition even among the most depraved, and that the crimes ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... great compassion for men. He did not think them altogether rational; their mistakes, when they were not cruel, amused him and made him smile. The belief in Putois interested him as an epitome and a summary of all human beliefs. As he was ironical and a joker, he spoke of Putois as if he were a real being. He spoke with so much insistence sometimes, and detailed the circumstances with such exactness, that my mother was quite surprised and said to him in her open-hearted way: 'One would say that you spoke seriously, my friend: you know ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... Kaiser[266]. According to our present information, then, German policy was sincerely peaceful, alike in aim and in tone, during the first six months of the year; and the piling up of armaments which then went on from the Urals to the Pyrenees may be regarded as an unconsciously ironical tribute paid by the Continental Powers to the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... want to fight with his hands?" demanded Kapolski, now cool and ironical. There was an infuriating attempt on his part to speak as if he were addressing a small, ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the intentions of a statesman is often more convincing than his official assertions. The world always suspects the latter; and many politicians have found it expedient to adopt the ironical device practised frequently with success by Bismarck on his Austrian colleagues at Frankfurt, that of telling the truth. Fortunately the English party game has nearly always been kept up with sportsmanlike fair play; ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of the Dutch: the Emerald Isle against the Low Countries—St. Patrick against St. Michael. The figure of St. Michael was paraded in defiance of the Dutch—the thundering drum and echoing shouts were all so many ironical and triumphant defiances. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... of wearing a costume much resembling that of the military dandies of the period. Choiseul meeting him in this equivocal garb, proceeded to be funny at his expense by putting to him all sorts of ironical and embarrassing questions. But Pecour felt all the vanity of a successful rival and was good natured. Then the Duke began to make sneering remarks which ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... with a pleasant and ironical glee, since it joyed him thus to gibe at one that had loved his wife. He—with his own ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... on with bitterness; she spoke of this transformation in her child with ironical disdain, She was sure Micheline was not in earnest; only a doll was capable of falling in love so foolishly with a man for his personal beauty. For to her mind the Prince was as regards mental power painfully deficient. No sense, dumb as soon as the conversation took ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sentiments now? Who dares utter these noble words without an ironical smile? Only a few helpless believers like myself who still energetically but vainly protest against these degradations. Some go to Algeria to prove their hereditary bravery and obtain the Cross of Honor they are deprived of ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... to the captain's room and gave him some sour red Canary wine. Cartwright drained his glass and looked up with an ironical smile. ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies self-conscious pride and exultation in the laugher. "What a ridiculous thing you are, to be sure!" he seems to say; "how clumsy and awkward, and what a poor show for a tail! Look at me, look at me!"—and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... abrupt but always well-contrived transitions from heroical magniloquence to plebeian farce and from scurrility to poetic elevation, finally in a frequent employment of the figure which the Greeks called [Greek: para prosdokian]. His poem is a parody of the Aristophanic type. 'Like a fantastically ironical magic tree, the world-subversive idea which lies at the root of it springs up with blooming ornament of thoughts, with singing nightingales and climbing chattering apes.'[202] To seek a central motive or a sober meaning in this caprice ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... induces me to fix this illness on the 25th of February is Jean Beaupere's question at the sitting of the 27th, "How have you been?" and Jeanne's ironical reply. This indisposition must not be confused, as it generally has been, with Jeanne's serious illness, which occurred after Easter. The shad and the herrings belong naturally to Lent; and Maitre Delachambre says explicitly that Jeanne recovered ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... fury, outraged sensibility, indignation, and infinite disgust that filled her little body at that moment, she should have been large, imperious, goddess-like, and commanding. But God is at times ironical with suffering womanhood. She could only writhe her hand from his grasp with childish contortions; she could only glare at him with eyes that were prettily and piquantly brilliant; she could only slap at his detaining hand with a plump ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... thought that the seed would sprout so thickly, for he had repeated a hundred times that nothing would germinate, so rotten was all the land. Although he almost choked with covert anger at seeing his predictions thus falsified, he was unwilling to admit his error, and put on an air of ironical doubt. ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... voice was ironical; it had dropped its tone of crushing menace. "Very little! Now I figure that you'll get the water-works for a third, or less, of their value. That'll give you something like half a million at the start-off, ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... other end can anything have? The end of an evening party is to go to bed; but its use is to gather congenial people together, that they may pass the time pleasantly. An invitation to the dance is not rendered ironical because the dance cannot last for ever; the youngest of us and the most vigorously wound up, after a few hours, has had enough of sinuous stepping and prancing. The transitoriness of things is essential to their physical being, and not at all ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... describe further than to say that it served to support a parrot, which maintained itself on it with the air of gravity and circumspection peculiar to those animals, taking note of everything that went on. The hard and ironical expression of the parrot tribe, their green coats, their red caps, their yellow boots, and finally, the hoarse, mocking words which they generally utter, give them a strange and repulsive aspect, half serious, half-comic. There is in their air an indescribable something ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... the two hundred francs, and an ironical smile stole over his face; it was as if he had said, "Aha! so she has paid it, has she? ... Faith, so much the better!" I read the Countess' future in his face. That good-looking, fair-haired young gentleman is a heartless gambler; he will ruin ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... bourgeoise, between a bourgeoise and the most luxuriously kept mistress, there are no differences except those of the education they have received, and the surroundings in which they live. The pouting of a fine lady is the same thing as the violence of a Rabouilleuse. At all levels, bitter sayings, ironical jests, cold contempt, hypocritical complaints, false quarrels, win as much success as the low outbursts of this Madame ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... digression from his account of affairs sixteen years earlier. Thus one fails to understand the remark, that "of the manner in which the deed was done we may be certain that Knox would disapprove as vehemently as any of his contemporaries." {251b} The words may be ironical, for vehement disapproval was not conspicuous among Protestant contemporaries. Knox himself, after Mary scattered the party of the murderers and recovered power, prayed that heaven would "put it into the heart of a multitude" to treat Mary ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... desire, she hanged herself. It is curious, if true, that she was as deformed in person as Pope himself. Her family seems to have been noble. In 1713, he published "Windsor Forest," an "Ode on St Cecilia's Day," and several papers in the Guardian—one of them being an exquisitely ironical paper, comparing Phillip's pastorals with his own, and affecting to give them the preference—the extracts being so selected as to damage his rival's claims. This year, also, he wrote, although he did not publish, his fine epistle to Jervas, the painter. Pope ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... him stood a man who had just come in and who seemed to be waiting for him to finish his sentence. The newcomer was a tall, powerfully-built young fellow, in riding-kit, with a hunting-crop in his hand. His strong and rather stern face was lighted up by a pair of fine eyes in which shone an ironical smile. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... militarism that he was sentenced to eighteen months' fortress imprisonment for "sedition." He served his sentence, and soon afterwards his political friends nominated him for the Reichstag for the Royal Division of Potsdam, of all places in the world, knowing that such a candidature would be as ironical a blow as could be dealt to the war aristocrats. He was elected by a big majority in 1913, the votes of the large working-class population of the division, including Spandau (the Prussian Woolwich), being more than enough to offset the ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... his deputy Zebul, left his residence at Arumah and approached the city. In a fine bit of realism we are told how Gaal observed the approaching foe and was told by Zebul, "You see the shadow of the hills as men,'' and as they drew nearer Zebul's ironical remark became a taunt, "Where is now thy mouth? is not this the people thou didst despise? go now and fight them!'' This revolt, which Abimelech successfully quelled, appears to be only an isolated ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... offered to the respectful admiration of the reader,—the one, a shadowy serjeant-at-law, Mr. Titmarsh's travelling companion, who escapes with a few side puffs of flattery, which the author struggles not to render ironical, and a mysterious countess, spoken of in a tone of religious reverence, and apparently introduced that we may learn by what delicate discriminations our adoration of rank ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Dublin. He graduated B.A. in 1748; M.A., 1751. In 1750 he came to London, to the Middle Temple. In 1756 Burke became known as a writer, by two pieces. One was a pamphlet called "A Vindication of Natural Society." This was an ironical piece, reducing to absurdity those theories of the excellence of uncivilised humanity which were gathering strength in France, and had been favoured in the philosophical works of Bolingbroke, then lately published. Burke's other work published in 1756, was his "Essay ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... not for sale, however." Brother Copas faced the two Hebrews with his ironical smile. "I am sorry to disappoint you, sirs, but I have no old clothes to dispose of, ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a frank, open, blue-eyed face, and thick light hair brushed back without a parting—a very attractive, slightly Norwegian-looking type. His mother was devoted to him; she was a real West Highlander, slight, with dark hair going grey, high cheekbones, a sweet but rather ironical smile, and those grey eyes which have second sight in them. I several times met Harburn at their house, for he would go in to play billiards with Holsteig in the evenings, and the whole family were on very friendly terms ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... she holds his letters, his papers, the means, in short, of ruining him. The two young men write back in their sister's name a spirited answer—the only one that has a truthful sound. They answer him line for line, without insult, but with a roughness often ironical, and betraying the wrath pent-up within them. The sister promises to obey him, to say nothing either to the bishop or the Jesuit. She congratulates him on having "boldness enough to exhort others to suffer." She takes up and returns him his shocking gallantry, but in ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... no more than those natural elements, let loose to war with each other in fierce selfishness, without pity, with no appeal beyond, no hope of final justice. And above us, in place of the good God of our happy youth, nothing, any more! or worse than nothing—a deity, barbarous and ironical, who cares nothing ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... none has been attempted by his biographers. Judged by its intrinsic merits, the Edinburgh article is one of the most absurd reviews ever written by a critic of recognized ability. Hazlitt followed the method of outlining the story by quotation with interspersed sarcasm and ironical criticism. As a coarse boor might crumple a delicate and beautifully wrought fabric to prove that it has not the wearing qualities of a blacksmith's apron, Hazlitt seized upon the ethereal story of Christabel, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Heraclitus the philosopher, out of a serious meditation of men's lives, fell a weeping, and with continual tears bewailed their misery, madness, and folly. Democritus on the other side, burst out a laughing, their whole life seemed to him so ridiculous, and he was so far carried with this ironical passion, that the citizens of Abdera took him to be mad, and sent therefore ambassadors to Hippocrates, the physician, that he would exercise his skill upon him. But the story is set down at large by Hippocrates, in his epistle to Damogetus, which because it is not impertinent to this ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... THE CLERK [feebly ironical]. I have noticed something about it in the papers. Heard you mention it once or twice, now I come to think ...
— Augustus Does His Bit • George Bernard Shaw
... ironical. She disappeared. I returned to Hafiz. Soon a bumble-bee, a great fellow splendid in gold and black and crimson, blundered into the room and immediately made furious racket against a window pane. Now I can't concentrate my mind on serious things, if there's a bumble-bee buzzing about. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... went out to see what I could see. I 'm afraid that our respected mayor is destined to play a very inconspicuous role in this evening's entertainment. If I am correctly informed, he is not to have a speaking part. As an accidental mayor, pitchforked into his present position by Fortune in one of her ironical moods, he is to be allowed merely a seat on the platform, where he may be seen but not heard. But to go back to the beginning. When it was learned that the President of the United States intended to honour us with a visit and to stand ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... a knitted crimson waistcoat, which instead of being buttoned was tied together with two or three tags of green ribbon. He stood for a moment watching the men pushing up against one another in order to give him a seat at the table, and a smile, half-amused, half-ironical, lighted up ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... proportions and like a screen shuts off the light which comes from the East, and in which the aged and weary West is quite inclined to believe. To whom is it necessary for me to ramble among the cultured nations like a leper, to conceal my race and obtain the ironical bow so essential to my unacknowledged dignity, by means of exorbitant "tips" flung right and ...
— The Shield • Various
... violence was attempted simply gave proof that they were the cowards he had accused them of being; but I believed it was possible to see in their faces that his ironical advice might bear fruit, and so I told him ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... asked, with an ironical lifting of the eyebrows. "What makes you think I've been speaking ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... pity that democracy, being the fine thing it essentially is, should behave so rudely. Must we come to family government, in order to be filial or fraternal in our bearing with one another? Why should we be so blunt, so sharp, so ironical, so brutal ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... an ironical sigh of profound impression: 'Well, Mrs. Roberts, you are certainly the most lavishly hospitable of hostesses. Every one knows what delightful dinners you give; but these little dramatic episodes which you offer your guests, by ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... Dawson's[402] infantry regiment and Woodruff's battery which went duly on to Little Rock with the requisite thirty days' subsistence and the caution that not a single cartridge was to be fired along the way. The caution Pike must have repeated in almost ironical vein; for the way to Little Rock lay through Indian Territory and cartridges like everything else under Pike's control had been collected ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... Robespierre possessed, but one stamped by the lowest, most miserable labor-conditions and outlook which American industrialism produces. To those who have seen at first-hand the life of the western casual laborer, any reflections on his gratitude or spiritual buoyancy seem ironical humor. ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... the dead past buries its dead, and the flowers that we lay on the newly-made grave quickly wither on the freshly-turned clay on which we have left them—except where the place of natural ones is taken by those deliciously ironical representations in the shape of tin—waterproof imitations which save the mourner the trouble ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... can't," he said, almost gruffly. "Go in, Con., and be prepared to welcome Sybil back; and I," he added, moving away, and turning a wicked look over his shoulder, "will be prepared to welcome Burrill;" a low, ironical laugh followed these words, and Evan Lamotte leaped the low garden palings, and went back as he had ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... bags while the battalion is charging with fixed bayonets; and in the evening sending up parties of weary laden carriers over shell-swept areas, while I myself stay behind at the Dump. Damn! Damn!! Damn!!! Then I shall receive ironical ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... as English, has studied Icelandic, and knows a good deal about the writers of modern France. Some friend had been reading Arnold's Literature and Dogma to him shortly before my visit. He was loud in praise of that book, the ironical insolence and pawky humour of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... spreading out his hands with an ironical gesture, "would prefer to dig mines under the Tour du Pin near the College, and under the Porte Neuve! To smuggle fireworks into the Arsenal and the Town House; and then, on the eve of execution, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... two surmises, Edmonds's was the nearer the truth. Urbane as always, the proprietor of The Patriot waved his editor to a seat, remarking, "I hope you'll sit down this time," the slightly ironical tinge to the final words being, in the course of the interview, his only reference to their previous encounter. Wondering dully whether Marrineal could have any idea of the murderous hatred which he inspired, Banneker took the nearest ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... happy marriage?" Rob Falkner queried in his brutal and ironical mood, which made his wife shiver for the proprieties of pleasant society. It was at one of Bessie's famous Torso suppers, when the Lanes and ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... to see the enjoyment he got out of teasing this woman by an ironical jargon which mystified her into madness. This time he went too far. With an inarticulate snarl of passion she lifted a knife that lay on the dining-room table and made for him. But this time, being prepared, he was not alarmed; nay, he seemed to take ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness... by reason of the abundance of all things, therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies...in want of all things.' A wise exchange! a good market they had brought their goods to! In striking ironical parallel the prophet goes on to say that so should they be redeemed. They had got nothing by bondage, they should give nothing for liberty. This text has its highest application in regard to our captivity and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the luxury of color in trophies, armor, and hangings; one or two careless groups before the recessed hearth or at the centre table, and the halted figure of a pretty woman on the broad, slow staircase. The contrast was sharp, ironical, and bewildering. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... heart, who made the greatest speech The court-house ever heard, and wrote A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese How does it happen, tell me, That I lie here unmarked, forgotten, While Chase Henry, the town drunkard, Has a marble block, topped by an urn Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical, Has ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... suppose you think you'll find out—with you watching their every move!" The lawyer had settled back in his chair, an ironical smile ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter |
