"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expression of diablerie came in he found impossible to discover. Experiment was necessary. The eyebrows—it could scarcely be the eyebrows? But he altered them. No, that was no better; in fact, if anything, a trifle more satanic. The corner of the mouth? Pah! more than ever a leer—and now, retouched, it was ominously grim. The eye, then? Catastrophe! he had filled his brush with vermilion instead of brown, and yet he had felt sure it was brown! The eye seemed now to have rolled in its socket, and was glaring ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each other and jest ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... great relief that the Reverend Orme was not looking at Shenton; his gaze was fastened on Manoel. Lewis, too, turned his eyes on Manoel. Cold sweat came out over him as he saw the terror in Manoel's face. The leer was still there, frozen. Over it and through it, like a double exposure on a single negative, hung the film of terror. The Reverend Orme, his hands half outstretched, walked ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... of his song. Those Boches had come into his village early in the war, torn him from his wife and his 'petite fille.' Since then he had 'had fear,' been hungry, been cold, eaten grass; eyeing some fat little dog, he would leer and mutter: 'J'ai mange cela, c'est bon!' and with fierce triumph add: 'Ils ont faim, les Boches!' The 'arrogant civilian' had never done his military service, for his infirmity, it seemed, had begun before ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... certain. They would have reason enough for being afraid to have her at large, if, indeed, there were no worse passion than fear driving some of them in pursuit of her. I could not keep out of my mind the beastly look of the Irishman who asked me, with such an ugly leer on his face, if there were no passage through. Not that I told either of the two women of my fears. But, all the same, I did not undress myself for a week, and sat in the great easy-chair in our kitchen through the whole of every night, waiting for the least ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... likeness, that she was invited everywhere; though how she, at her age, could fly about to so many parties, unless she was a fairy, no one could say. Behind the fairy, up the marble stairs, came the most noble Farintosh, with that vacuous leer which distinguishes his lordship. Ethel seemed to be carrying the stack of flowers which the Marquis had sent to her. The noble Bustington (Viscount Bustington, I need scarcely tell the reader, is the heir of the house of Podbury), the Baronet of the North, the gallant ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I object to its treatment of flies—nasty little worries, they deserve everything that happens to them. But it is the appearance of a spider that is so against it. There is a shifty expression about the eye, and such a leer on the upper lip. Money spinners are not so objectionable. I can tolerate them. It is the big, almost tarantulas, from which I flee. Those creatures which start up suddenly, and run across the room close by where you are sitting; creatures so large that you ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... more than "a gentleman should squint." The costume—long coat, waistcoat buttoned to the neck, knee-breeches, and stockings—is not unpleasing, but the expression of the face is something between a leer and a sneer. Walpole (Letters, 1858, vii. 274) describes another portrait (by Zoffani) as "a delightful piece of Wilkes looking—no, squinting tenderly at his daughter. It is a caricature of the Devil acknowledging Miss ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... reckoned we might draw the game. I then added, that from the look of the establishment I could not be wrong in assuming that they did a large business in the way of feeding hungry politicians and honester people. 'You may stake some on that, old feller,' says he, with a suspicious leer. His nasal was somewhat strong, so I put him down as from Vermont State, perhaps from the more mountainous part of it. As if shy of my patronage he upon the counter, pompous, spread his hands, as if the mahogany was all his. This seeming indifference rather touched ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... infernul nonsense. I manetane that wax figgers is more elevatin than awl the plays ever wroten. Take Shakespeer for instunse. Peple think heze grate things, but I kontend heze quite the reverse to the kontrary. What sort of sense is thare to King Leer, who goze round cussin his darters, chawin hay and throin straw at folks, and larfin like a silly old koot and makin a ass of hisself ginerally? Thare's Mrs. Mackbeth—sheze a nise kind of woomon to have round ain't she, a puttin old Mack, her husband, up to slayin Dunkan with a ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better away, a latent corruption,—a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours,—but not all. The foul satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon." Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... on each side, helped Ada into the cab. Her feet scraped helplessly over the flagged pavement her head lolled on her shoulder, and the baleful white gleam of the huge electric lamps fell like limelight on her face contracted in an atrocious leer. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... foyn[128] On height; Over your heads my hand I lift, Out go your eyes, fore to do your sight, But yet I must make better shift, And it be right. What, Lord? they sleep hard! that may ye all hear; Was I never a shepherd, but now will I leer[129] If the flock be scared, yet shall I nap near, Who draws hitherward, now mends our cheer, From sorrow: A fat sheep I dare say, A good fleece dare I lay, Eft white when I may, ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... A cunning leer passed over the greyish countenance as the dazzling vision protruded itself before Mr. Sharpley. He drew his fingers convulsively through the mass of bristling hair (which might be designated by ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... a little hot and angry after riding,' the horse-dealer returned, with the leer of a privileged jester. 'Presently, he will see my horse's points more clearly. I will wait till he has finished his talk with the Padre. I will wait under ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... he growled. "I have waited long enough, and too long, and you must choose between us now. You know we will soon be at 'Five Fingers,' and you must be good or they may get you," with a wicked leer and clutch at her arm calculated to startle her as she carelessly sat ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... to sage Piraeus sped the seer, His honour'd host, a welcome inmate there. O'er the protracted feast the suitors sit, And aim to wound the prince with pointless wit: Cries one, with scornful leer and mimic voice, "Thy charity we praise, but not thy choice; Why such profusion of indulgence shown To this poor, timorous, toil-detesting drone? That others feeds on planetary schemes, And pays his host with hideous noon-day dreams. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... they answered. "Monsieur is a man of sense," said one, with a maniac leer at his companion. "We will allow him to make merry at our ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... to look at it, my Lord," said the man, with a leer, half servile, half cunning. "There came two young gentlemen of fashion yesterday morning, and almost lost their wits at sight of it. Either would have bought it, but both had had ill luck at basset for a week ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... such only, I was sure, could have left the foot-print in the court, and be the owner of the shoe I had seen—could hardly pass through the Rue de Seine without drawing the eyes of all the lodgers on the street. Dried up hag faces would have met the apparition with a leer; the porters would have turned to stare, and she would have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... paper," said Mr. Russell, with a diabolical leer in the direction of the unfortunate Mr. Vickers. "The paper what your father found in your ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... cool and ready soldier," observed Pitts. "I saw him once in Philadelphia, before his Legion went south. He had a most determined look in spite of the good-humoured leer of his eye. He was one of the last men I should have wished to provoke; he was a complete Irishman—blunders and all. I heard of his telling a black servant who was walking barefoot on the snow to put on a pair of stockings the ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... I went down to breakfast. Everything about the place looked bleak and dreary and as grey as a granite tombstone. Hawkes, who but twelve hours before had seemed the embodiment of life in its most resilient form, now appeared as a drab nemesis with wooden legs and a frozen leer. My coffee was bitter, the peaches were like sponges, the bacon and rolls of uniform sogginess and the eggs of a strange liverish hue. I sat there alone, gloomy and depressed, contrasting the hateful sunshine with the soft, witching refulgence of twenty-four candles and the light that ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... head. A gas jet above the wretched little washstand lighted the room but poorly. The door opened slowly. A tall, ungainly woman entered the room—a creature with a sallow, weather-beaten face and a perpetual leer. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... hands into the hip pockets of his striped trousers; and putting on a leer of pretended indifference, turned to a man named Benoit, who was regarding ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike. Satires: ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Monsieur," said the obese Turk with a graceful wave of the hand in my direction, "and not you, who has robbed my home of its treasure, unless," he added, and I shall always remember the hideous leer of that pulpy-nosed and small-pox pitted face, "unless Monsieur has relieved you of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute - and I do - But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can, Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! And ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... to the men; it was the feminine portion of the audience that interested him, and he regarded it with a gloating leer, the expression of a senile satyr. Albeit a little on the seamy side of life, his rank and wealth were such that he himself attracted a good deal of attention, matronly eyes being turned in his direction with not unkindly purport. The marquis perceived the stir his presence ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... very moment she entered the room, eager to learn from her husband what the magnificent stranger had confided to him in private. He looked at her with a roguish leer, but still with some ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... ye maiden vile, And rob me of my mate?' And on her child the mother scowled 80 A deadly leer of hate. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fringe, sweeping the furthest ends of the landscape, not with the strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground—a red face looking on with a drunken leer. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... strike him down and ride over his ugly grinning face flashed through her. But the wooden stock was light under the braided leather; she knew that she could not have knocked a grunt out of the tough rascal who barred her way with his insolent leer in his mean squint eyes. He was a man who had nothing to ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... but the business was over in two twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... daughter. The older face, with its cruelty, its cunning, and its greed stood reproduced, feature for feature, line for line. It was as though Nature, for an artistic freak, had set herself the task of fashioning hideousness and beauty from precisely the same materials. Between the leer of the man and the smile of the girl, where lay the difference? It would have puzzled any student of anatomy to point it out. Yet the one sickened, while to gain the other most men would ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... been expressed, M. le Duc cast a brilliant leer at me, and prepared to speak; but the Keeper of the Seals, who, from his side of the table did not see this movement, wishing also to say something, M. le Duc d'Orleans intimated to him that M. le Duc had the start of him. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... tries to be friendly, I meets him half-way. But that fellow," and he shook a remonstrating finger at the door of the lodging-house, "thinks himself better'n other people. And mind you," with a leer, "maybe ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... that one individual lingered near the May-pole. As he was especially active, we may describe him and his employment. He was apparently about fifteen. He had coarse straight white hair—a face that denoted stupidity—but with a cunning leer, which seemed ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Deputy, with a shrewd leer of recognition, and smoking an imaginary pipe, with his head very much on one side and his eyes very much out ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... himself black in the face, and, with the napkin under his chin, was no bad representation of Sancho Panza in the suds, with the dishclout about his neck, when the duke's scullions insisted upon shaving him; this sea-wit, turning to the boy, with a waggish leer, "I suppose (said he) you don't understand the figure of amplification so well as Monsieur your father." At that instant, one of the nieces, who knew her uncle to be very ticklish, touched him under the short ribs, on which the little man attempted to spring up, but lost the centre of gravity. He ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... understand Thoorko better nor the English understand Scotch, it's little speed I'll come wi' them," said Dan with a leer. "Howsomediver, I'll give 'em a trial. I say, Mr Red-beard, hubba doorum bobble moti squorum howko joski tearum thaddi whak? Come, now, avic, let's hear what ye've got to say to that. An' mind what ye spake, 'cause we won't ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... successful politician, who had worked his way up from being a slim and impecunious "repeater" to the position of Alderman, or Custom House official, and President of the Fat Men's Club. There is a drunken leer in this beast's eye, an inebriate roll in all his movements, that lead one mechanically to peer into the darkness of his den with the view of seeing what the Bar fixings are like. It would be a rare ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... more that my daughter is very irritable and passionate, and withal so fond of admiration, that nothing in the shape of a leer comes amiss to her. She likes a good squeeze above all things. Evil, and the Father of Evil though I be, I am not so very wicked as to wish thee to marry a woman of that description without thy knowing what kind of treasure ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... quietly closed the lid and again covered the basket with a blanket, after which he looked up with a cunning and triumphant leer. ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... the irreverent of the town. As he sat aloft on his boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion. Some coarse town humorist would leer upon him from the doorway—a leer of furtive, devilish cunning—and whisper hoarsely, "Hist! Are ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... was a pleasant-looking fellow, with huge black whiskers and a roguish eye. He touched the guitar with masterly skill, and sang little amorous ditties with an expressive leer." ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... a most respectable room; an intelligent girl. Only Madame herself seeing Jacob out had about her that leer, that lewdness, that quake of the surface (visible in the eyes chiefly), which threatens to spill the whole bag of ordure, with difficulty held together, over the pavement. In short, something ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... shoulders Driscoll forced him down the trail to his caravan. Most of the animals were lying down, dozing under their packs. Murguia's eyes grew watery when he saw them, but he was still dazed and his delusion was obstinate. The leer shot exultant gleams. "A rich man can enter heaven," he chuckled with ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... there was a replica of Shelton's robot control, teleview disc and all. Carlos had just pulled the switch and the robot was taking visible form. The man who prodded him with the automatic was Cadorna, no doubt of that. His evil leer and yellow eyes marked him at once. The other occupant of the room was a big square-built man with a patch over one eye and strips of adhesive tape across his nose—his antagonist of the night before. Must have sneaked off after he came to; it ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... Leather, 'those by the book-stall. That be Mr. Waffles,' continued he, giving his master a touch in the ribs as he jerked his portmanteau into a fly, 'that be Mr. Waffles,' repeated he, with a knowing leer. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... interrupted by one of the women, who seemed bent on keeping up the spirit of banter with which they had begun. She asked him with a leer if he had got ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... is favorably situated, an examination discloses many drawbacks. It needs better dock facilities and railroads to bring it up to standard and in order to relieve the extensive shipping of troops at Wilhelmshaven. Under existing circumstances Leer and Papenburg could be used for transporting purposes, and these two with ...
— Operations Upon the Sea - A Study • Franz Edelsheim
... specimen. He had the rolling gait of the deep sea. A squinting eye gave him a villainous leer, while a bristly beard and long gray hair made him a ferocious spectacle. His age was doubtful, as the lines in his ruddy skin might have been cut by dissipation as much as age. The most prominent feature of his unlovely countenance was a nose, fiery ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... it—for a luxury, you know! Able to take my wife to Frascati on the last Thursday of October as a great holiday. My wife, too! A creature of beads and saints and little books with crosses on them—who would leer at a friar through the grating of a confessional, and who makes the house hideous with her howling if I choose to eat a bit of pork on a Friday! A good wife indeed! A jewel of a wife, and an apoplexy on all such ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Turkish service who was stationed here, we saluted in the usual manner. Without returning it, he walked up, stepped across us, flung himself on our rug, leaned on his elbow, and with an impertinent leer stared in our faces all round until he met Richard's eye, which partook of something of the tiger kind, when he started and turned pale. Richard called out, "Kawwasses!" The kawwasses and two wardis ran into the room. "Remove that son of a dog." They seized him, fat and big as he was, as if he ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... barred the sitting-room door he came and stood beside the table, and there was a repulsive, insulting leer on his face as he looked ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... women with evil faces crept like animals. And towering above them, unreal in size, his scornful face an epitome of sin, the knout which he wielded symbolical and ghastly, driving his motley flock with the leer of the evil shepherd, was the man from whom he had already learnt to recoil with horror. The picture came and went in a flash. Francis found himself accepting a courteously offered cigar ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things, Most terrible to see. Around, around, they waltzed and wound; Some wheeled in smirking pairs: With the mincing step of demirep Some sidled up the stairs: And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer, Each helped ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... scorching. As he spun away in front of me, his body bent forward until his back was nearly horizontal, and his green-stockinged legs striking out behind him with the furious rapidity of a great frog trying to push his head into the mud, he turned back his little face with a leer of triumphant derision at every moving thing which might ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... crucified. I built in his arms—his right arm first—and mortised the stones, then his left arm in the same way. I was careful not to look in his face. No, no! I didn't look in his face." Knightley repeated the words with a horrible leer of cunning, and hugged himself with his arms. To Wyley's thinking he was strung almost to madness. "After his arms I built in his feet, and upwards from his feet I built in his legs and his body until I came to his neck. All this while he had been crying out for pity, babbling prayers, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... going to put off the show I must be getting home or Mother will think I have been waylaid and my watch stolen. So long, everybody, and pleasant dreams." Then thrusting his face back into the room through the narrowing crack of the door, he added with elfish leer, "Just the same, I still think that Coulter had something to do with ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... villainous-looking a person as I have ever set eyes on. He was sullen and furtive. I judged him at sight to be half Hindu, half Tibetan. He had a dark complexion, between brown and tawny; narrow slant eyes, very small and beady-black, with a cunning leer in their oblique corners; a flat nose much broadened at the wings; a cruel, thick, sensuous mouth, and high cheek-bones; the whole surmounted by a comprehensive scowl and an abundant crop of lank black hair, tied up in a knot at the nape of the neck with a yellow ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... corner of a lane that ran into the principal thoroughfare. The upper windows were much wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer. To-night nothing was visible but the outline of the ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or perhaps a present from a friend—what shall hinder him from going ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... enough. He fell back a step, and scowled at Stonor as if he suspected him of a desire to make fun of him. Then his eyes went involuntarily to Hooliam. Stonor, following his glance, was struck by the odd, self-conscious leer on Hooliam's comely face. Suddenly it flashed on him that this was his man. His face went blank with astonishment. The ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... I shouted, When I saw his hateful leer; 'Tell me what this means, Jim Johnson. Where is Billy? Ain't he here?' He was standing on the doorstep, And the light that shone within Seemed to twist his wrinkled features In a sort of wonder-grin. 'Well! well! Nancy! sure's I'm livin'! Out there in the pouring wet! Sure I'll ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... of a boat in a stormy sea, the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate and rigid with terror and misery. Above, through a rent in the clouds, is visible an ugly grotesque figure, with a demoniacal leer on his face, beating upon a number of drums. The picture is entitled "The Thunder-God beats his drums." Well, Carlyle seems to me like that; he has no pity for humanity, he only likes to add to its terrors and its bewilderment. He preached silence ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... clammy sweat superseded by returning warmth. Working earnestly, thinking of nothing but the human life that hung in the balance, I failed to observe the presence of the most disagreeable of the female nurses, who was standing, with "arms akimbo," looking on, until, with an insulting leer, she remarked, "It seems to me ye're taking great liberties for an honest woman." Paralyzed with surprise and indignation, I knew not how to act. Just then the surgeon in charge of the ward, who had been ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... sledge were ready did Bucky utter a word. The terrific beating he had received had stunned him for a few minutes; but now he jumped to his feet, not waiting for the command from Walker, and strode up close to Billy. There was a vengeful leer on his bloody face and his eyes blazed almost white, but his voice was so low that Conway and Walker could only hear the murmur of it. His words ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... new broad, black hat, a celluloid collar, a wrinkled suit of store clothes, and his same shrewd, evil leer. Oldham did not appear, but requested that the visitor be shown into his room. There, having closed the transom, he ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... leer Hunch entered and deposited a tray upon the table. Carl poured himself some whiskey and pushed the decanter toward his guest with a significant glance. Jokai of Vienna poured and drank ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... in this invitation and in the leer which accompanied it, that Hugh felt a qualm of misgiving. He hung back, uncertain what to say next, until cross-eyed Harry gave him a push that sent him staggering through the doorway. The four men then entered the cabin after him, closing the ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... Before this time he had known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... live with ease; Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne; View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes, And hate, for arts that caused himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame as to commend, A timorous foe and a suspicious friend; Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to you," insisted Anthony with a leer. "Firs' place, my wife wants nothin' whatever do with ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... on "Martin Luther on Celibacy and Marriage" Dr. Brandes derides with a satyr-like leer all traditional ideas of chastity, conjugal fidelity, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... perhaps once in a lifetime, he saw, even in the all-pervading darkness, the shadowy face that was pressed close to his own. The eyes that looked into his were dim pools of evil light, faintly phosphorescent like those of a cat, and the face that framed them was contorted into a malignant leer of triumph. That much he saw before the darkness crushed him out of existence and all things earthly faded ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... just looked at the pictures in an uncomfortable manner. He spoke only once and that was about the mottled lady reaching over her shoulder and smiling. "Grinitch," says he with a knowing leer. But Vernabelle only says, yes, it was painted in the dear ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... snatched at it. Great God! as I did so, another arm was thrust forth—not mine, I swear, if I live a thousand years; and as I recoiled, I saw in that glass a fiend step back. Not me, not me!—but a fiend with bloody hands, and a foul leer upon its face, and a fierce, cruel laugh in its glittering eyes. It was he, it was he! It was the devil that had possessed me before, come back again. And as I shuddered and gasped, and turned away, and then looked again into those eyes that pierced me through, and saw the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise, Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And with our sneering teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike, Alike reserved to blame or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend, Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... thick lips drew back in an ugly leer, and he gave a savage curse. Nanette flinched as if struck ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... So I waited, I did." And here, again, Milo of Crotona touched the peak of his cap, and looked from Barnabas to Cleone's flushing loveliness with eyes wide and profoundly innocent,—a very cherub in top-boots, only his buttons (Ah, his buttons!) seemed to leer and wink one to another, as much as to say: "Oh yes! Of ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... contemptuously on his heel, with military precision. Then he chuckled Dolores under the chin with a leer, to have his hand indignantly pushed aside. As the girl glared at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes, he stalked into the taproom, ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... and cordial amongst the Southerners, while the intruder pressed hard upon Mr. Reybold. He was a singular object; tall, grim, half-comical, with a leer of low familiarity in his eves, but his waxed mustache of military proportions, his patch of goatee just above the chin, his elaborately oiled hair and flaming necktie, set off his faded face with ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... leer, ni tan siquiera[78-9] en castellano, que (p79) es lalengua mas clara del mundo; pero el diablo me lleve si esta escritura no ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... the corset are the creased backs and gooseflesh of his nudes! What lurking cynicism there is in some of his interiors! Voila l'animale! he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... newspaper marked in the corner, "Compliments of J.P." I opened it with sensible shrinkings; and there, wedged between an account of a prize-fight and a skittish article upon chiropody—think of chiropody treated with a leer!—I came upon a column and a half in which myself and my poor statue were embalmed. Like the editor with the first of the series, I did but glance my eye down the head-lines and ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Your pluck has saved your life; but remember, I've not said I won't shoot him or your father, if chance throws them in my way," he added, looking back over his shoulder with a malicious leer, as he left the arbor, then disappearing from sight among the ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... distracted mein The object of their strife is seen; His eyes with wild confusion roll, Mixt passions, with alternate sway, In his ambiguous features play, And speak as yet the undetermined soul; But that half-assenting leer, Obliquely on the little wheedler thrown, Portends, though checkt with aukward fear, That soon the apostate will be ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... you through?" and what the judge intended for a smile of fatherly affection became a leer of ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... harvest-folks, and John, "Came in and look'd askew; "'Twas my red face that set them on, "And then they leer'd at Sue. ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: The Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. Ah, master, says the gipsy, that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you have not that simper about the mouth for nothing—The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the money with her that he had crossed ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... of a Moorish palace; the hideous, hairy, red-eyed jacks-in-boxes; the flies in the Noah's arks, that "an't on that scale neither as compared with elephants;" the giant masks, having a certain furtive leer, "safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentlemen between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer vacation," were all of them like dreams of the Danish poet, coloured into a semblance ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... much as he would let me. He interrupted me with his thumb again, and on his face was what in a lesser person I should unhesitatingly have called a leer. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of the women, "Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks aren't looking? Got something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... dissonance of his nerves, as seen in the physiological outbursts of the B minor Scherzo, is the agony of a tortured soul. The piece is Chopin's Iliad; in it are the ghosts that lurk near the hidden alleys of the soul, but here come out to leer ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... kind which people do not admit even to themselves," said Raoul bitterly. "The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it... Picture it: a man who lives in a palace underground!" And he gave a leer. ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... magnificent to be such a willing—" added Schliemann, sidling up to him with a dreadful leer on his face. He made use of the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Knight; "Of him I have heard much good! I grant," he said, "with you to wend, My brethren all in-fere: My purpose was to have dined to-day At Blyth or Doncaster." Forth then went that gentle Knight, With a careful cheer; The tears out of his eyen ran, And fell down by his leer. They brought him unto the lodge door: When ROBIN 'gan him see, Full courteously did off his hood, And set him on his knee. "Welcome, Sir Knight!" then said ROBIN, "Welcome thou art to me; I have abide you fasting, Sir, All these hours three!" Then answered the gentle Knight With ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... there was a leer on his bearded face seen by the dull swinging oil-lamp, as, half covering his mouth, he whispered hoarsely behind ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... leader, and who turns back with a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering;—and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... am going to Bremen; but we shall travel together as far as—you go by Amsterdam, I suppose?—as far as Leer, then. That will be very pleasant.' I fancied there was a ghoulish gusto in ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... well known to his friends, as well as to his creditors. Lord Guildford met him one day. 'Well, Sherry, so you've taken a new house, I hear.'—'Yes, and you'll see now that everything will go on like clockwork.'—'Ay,' said my lord, with a knowing leer, 'tick, tick.' Even his son Tom used to laugh at him for it. 'Tom, if you marry that girl, I'll cut you off with a shilling,'—'Then you must borrow it,' replied the ingenuous youth.[8] Tom sometimes disconcerted his father with his inherited wit—his ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Both occupations are equally unhealthy." As he said this he watched the young man with the inscrutable smile that at moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest had once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but now he detected in it the suavity of the hypocrite and the leer of the criminal. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... to Josh to come and look. There was not much to see; there was an easel and a small canvas thereon, an open black japanned paint-box, a large wooden palette blotched with many colours lying on a bed of fern, and whose thumb-hole seemed to comically leer up at the boys like some great eye. Then there was a pair of big, sturdy legs, upon which rested a great felt hat, everything else being covered in by a great opened-out white umbrella, perfectly useless then, for, as Will had said, all was ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... not walk; that awful crew Might speak or laugh as you pass by. Might touch or paw With a formless claw Or leer from a sodden eye, Might whisper awful things they knew, Or wring their ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell |
