"Mocking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peaches Melba, three francs each at the Cafe de Paris; truffled capon from Normandy; duck after the manner of the incomparable Frederic. About half a dozen peaches Melba would have appealed to him now; he looked, instead, with the eyes of longing at a codfish ball. Oh, glorious appetite, mocking recollections ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... national festival, carried the same oppressive thought still closer to her heart, while some notes would melt in distant and falling tones, as if in compassion for her sorrows, and some burst close and near upon her, as if mocking her misery, with all the insolence of unlimited mirth. "These sounds," she said, "are mine—mine, because they are HIS; but I cannot say, Be still, these loud strains suit me not; and the voice of the meanest peasant that mingles in the dance ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... assented Marzio proudly; then catching sight of the expression on the young man's face, he turned sharply upon him. "You are mocking me, you good-for-nothing!" he cried angrily. "You are laughing at me, at your master, you villain you wretch, you sickly hound, you priest-ridden worm! It is intolerable! It is the first time you have ever dared; do you think I am ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... and saw that Zillah was looking at her with a strange expression. Something like a mocking smile ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... God which do not come or go at man's bidding. In her silent chamber there seemed to be a kind of hushed yet palpable life. It seemed to Winsome as if there were about her a thousand little whispering voices. Unseen presences flitted everywhere. She could hear them laughing such wicked, mocking laughs. They were clustering round the crumpled piece of paper in the corner. Well, it might lie there forever ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... natives say is "pula, pula" (rain, rain), but more like "weep, weep, weep". Then we have the loud cry of francolins, the "pumpuru, pumpuru" of turtle-doves, and the "chiken, chiken, chik, churr, churr" of the honey-guide. Occasionally, near villages, we have a kind of mocking-bird, imitating the calls of domestic fowls. These African birds have not been wanting in song; they have only lacked poets to sing their praises, which ours have had from the time of Aristophanes downward. Ours have both a classic and a modern ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... possible; but he smiled wickedly, in the pride of his resources. He struck the table sharply with his knife-haft. "What?" he cried. "You don't answer me, girl? You withstand me, do you? To heel! To heel! Stand out in front of me, you jade, and answer me at once. There! Stand there! Do you hear?" With a mocking eye he indicated with his knife the spot that took ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... in baffled effort spent? Where in blind maze, with crafty windings crossed, With stumbling-blocks beset, with pitfalls strewed, Thou wanderest, in endless error lost; Athirst beside glad rivers that elude, With mocking lapse, thy tantalized pursuit, And hungering where gilded husks delude With bitter ashes as of Dead Sea fruit, Ashes of Hope, but seed of Discontent, That rears its upas growth from blighted root? Around, thou hear'st Creation eloquent, Hymning creative attributes, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... her short, serviceable spear. She saw the broad, black, scowling visage of young Mawg, towering over a little group of his kinsfolk, and eyeing her with mingled greed and rage, and she divined at once that he was at the back of whatever mischief might be brewing. She answered his look with one of mocking scorn, and then turned her attention to the Chief, who was sitting in grim silence, the customary hand of ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... feller," he was heard to mutter, as they heard the wildcat emit a mocking, tantalizing cry at some little distance away. "You ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... of our country. She and her husband were prosperous, and everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. It may sound irreverent, James, but there was a time during my life in New York when I was discouraged; when it seemed as though heaven were mocking me and my husband in our homely struggle against the forces of evil, and bestowing all its favors on a woman whose example was a menace to American womanhood! Sorry? Why should I be sorry to see justice triumph ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... its Love ever haunted by Hate! Life's laughing morrows frowned over by Fate! Young Life's wild gladness still waylaid by Age! All its sweet badness still mocking the sage! What can e'er measure the ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... live in the suburbs of Atlanta. We have had lots of birds' nests in our yard this summer—mocking-birds, bluebirds, and sparrows. On moonlight nights the mocking-bird sings far ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... well known that every advance in scientific knowledge is greeted with mocking laughter. We know the jeers with which even clever men greeted the Marconi claims. It is not so many years ago that a distinguished member of the French Academy of Science rose up amongst his colleagues and pronounced the Edison phonograph ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... space shalt thou creep to my knee, and swear that thou dost love me," answered Ayesha, with a sweet, mocking laugh. "Come, there is no time like the present time, here before this dead girl who loved thee, let us put it to ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... the subject. In the present age extensive intercourse with Europeans has produced not a reformation but a certain reticence amongst the upper classes: they are as vicious as ever, but they do not care for displaying their vices to the eyes of mocking strangers. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... treasure!" says Algy, presently, in a mocking voice, "might I be allowed to offer you our umbrella, and a pair of goloshes to defend ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Murray, with a mocking smile at the detective, "will you tell us what you have found out since you have been ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... exclaims the captive. "Nacena is but mocking me," she adds, involuntarily falling into the figurative mode of speech peculiar to the American Indian. "Indeed, I do desire it. But how could Nacena set me ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... a low voice, in reply to which she nodded affirmatively. He next sought Miss Putnam and evidently asked her the same question, receiving a similar answer. Then he led her forward, and she sang the opening part of "Listen to the Mocking Bird." After they had sung the chorus it was repeated on the piano and Quincy electrified the audience by whistling it, introducing all the trills, staccatos, and roulades that he had heard so many times come from ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Heliobas surveyed him sadly as he spoke. "Nay! ... pray rather that they may find THEE!" He looked long and steadfastly at Alwyn's countenance, on which there was just then the faint glimmer of a rather mocking smile,—and as he looked, his own face darkened suddenly into an expression of vague trouble and uneasiness—and a strange quiver passed visibly through him from ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and you're a better philosopher than I thought," Carrie remarked. She got up and, stopping a moment, gave him a half-mocking glance. "But I wonder what you'd get like if you went to the Old Country and met ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... cease!" said the mocking voice of Chaka; "but know this, thou hast done well to grieve aloud, because the Mother of the Heavens is no more, and ill wouldst thou have done to grieve because the fire from above has kissed thy gates. For hadst thou done this last thing or left the first undone, I should have known ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... and struck him full on the mouth with his fist. The man clapped his hand to his cut lip, and looked at the blood in amazement. The shock cleared his brain, and he remembered with terror the tales of deadly revenge taken by the pushes. He looked wildly for help. He was in a ring of mocking, menacing faces. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the day fulfilleth, And still the night goes round, And the guest-hall boometh and shrilleth, With the dance's mocking sound. ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... humiliating moments in Chauvelin's career were associated with that silly rhyme, and now here it was, mocking him even when he knew that his bitter enemy lay fettered and helpless, caught in a trap, out of which there was no escape possible; even though he knew for a positive certainty that the mocking voice which had spoken those rhymes on that far-off day last September ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... would be difficult for those not versed in his character to conceive that he could ever bring himself, while under the influence of a passion so sincere, to assume. But such is ever the wantonness of the mocking spirit, from which nothing,—not even love,—remains sacred; and which, at last, for want of other food, turns upon himself. The same horror, too, of hypocrisy that led Lord Byron to exaggerate his own errors, led him also to disguise, under ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... provoked. The conduct of the bulls annoyed me exceedingly, and I really fancied that they knew it. Their manoeuvres were of the oddest kind, and some of them appeared to be made for the purpose of mocking me. At times they would charge up very close—their heads set in a menacing attitude; and I must confess that with their black shaggy fronts, their sharp horns, and glaring red eyes, they ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... there is self-interest. I entreat you to reflect. The world, as you know, is a mocking world; you want to excite universal derision and injure the respect which is due to the place that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the world. Rouge had destroyed by this time the diaphanous tints of her cheeks, the flesh of which was still delicate; but although she could no longer blush or turn pale, she had a thin nose with rosy, passionate nostrils, made to express irony,—the mocking irony of Moliere's women-servants. Her sensual mouth, expressive of sarcasm and love of dissipation, was adorned with a deep furrow that united the upper lip with the nose. Her chin, white and rather fat, betrayed the violence of ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... implore you all to be merciful with the wounded and to treat the prisoners leniently. Among these prisoners are about one thousand Bavarians and Saxons. See, they are standing down yonder in dense groups, and our men surround them, mocking and abusing them. Go down to them, dear Secretary Doeninger; tell them to be merciful and compassionate, and to bear always in mind that the prisoners are no longer their enemies, but their German brethren; that they are Saxons and Bavarians, speak one and the same language with us, and are ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... shameless creature who coolly admitted her guilt, told me that she had never cared for me, and that she had only married me to escape from the monotony of her London life with her mother—if she was her mother, she added with a mocking laugh. ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... morning. On the road, she met many people coming from the town, where they had heard of the events of the previous night; and the poor girl was obliged to keep her eyes fastened to the ground in order to escape the insulting looks and mocking salutations with which ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... mocking-bird at Hidden Water that sings the songs of all the birds and whistles for the dog. His nest is in a great cluster of mistletoe in the mesquite tree behind the house and every morning he polishes his long curved bill against the ramada roof, preens out ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Lady Cochrane and I don't perhaps quite agree in this, but I can't approve of any trafficking with persons disaffected to the government. Gone! what, did any man say that Pollock was here?" And the earl shuffled in his chair beneath Claverhouse's mocking eyes. ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... to go through the long list of names which we had compiled and to review our elaborate notes. When, at last, I turned in, the night had given place to a new day. But sleep evaded me, and "ANDAMAN—SECOND" danced like a mocking ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... in the depths of his heart that he was not master of her whole being. That sometimes his very kisses seemed frozen on her lips, and she turned from his protestations of love with sad smiles, that seemed mocking him. And she, alas, the woman who believes herself unloved by her husband, is always ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... not have to shatter my mocking dreams—they are already gone. But you may be sure that I, too, have been dreaming of a knight who was to lay a kingdom at my feet and talk to me of flowers and love—Olof, I want to be your wife! Here is my hand! But this much I must ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... pathway of old years, Notes this forthright, that meander, till the long-past life appears Like an outspread map of country plodded through, each mile and rood, Once, and well remembered still: I'm startled in my solitude Ever and anon by—what's the sudden mocking light that breaks On me as I slap the table till no rummer-glass but shakes While I ask—aloud, I do believe, God help me!—"Was it thus? Can it be that so I faltered, stopped when just one step for us—" (Us,—you were not born, I grant, but surely some day born ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... for Alick that I was chiefly troubled, as I saw him fling down the flowers and run, while Harry, shouting "conceited young jackanapes," pursued him at full speed. I had never seen such rough play or heard such mocking laughter, and I burst into tears, sobbing out my trouble on my uncle's shoulder as he carried me off and laughingly soothed me, pressing the prickly wreath all the while against ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... blossoms that one required no little scrutiny to determine what manner of sweet thing it could be. From various arms of this tree hung cages of different kinds. In one, a large wicker cylinder with a ring at top, revelled a mocking bird; in another an oriole; in a third the impudent bobolink—while three or four more delicate prisons were loudly vocal ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Even here Varvara Pavlovna did not leave her in peace. She began to admire her taste, her skill.... Lisa's heart beat violently and painfully. She could scarcely control herself, she could scarcely sit in her place. It seemed to her that Varvara Pavlovna knew all, and was mocking at her in secret triumph. To her relief, Gedeonovsky began to talk to Varvara Pavlovna, and drew off her attention. Lisa bent over her frame, and secretly watched her. "That woman," she thought, "was loved by him." ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... him, after hunting the deer over against Cranbourne, returned at evening to Salisbury, and after meat with some of his intimates they sat late drinking wine and fell into a merry, boisterous mood. They spoke of Athelwold, who was not with them, and indulged in some mocking remarks about his frequent and prolonged absences from the king's company. Edgar took it in good part and smilingly replied that it had been reported to him that the earl was now wedded to a woman with a will. Also he knew that her father, the great Earldoman of Devon, had ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... speech with a mocking sarcasm on his lip, but an expression of such hopeless wretchedness in his eyes, as they alone can comprehend who have witnessed madness in its lucid intervals. He sank down, and his head drooped gloomily on his breast. "No," ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it, and laughed. "Didn't I tell yer you was afraid," he said, in a mocking tone; "what's the good of going ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... Thunes ran boldly to the formidable beam, and placed his foot upon it: "Here is one!" he exclaimed; "'tis the canons who send it to you." And, making a mocking salute in the direction of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Rushford laughed, a little mocking laugh. "Can't your conscience give you an explanation? Or is it too ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... that once in the dust I trembled, 'Mid mocking fiends assembled; Beneath thy conquering steel, But Fortune's wheel is turning, In torments thou art burning, The victim of ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... should she not love me? I am esteemed well-looking and intelligent, thought I, looking into the glass, as if to confirm my satisfactory judgment of myself. I gazed long and earnestly. Yes, certainly handsome, said I with my lips, but—fool! fool! said my mocking eyes; for at that moment there came out of their depths—there came a devil! Yes, a devil that glared at me from the glass! a devil that was, and yet was not, myself! a devil that had my form, and looked out of my face, but with its own cruel, mocking eyes! And he and I confronted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... genius. Goethe's 'Goetz' was the first revolutionary symptom which really attracted much attention, but the 'Fly-sheets on German Style and Art' preceded the publication of 'Goetz,' as a kind of programme or manifesto." Even Wieland, the mocking and French-minded, the man of consummate talent but shallow genius, the representative of the Aufklaerung (Eclaircissement, Illumination) was carried away by this new stream of tendency, and saddled his hoppogriff for a ride ins alte romantische Land. He availed himself of the new "Library ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... mocking spiritual things when it is the imperfection of material nature, (which they set so much store by,) that provokes ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... darkness of the inner court, but instead there arose before his mental eyes the vision of a petrified wooden cross beside a glassy pool, and mingled incongruously with it, the face of Starr Wiley, distorted as he had last seen it, with the bruised lips twisted into a mocking leer. Would the lightly expressed wish of Gentleman Geoff's Billie prove a presage of victory in the great game they two ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... didn't; and, perhaps, it was just as well. The sudden inclination passed, and there remained nothing but an overwhelming sense of disappointment, by which I was crushed for a few minutes, while still the doctor's mocking laughter sounded in ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... spoken like this before, and, instead of being two years younger than himself, she suddenly seemed many years older. She stood with her mocking eyes fixed on him, till he grew angry at being outdone by a girl, and taking her hand ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... The other dropped his mocking tone. "We want that chief and his boy, whom you are harboring in your camp. According to our Indian companion, they own, or know of the hiding-place of, a fortune in plumes. If the plumes are not to be easily reached, we can still hold the chief and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... out by the Synoptics. He says that all the disciples forsook their Master, which seems to overlook Peter's attack on the high priest's servant. In the account of the Crucifixion he somewhat amplifies the Synoptic version of the mocking gestures of the crowd. And besides these matters of fact he has two sayings, 'In whatsoever I find you, therein will I also judge you,' and 'There shall be schisms and heresies,' which are without parallel, or have no ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... mocking face was all aglow with triumph as he led his prisoner where some horses were ready ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... themselves, with characteristic levity, by theatrical representations of the contest upon the stage. The passions of the two parties were roused; the Jews and Pagans, of whom the town was full, exasperated things by their mocking derision. The dissension spread: the whole country became convulsed. In the hot climate of Africa, theological controversy soon ripened into political disturbance. In all Egypt there was not a Christian man, and not a woman, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... boatman. John John Crow. De red-bird de soger. John John Crow. De mocking-bird de lawyer. John John Crow. De alligator sawyer. John ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... having eaten of it as a dainty morsel, and sent it as a mess to thy friends." Such is the kind of jokes they enjoy; the poet describes the speech of the Queen as "a word of mockery."[48] The exchange of mocking words between Loki and the gods is of the same order as Gudrun's speech. Cowards! cries Loki to the gods; Prostitutes! cries he to the goddesses; Drunkard! is the reply of both. There is no question ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... rabbit before you start cookin' him!" laughed Jud in a jeering fashion, as he waved them a mocking adieu through the broken window, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... was hard at work with the mistiness of dreaming. He was half aware that he was stretched out upon a bed, yet it seemed to him that he was bound down with fetters of iron, which resisted his wildest efforts to break. It seemed to him that he was struggling fiercely, and that Jake was looking on mocking him. At last, utterly weary and exhausted he gave up trying and called upon Arizona. He shouted loudly, but he could not hear his own voice; he shouted again and again, raising his screams to a fearful pitch, but ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... when Agnes should answer this question, as she fully expected her to do, by producing the cutting from the newspaper and repeating her accusations. But when Agnes drew her hand forth, there was no slip of paper in it, and all the answer that she made to Will's question was to say in a mocking tone,— ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... dog beside the threshold lies, Mocking sleep with half-shut eyes— With head crouched down upon his feet, Till strangers pass his sunny seat— Then quick he pricks his ears to hark And bustles up to growl and bark; While boys in fear stop short their song, And sneak in ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... explained to you," said Amroth. "And now good-bye for the present. Let me hear a good report of you," he added, with a parental air, "when I come again. What would not we older fellows give to be back here!" he added with a half-mocking smile. "Let me tell you, my boy, you have got the happiest time of your life ahead of you. Well, be ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of going to see the beautiful fern-glens with the rest of the party. It was a great disappointment. I was able, however, to enjoy the lovely distant view from the verandah, as well as the closer view of the rocky sandstone cliffs and fern-clad gullies; and I could hear the mocking note of the rarely seen lyre-bird, the curious cachinnation of the laughing jackass, and the occasional distant note of the bell-bird. Even this brief rest amidst these pleasant surroundings refreshed me greatly, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... cried he, in a loud and mocking tone. "Ho, there! my Lady Carse! A word with you!" But she ran up the Wynd as fast ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... Roman Empire, and, above all, because he had robbed her of Silesia; Madame de Pompadour, because when she sent him a message of compliment, he answered, "Je ne la connais pas," forbade his ambassador to visit her, and in his mocking wit spared neither her nor her royal lover. Feminine pique, revenge, or vanity had then at their service the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... they all slept soundly, dreamt of water, and awoke to the sad reality that they were tormented with thirst, and were on a sandy beach with the salt waves mocking them; but they reflected how many of their late companions had been swallowed up, and felt thankful that they had been spared. It was early dawn when they all rose from the forms which they had impressed on the yielding sand; and, by ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... more. He looked round more frequently toward her, and broke off in what he was saying. He did not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and took his leave. The same inquisitive, challenging, and rather mocking eyes still looked at him. After his first visit Boris said to himself that Natasha attracted him just as much as ever, but that he must not yield to that feeling, because to marry her, a girl almost without fortune, would mean ruin to his ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... quite left him, however, he felt his feet again touch the ground. The choking sensation passed away, and he found himself supported by two men. A burst of mocking laughter then proved to the wretched man that his tormentors had practised on him the refined cruelty of half-hanging him. If he had had any doubt on this subject, the remark of the interpreter, as he afterwards ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... also, the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, "He saved others; himself he cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, that we may see and believe. He trusteth on God; let him deliver him now, if he desireth him: for ...
— His Last Week - The Story of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus • William E. Barton
... eastern ramparts of the desert were bright red with the rising sun. With the night behind him and the morning cool and bright and beautiful, Bostil did not suffer a pang nor feel a regret. He walked around under the cottonwoods where the mocking-birds were singing. The shrill, screeching bray of a burro split the morning stillness, and with that the sounds of the awakening village drowned that sullen, dreadful boom of the river. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... that which the French singer assumed—was now seventeen, and the poor Prince three-and-twenty. What mocking hand had thought it sport to bring the match so near the powder? A fragrant room hung with rose-colored silk and brilliant with wax lights, a bed dressed in lace, a silent palace, and Venice! Two young and beautiful creatures! every ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... report), and was prepared for trouble, but their clanging cries, their cynical eyes, their clutching insolent hands were more terrifying than anything I had imagined. Their faces expressed something remorseless, inhuman and mocking. Their grins were ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... was! How vividly her features rise before me. Well do I remember her as she entered my room on a stormy day in January. Her torn mocassins were a mocking protection to her nearly frozen feet; her worn "okendo kenda" hardly covering a wrinkled neck and arms seamed with the scars of many a self-inflicted wound; she tried to make her tattered blanket meet across her chest, but the benumbed fingers were ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... tired, overworked and troubled sister, I have a special word for you. It is simply impossible for circumstances of any sort to overthrow the high spirit of one who believes in something yet to come and out of sight. What are poverty and adverse fate and mocking hopes and disappointed ambition to the soul which is only journeying through an unfriendly world to a heritage that cannot fail? As well might a flower complain of the rains that called it from the sod, of the winds that rocked it, and ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... face and sobbed, I am not ashamed to say that I cried too. I know very well that Mahommed was not quite wrong in what he says of the Europeans. I know the cruel old platitudes about governing Orientals by fear which the English pick up like mocking birds from the Turks. I know all about 'the stick' and 'vigour' and all that—but—'I sit among the people' and I know too that Mohammed feels just as John Smith or Tom Brown would feel in his place, and that men who were very savage against the rioters in the beginning, are now almost in ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... are the heroes of the ages past,— Where the brave chieftans; where the mighty ones Who flourished in the infancy of days? Ah to the grave gone down! On their fallen fame Exultant, mocking, at the pride of man, Sits grim Forgetfulness. The warrior's arm Lies nerveless on the pillow of its shame, Hushed is the stormy voice, and quenched the blaze Of ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... shrill, mocking voice the man whirled about and his huge blade was out like a flash. But only a cackling laugh answered him, as down from the bank above slipped a perfect hag of a creature, and he drew back in alarm. At that instant the moon flooded out; his sudden ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... well an' that's a fact, Trimm," sneered the tramp, resuming his malicious, mocking air. "But set down an' make yourself at home, an' after a while, when this is done, we'll have a bite together—you an' me. It'll be a reg'lar tea party fur ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... light of the moon. Europe has several of these minstrels of the night. Beside the true Philomel of poetry and romance, the Reed-Thrush and the Woodcock are of this character. In the United States, the Mocking-Bird enjoys the greatest reputation; the Rose-breasted Grosbeak and the New York Thrush are also ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to a bean-pole," was the mocking answer. "Come along, boys, no use wasting time on an old ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... crossed the threshold the door closed behind him, and the lamp was extinguished, leaving everything in total darkness. Then the detective felt the floor give way, and he was precipitated to his doom, the last sound reaching his ears being a mocking laugh ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... poured his heart out in that peculiarly pathetic threnody which no other feathered throat contributes to the varied volume of bird lays. Poised on the point of an iron spike in the line that bristled along the wall, a mocking bird preened, then spread his wings, soared and finally swept downward, thrilling the air with the bravura of the "tumbling song"; and over the rampart that shut out the world, drifted the refrain of a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the rumble of talk which had followed the first stifled cry from Doran when the sponge of chloroform was thrust into his face, and every now and again he had heard Frencham Altar's voice ring out high and mocking and exasperatingly like his own. Finally the front door had slammed but he remained concealed for over an hour in case of misadventure. Doran was lying in the hall when he stepped from his hiding place. Barraclough knew a little of the rough science of medicine and very ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... a good woman. And Joan, who knew that her power now lay in her unattainableness, feigned a wavering reluctance, when in truth any surrender was impossible. He left her with a spirit that her presence gave him, in a kind of trance, radiant, yet with mocking smile, as if he foresaw the overthrow of his soul through her, and in the light of that his waning power over his Legion was ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... remaining to give another cry so frightfully loud; the damned never lowered their key, and the devils kept replying, "behold your welcome for ever and ever." And it almost seemed that the sauciness and bitterness of the devils, in jeering and mocking their victims, were worse to bear than the pain itself. What was worst of all, their conscience was at present utterly aroused, and was tearing them worse than a thousand of the infernal lions. We proceeded farther and farther downward, and the farther ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... Leslie at the gangway, sat at a corner table, partly hidden by two carved pillars below. She held a champagne glass in a lavishly jeweled hand, and there was no doubt that she was pretty, but there was that in her suggestive laugh and mocking curve of the full red lips, something which set Millicent's teeth on edge. If more were needed to increase the unpleasant impression, a rich mine promoter sat near the young woman, trying to whisper confidentially, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... staggered from side to side, and fought hard to stand upright. She grew bewildered, and the trees seemed to be whirling around her. The roaring of the storm overhead sounded like the voice of a demon mocking at her despair. She could endure it no longer; she felt that she was ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... whereby the delicate irony and subtle humor of the immortal poem—though doubtless these admirable qualities were well appreciated by the translators—have been utterly sacrificed in the result. In none of the English versions that I have examined is more than a trace of the mocking spirit of insincerity pervading the whole prayer,—the cool effrontery of the suppliant in enumerating his demerits, his serenely illogical demands of salvation in spite, or rather because, of them, his meek submission to the punishment of others, and the many similarly pleasing characteristics ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... for the betterment of his state? Should he now, at this, the hour of her supremest political and moral peril, desert her as irredeemable, and join the ranks of those who sneered at her, and pointed mocking fingers at ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... forest and suffering great afflictions as if ye had none to take care of you, himself in prosperity, this wretch entertained the desire of beholding you plunged in adversity and misfortune. They came hither for mocking you and the illustrious daughter of Drupada. The lord of the celestials also, having ascertained this purpose of theirs, told me, 'Go thou and bring Duryodhana hither in chains along with his counsellors. Dhananjaya also with his brother ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... allusion and literary tone were at one time criticised as showing that Longfellow's genius was really an exotic grown under glass, or a smooth-throated mocking-bird warbling a foreign melody. A recent admirable paper in the Evening Post intimates that the kindly poet took the suggestion in good part, and modified his strain. But there was never any interruption or change in the continuity of his work. ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... compels the admiration and possibly the sympathy of the reader. There is, however, another strain in his ghostly attributes, which betrays a more recent consanguinity: now and again he gives token that he is of the lineage of Mephistopheles. He is sometimes, though rarely, a mocking as well as a rebellious spirit, and occasionally indulges in a grim persiflage beneath the dignity if not the capacity of Satan. It is needless to add that Lucifer has a most lifelike personality of his own. The conception of the spirit of evil justifying an eternal antagonism ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... looked as if she was going to run after him; but Mr. Phil Kennedy, who stood laughing in his doorway, called after her, and Biddy came back. He led her through the hall, into a very pleasant room. There was an open fire, a bright rug in front of it, a mocking-bird in a cage in the window, and a beautiful lady sitting in an arm-chair, with her feet on a cushion. The lady was pale; her hands were thin and white; there were crutches beside her chair; but she looked as if ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... character looked wickeder, as well as meaner, than that he, all the while that he was professing to be of the Church of England, expressing both zeal and affection to it, was yet secretly reconciled to the Church of Rome; thus mocking God, and deceiving the world with so gross a prevarication. And his not having the honesty or courage to own it at the last; his not shewing any sign of the least remorse for his ill-led life, or any tenderness either ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... mocking voice of 'Gene Black. "Down this way to see your first train go through? Stay with us, and we'll show you how it doesn't ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... languid, mocking breeze That rustles through the Jasmin flowers And stirs among the Tamarind trees; A little gurgle of the spray That drips, unheard, though silent hours, Then ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... he to himself, inly pleased at their ignorance, "if I cared, could I not make them ashamed, by telling them they were mocking a ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his actions and the strength of his lungs, would seem to be a victim of consumption. His eye is black as Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient nervousness; and when he has burst forth as he does constantly with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... offender. This violation was denounced by the fashionable preacher, Hortensio Felix Paravicino (q.v.), in a sermon preached before Philip IV.; [v.04 p.0985] Calderon retorted by introducing into El Principe constante a mocking reference (afterwards cancelled) to Paravicino's gongoristic verbiage, and was committed to prison. He was soon released, grew rapidly in reputation as a playwright, and, on the death of Lope de Vega in 1635, was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Kings, the English Nation clutched up the readiest that came to hand; "Here is our King!" said they,—again under mistake, still under their old mistake. And, what was singular, they then avenged themselves by mocking, calumniating, by angrily speaking, writing and laughing at the poor mistaken King so clutched!—It is high time the English were candidly asking themselves, with very great seriousness indeed, WHAT it was they had ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "Alas, sire! you see my infirmity, and that I have no eyes wherewith to find my way!" Then said the king to the lame man, "And you, have you been into my garden?" And he answered, "Surely my lord has forgotten my infirmity; it cannot be that he desires to hurt my feelings by mocking me!" So the king was perplexed, and went apart to consider how the two could have contrived the business—for he was sure that they were guilty. At last a thought came to him, and he set the lame ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... in his words rather than in his tone. Was he mocking, she wondered, and looked at him with the searching frankness that another might have found disconcerting. He took the glance for a question, ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... just the same and a hideous echo from somewhere threw our words back at us in a broken, mocking answer. That was all. We were paralyzed with fear that Sahwah had wandered into the swamp or had fallen over the precipice in the dark into the lake. We turned the lights of the car on the swamp for a long distance, but ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... of Nina worried him more and more. After he went to bed at night, he would hear her laugh and see her mocking smile and listen to her shrill imitations of his own absurdities. She had been the one happy person amongst them all, and now—! Well, he had seen enough of Boris Grogoff to know what sort of fellow he was. He ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... more terrible in the loneliness of its wrath, its sorrow, its revenge. But from one end of his song to the other Vergil has surrounded AEneas with the ties and affections of home. In the awful night with which his story opens the loss of Creusa, the mocking embrace in which the dead wife flies from his arms, form his farewell to Troy. "Thrice strove I there to clasp my arms about her neck,"—everyone knows ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... infant in the home would be a source of unbounded joy; but over against this pleasing picture there stood cruel want pointing its wicked, mocking finger at him, anxious for another victim. As the time for the expected gift drew near, Belton grew more moody and despondent. Day by day he grew more and more nervous. One evening the nurse called him into his wife's room, bidding him come and look at his son. The ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... down. What can law answer to such a demand? It is silent; it can only say, 'What is written is written.' It has no word to speak that promises 'the blotting out of the handwriting that is against us'; and through its silence one can hear the mocking laugh of the tyrant ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Limousin are by no means afflicted; neither do they labour under Heaven's displeasure "as the folk of our provinces imagine." But he adds that he does not like their habits. It would seem that at first Brother Seguin was annoyed by Jeanne's mocking vivacious repartees. But he cherished no ill-will against her. "The Limousin's good nature does not permit the endurance of any unfriendly feeling," says Abel Hugo in La France pittoresque: Haute-Vienne. Cf. A. Precicou, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... everlastingly tortured by the sight of the thing that stood as a silent accuser of all who looked, was more than Percival could stand. Easter Sunday,—and that gibbet pointing its long arm toward the little flock in the shadow of sanctuary,—mocking the good as it beckoned to ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... sweltering lies, 300 And scorns the feeble arrow that assails His Heaven-defying crest and iron scales; His brows with wan and withered roses crowned, And reeling to the pipe's lascivious sound, We see Intemperance his goblet quaff; And mocking Blasphemy, with mad loud laugh, Acting before high Heaven a direr part, Sport with the weapons that shall pierce his heart! If o'er the southern wave[64] we turn our sight, More dismal shapes of hideous woe affright: 310 Grim-visaged War, that ruthless, as he hies, Drowns with his trumpet's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... frankness, Doctor, but I must tell you I am getting a little tired of Mona. I wish I might never hear her name again. If I can resist the charms of such an exquisite bundle of perfections as Antonia is, do you think I am likely to be overcome by a mocking-bird of your imagination?" ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... a boy. His soul is full of music; his fingers are as much at home on the key-board of a piano as a mocking-bird in its own native orange grove. His sister is a mathematician; she solves a problem in mathematics as easily as her brother plays a piece of music. Because one is a boy and the other a girl, don't make the girl teach music and the boy ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... with as if it had indeed been a court of justice. The seaman treated the affair lightly, laughed and joked with the farmers, and the crowd began to disperse, when a burst of musical laughter, bitter mocking in its tones, was heard in the apartment. It came from no one there. All stood aghast. Many a stout-hearted countryman who would have faced a cannon without shrinking, trembled and turned pale. The women shrieked; ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... for Verse and the World well lost. The enemy is around them on all sides, jailers of the Marshalsea and envious critics, the evil shepherds that preside over grates of steel and noisome beds of straw, but Youth has its mocking answer to ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... death and the vast collection of scientific apparatus, a ghastly mocking of humanity. How futile was it all in the presence ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve |
