"Ridicule" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dont les jugements sont rarement tout a fait faux, voit une sorte de ridicule a etre vertueux quand on n'y est pas oblige par un devoir professionnel. Le pretre, ayant pour etat d'etre chaste, comme le soldat d'etre brave, est, d'apres ces idees, presque le seul qui puisse sans ridicule tenir a des ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... strictness ruled throughout the dark season of childhood. Many the things, in truth, I with patience endured from my playmates, When the good-will that I bore them they often requited with malice. Often I suffered their flings and their blows to pass unresented; But if they ventured to ridicule father, when he of a Sunday Home from Church would come, with his solemn and dignified bearing; If they made fun of his cap-string, or laughed at the flowers of the wrapper He with such stateliness wore, which was given away but this morning— Threateningly doubled my fist in an instant; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... demanded, in German French, to be taken to some private apartment. We heard that she and her maid had come in the coupe, and, probably from pride, poor young lady! she had avoided all association with her fellow-passengers, thereby exciting their dislike and ridicule. All these little pieces of hearsay had a significance to us afterwards, though, at the time, the only remark made that bore upon the future was Amante's whisper to me that the young lady's hair was exactly the colour of mine, which she had cut off and burnt in ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... of athletes. MacNuffery was the most disagreeable man of the English party, and soon began to turn up his nose at Bobbs. But Bobbs, I think, got the better of him. "Do you allow coffee to your club;—coffee?" asked MacNuffery, in a voice mingling ridicule and reproof with a touch of satire, as he had begun to guess that Bobbs had not been long attending to his present work. "You'll find," said Bobbs, "that young men in our air do not need the restraints ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... mischief fit: He never slept, yet ever in a Dream; Religion, Law, and State, was all his Theam. On these he wrote in Earnest and in Jeast, Till he grew mad, and turn'd into a Beast, Zattue his Zanie was, Buffoon, and Fool, Who turn'd Religion into Ridicule: Jeer'd at the Plot, did Sanhedrims abuse, Mock'd Magistrates, damn'd all Sects of the Jews. Of little Manners, and of lesser Brains; Yet to embroil the State, took wondrous pains. In jeasting still his little Talent lay; At Hushai scoft ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... of Madame Soudry's salon. No society is complete without a victim,—without an object to pity, ridicule, despise, and protect. Vermut, full of his scientific problems, often came with his cravat untied, his waistcoat unbuttoned, and his little ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... ferments had been advocated long before it had been taken up by M. Fremy. It no longer commands the slightest credit, nor do any observers of note any longer give it the least attention; it might even be said that it has become a subject of ridicule. ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the time had it in their power to make sport of those novelties.... As for the man who laughs at the idea of undressed women going through gymnastic exercises, as a means of revealing what is most perfect, his ridicule is but 'unripe fruit plucked from the tree of wisdom.'" (Plato, Republic, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the men also, wear much livelier descriptions of dress than we are accustomed to in the west of Europe; and whilst the frilled unmentionables of some of them would excite ridicule amongst our hardy operatives, the brocaded vests of others would perhaps be regarded ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... made glad by the appearance of two pups. They were tawny, bright-eyed little fellows, and the Frenchman loved them with a love that the Anglo-Saxon knows not of, especially in the matter of dogs. Well, provisions got scarcer and scarcer, and finally, with an anguish that I have no right to ridicule, and as the only thing left for him to do, the poor Frenchman brought his pups around and presented them to the cook of our hospital. Here the little fellows waxed fat and strong, and were soon great favorites, not only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... made to disburse seven lakhs. On the 3rd August, Gholam Kadir gave proof of the degraded barbarity of which Hindustani Pathans can be guilty, by lounging on the throne on the Diwan Khas, side by side with the nominal Emperor, whom he covered with abuse and ridicule, as he smoked the hookah in his face. On the 6th, he destroyed the same throne for the sake of the plating which still adhered to it, which he threw into the melting-pot; and passed the next three days in digging up ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... refined, ambitious, high principled at heart and a thorough gentleman by birth, training, and instinct. Yet, because of a lack of clear knowledge, his life has been one of hardship, privation, disappointment, disillusionment, galling poverty, and utter failure. He has been subjected to ridicule and the even more blighting cruelty of good-natured, patronizing, contemptuous tolerance. His reputation is that of a lazy, good-for-nothing, disreputable dead beat and loafer. And yet, in a sense, nothing ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... in a very entertaining manner, of people walking and conversing in their sleep. I am very sorry I have no note of this. We talked of the Ouran-Outang, and of Lord Monboddo's thinking that he might be taught to speak. Dr Johnson treated this with ridicule. Mr Crosbie said, that Lord Monboddo believed the existence of every thing possible; in short, that all which is in posse might be found in esse. JOHNSON. 'But, sir, it is as possible that the Ouran-Outang does not speak, as that ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... for him to go back afterward in such a manner but that the blame of the kiss should rest with him. When he should desire to be "off," he could not plead that the kissing had been all her doing. A man in Mr. Prosper's position has difficulties among which he must be very wary. And then the ridicule of the world is so strong a weapon, and is always used on the side of the women! He gave a little start, but he did not at once shake her off. "What's the objection to the ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... men all along the Atlantic Plain now took up the problem of improving the inland rivers, they faced a storm of criticism and ridicule that would have daunted any but such as Washington and Johnson of Virginia or White and Hazard of Pennsylvania or Morris and Watson of New York. Every imaginable objection to such projects was advanced—from the inefficiency of the science of engineering to the probable destruction ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... said that Dr. Burney was as bad a father as so goodhearted a man could possibly be. It never seems to have crossed his mind that Fanny was about to take a step on which the whole happiness of her life might depend, a step which might raise her to an honourable eminence or cover her with ridicule and contempt. Several people had already been trusted, and strict concealment was therefore not to be expected. On so grave an occasion, it was surely his duty to give his best counsel to his daughter, to win her confidence, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... was a tragedy. Your farmer is not given to introspection. For that matter, anyone knows that a farmer in town is a comedy. Vaudeville, burlesque, the Sunday supplement, the comic papers, have marked him a fair target for ridicule. Perhaps one should know him in his overalled, stubble-bearded days, with the rich black loam of the Mississippi bottomlands clinging to ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... cathedra, of his keeping a seraglio[607], and acknowledge that the supposition had often been in his thoughts, struck me so forcibly with ludicrous contrast, that I could not but laugh immoderately. He was too proud to submit, even for a moment, to be the object of ridicule, and instantly retaliated with such keen sarcastick wit, and such a variety of degrading images, of every one of which I was the object, that, though I can bear such attacks as well as most men, I yet found myself so much the sport of all the company, that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... eat you up. But it is different in society, where you cannot mistake the character of those you converse with, or suffer your fancy to exaggerate their qualities, good or bad, without exposing yourself not only to ridicule, but to great and serious inconveniences. Keep guard, therefore, on your imagination, my dear Darsie; and let your old friend assure you, it is the point of your character most pregnant with peril to its good and generous owner. Adieu! let not the franks of the worthy peer remain unemployed; above ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... queer thing, indeed, if a son of the water-country didn't turn to "botoring," provided he had any soul for sport. We Hollanders made practical use of motor-boats while the people of dry lands still poked ridicule at them in comic illustrated papers; therefore this will be by no means my first experience. I had that three years ago with a racer, and again with a barge which I fitted up with a twenty horse-power ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... origin of the Gospel, but we must speak further of their bearing on the evangelist's view of the Old Testament. His Messianic quotations are introduced by such phrases as "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet," or, "then was fulfilled," etc. The tendency of modern scepticism to ridicule the supernatural element in prophecy has caused some writers to depreciate this method of quotation. And we find even a thoughtful Roman Catholic writer speaking of it as "giving the impression ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... About a hundred pounds a year were thus added to his income. The marriage is said not to have been a happy one, and perhaps it was not, for his wife was apparently a weak-minded woman; but the inference from the internal evidence of Dryden's plays, as of Shakespeare's, is very untrustworthy, ridicule of marriage having always been a common stock in trade of the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the opinions of the people who know. The more we understand the vast interior of China and the conservatism and peculiarities of character of the people of that interior, the less disposed shall we be to jest, the less disposed to ridicule, what I would characterize as the strongest and most deadly of the hidden menaces ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... always of the same cast. It varied as greatly as were the moods of the composer. The sublimity of Ossian had its opposite in the biting sarcasm and trenchant ridicule of some of ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... grandfather and the "malignant Church," probably points to one of the causes for his persistent dislike towards the Protestant dissenters. His attitude displays a profound disgust both for their teaching and their conduct; and he found, very early, occasion to ridicule them, as may be seen in his description of Jack, Martin, and Peter in "A Tale of a Tub" (see vol. i. of this edition). In spite, however, of this attitude, Swift seems to have remained silent on the question of the repeal of the Test Act for a period of more than twenty years. He had published ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... ridicule them for their vanity and awkward imitation; and therefore, I believe, he avoided all concerns with them, even when they endeavoured to engage his attention. It was the lower sort of people with whom he chiefly conversed, such as ploughmen, ditchers, and ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... that both the men were somewhat absurdly and self-consciously trying to be solemn and learned. Louis beyond doubt was self-conscious—acting as it were to impress his wife—and Batchgrew's efforts to be hearty and youthful with the young roused her private ridicule. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... consideration. If, after all her striving, freedom had come to her as a gift, as a peaceful present such as is sometimes given away with a pound of tea, Ireland would have accepted the gift with shamefacedness, and have felt that her centuries of revolt had ended in something very like ridicule. The blood of brave men had to sanctify such a consummation if the national imagination was to be stirred to the dreadful business which is the organizing of freedom, and both imagination and brains have been stagnant in Ireland this many a year. Following on such tameness, failure ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... with his son and an uncle named Rashbehari, arrived at Jogesh's house in a second-class cab. No procession attended them, partly because the last had cost so much money, partly owing to the fear that another hitch might cover them with ridicule. After exchanging hearty salutations with Jogesh, they asked him to exhibit the ornaments prepared for the bride-elect. He took them to a side room and left them there a while, presently introducing a well-dressed ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... himself, and publicly gave him a strong lesson. 'All's Well that Ends Well' contains a figure, Parolles, whose peculiarities are too closely akin to those of Ben Jonson to be regarded as a mere fortuitous accident; especially when we find that Jonson, in 'The Poetaster,' again tries to ridicule this hit by a ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... and simple man as you are, that if I go into Africa for this ridiculous motive, I will not endeavor to come out of it without ridicule? Will I not give the world cause to speak of me? And to be spoken of nowadays, when there are Monsieur le Prince, M. de Turenne, and many others, my contemporaries, I, admiral of France, grandson of Henry IV., king ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... face back of them is that of a friend to me now. We'll shake again. Good-by;" and I went home feeling as if I had solid ground under my feet. At supper I went over the whole scene, taking off the man in humorous pantomime, not ridicule, and even my wife grew hilarious over her disappointed hopes of the "new-fangled truck." I managed, however, that the children should not lose the lesson that a rough diamond is better than a smooth paste stone, and that people often do themselves ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... has just been completed to this place, and that it is to be continued from there to the shores of Hudson Bay. How this modern change would have startled the old fur-traders! Even if they could have dreamed of anything so wonderful as a railway, we can imagine their ridicule of the idea that some day men should travel from the East to the far-off {94} shores of the Saskatchewan in two or three days, a trip which cost them months of ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... ominous fact that Germany was the one nation of Europe which openly despised and flouted the Monroe Doctrine as an outworn superstition. Her learned professors (followed by a few servile American imitators) had poured ridicule and scorn upon it in unreadable books. Her actions in the West Indies and South America showed her contempt for it as a "bit of American bluff." Gradually it dawned upon us that if France were crushed and England crippled our dear old Monroe Doctrine would stand a poor ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... vain," said the young man, flushing. He smarted under the implied rebuke,—in fact, he was uncomfortably aware of ridicule. "My riding-boots were filthy. I—I—Yes, I know," he broke in upon himself as Phineas extended one of his own muddy boots for inspection. "I know, but, you see, I am the unbidden guest of yourself and Mrs. Striker. The least ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... years, nearly alternately with rye and buckwheat; (sometimes a crop of each in one year.) The whole field seemed so far exhausted that we had failed to get a crop of corn or oats from it after two different trials; and I underwent no small share of ridicule from my neighbors, while preparing it for wheat. Remarks like the following were of daily occurrence—"Ah! Seaman you will fail this time." "You have not got your old highly manured fields to exhaust this time by your stimulating stuff!" ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... rain. When the dawn of the next day appears, the deluge will begin, which will cover the earth and drown all living things.'" Shamashnapishtim repeated the warning to the people, but the people refused to believe it, and turned him into ridicule. The work went rapidly forward: the hull was a hundred and forty cubits long, the deck one hundred and forty broad; all the joints were caulked with pitch and bitumen. A solemn festival was observed at its completion, and the embarkation began.** "All that I possessed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and, as usual, you excel in ridicule. But if the ox of which you speak is really a god, like Apis, or like that subterranean ox whose high priest I see here, and if the frog, being wisely inspired, succeed in equalling it, would it not be, in fact, more virtuous than ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... having shut the door upon it, Dorothea could reflect that her brother, too, had suffered. She knew his pride, his sensitiveness, his mortal dread of ridicule. In the smart of his wound he had turned and rent her cruelly, but had recovered himself and defended her loyally from worse rendings. She remembered, too, that he had distrusted ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... motive which he was ashamed to avow. He was led, however, to tell his brother, after some time, that in a field through which he passed to and from school, he invariably met the apparition of a woman, whom he personally knew while living, and who had been dead about eight years. Ridicule, threats, persuasions, were alike used in vain by the family to induce him to dismiss these absurd ideas. Finally, Mr Ruddle was sent for, and to him the boy ingenuously told the time, manner, and frequency ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... stood still, holding her breath a little in her intense excitement. It seemed impossible that Inez could do all she promised without making a mistake, and Dolores would not have been a woman had she not been visited just then by visions of ridicule. Without light she was utterly helpless to do anything for herself, and she had never before then fully realized the enormous misfortune with which her sister had to contend. She had not guessed, either, what energy ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... hands of a Schiller, leads inevitably to a crescendo of rhetorical contrasts, which in the end sound somewhat flighty and forced. The poem was an object of ridicule to the Romanticists, and the elder Schlegel wrote a saucy parody of ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... good place to preach. They passed down the main thoroughfare, and everywhere they attracted attention. Cries of "Ugly barbarian!" and oftenest "Black-bearded barbarian" were heard on all sides. A Hoa was known in Kelung and contempt and ridicule was heaped upon him by his old college acquaintances. He was consorting with the barbarian! He was a friend of this foreigner! They poured more insults upon him than they did upon the barbarian himself. Some took the stranger as a joke, and ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... Bhishma of terrible prowess. The mighty Bhishma will not be able to afflict thee in battle. Therefore, O mighty-armed one, encounter Bhishma with vigor. If, O sire, thou returnest today without slaying Bhishma, thou wilt, with myself, be an object of ridicule to the world. Seek to do that in battle by which, O hero, we may not incur ridicule in this great battle. Stay the grandsire. O thou of great strength, I will protect thee in this battle, checking all the car-warriors (of the Kuru army). Do thou slay the grandsire. Drona, and Drona's son, and Kripa, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in "The Rehearsal"; the celebrated farce written by the Duke of Buckingham, in conjunction with Martin Clifford, Butler, Sprat, and others, in ridicule of the rhyming tragedies then in vogue, and especially of Dryden in the character of Bayes.—See Malone's "Life of Dryden," p. 95.—W. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... who suggested that time and place had been deliberately chosen because Colonel Frank Rhodes, Doctor Jameson, Sir John Willoughby, General French with his staff, and other officers, were known to have lunched in the Royal Hotel on several previous days, met with nothing but ridicule. Colonel Rhodes especially made light of the idea that any gun could shoot so accurately as to get within a few feet of hitting the exact mark aimed at from a range of nearly five miles. Since then, however, the hotel has been nearly struck several times, and on each occasion about the same hour, ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... credit this, but will ridicule the idea that their own imaginations are daily helping or hindering their own ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... Ridicule could not affect him, and out of pity for his suffering Wetherell invited him to make down his bed in the doorway of his ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... ministry. In the year 1650 he was imprisoned at Derby for speaking publicly in the church after divine service; on being brought before a magistrate, he bade the company "tremble at the word of the Lord;" the expression was turned into ridicule, and he and his friends received ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life. I have endured a great deal of ridicule, without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... either by a play upon the words or by the transposition of the terms in which it was expressed. Under the pretence of maintaining some philosophical question, he poured out a medley of absurd jokes and 'personal ridicule, which gradually led to the abolition of the office. In Thoresby's "Diary" we read, "Tuesday, July 6th. The Praevaricator's speech was smart and ingenious, attended with vollies of hurras" (see Wordsworth's "University Life in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... spirits tried to get up a lofty contempt of his quiet ways and simple earnestness,—but they failed,—it not being in human nature, even the most scampish, to entertain scorn for that which is innately true and noble. So, finally, the worst that befell him was ridicule,—which, even when he was aware of it, hurt him little. Often, indeed, he would receive their jests and artful civilities with implicit good faith; acknowledging apparent attentions with a gentle, kindly courtesy, indescribably mystifying to those excellent young men who expended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... year, in many families, shoes were not worn. Boots, a fur hat and a coat, with buttons on each side, attracted the gaze of the beholder and sometimes received censure or rebuke. A stranger from the old States chose to doff his ruffles, his broad-cloth and his cue rather than endure the scoff and ridicule ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... it depends upon perseverance in faithful work; books which develop the child's sympathies by teaching consideration for the feelings of others, kindness to animals and to all weak and dependent creatures. Lack of reverence is common in the youth of today and books and papers which ridicule old age, filial duty and other things which ought to be respected are all too common. Few have added more to the happiness of mankind than he who has written a classic for children. It takes very unusual qualities to write ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... sadly, but they were going to be married. I would have laughed at her if she had not been so tragic. But there is something about Alice, in spite of her romantic folly, (which she has adapted from the French to suit her American needs,) which forbids ridicule. Nevertheless I felt, with one of those sudden flashes of intuition, that this choice of hers was a hideous mistake. The situation repelled me. But the very strangeness of it seemed to attract the morbid Alice. And it was this one curious strain of unexplained foolishness marring her otherwise ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... that is your decision, I must do without your name. Already we have many signatures, and shall obtain hundreds more without difficulty. We look at things differently, Pauline. Our point of view has never been the same. Ridiculous? I should be proud of the ridicule of people too selfish or too unenlightened to heed the outcry of aspiring humanity. If we had to depend on your little set to strike the note of progress, I fear we should sit with folded hands most of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... I have observed, are invariably objects of ridicule; timid, jealous, and nervous, a frown throws them into a state of agony it would be difficult to describe, and a smile bestowed upon a rival breaks their rest for a week. Only observe one of them engaged ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... Seeing that he resented their remarks with temper, they only became more aggressive, and at last went so far as to pursue him through the city with yells and cries. The man, overcome with passion, got rabbia, and died. Ridicule is the one thing no Italian can bear. When you lose temper with an Italian, and give way to any show of violence before him, he is triumphant; his cheek glows, his eye brightens, his chest expands, he sees he has you at a disadvantage, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... you think, among these gentlemen, any could be found with sufficient enthusiasm, for the Royal cause, here represented by me, to attend, and support me through all the fatigues, the endless errands, the interviews—ay, also the rebuffs, the ridicule at times, perhaps the danger of the conjuration, which must be set on foot in this country—to do all that, without hope of other reward than the consciousness of helping a good cause, and—and the gratitude of one, who may have ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... drove out to a palace in the outskirts, which had been converted into a military hospital and was being maintained by the Emperor out of his private purse. There are some writers of war experiences on the Western Front who have revelled in pouring ridicule upon the inspections that are ever proceeding at our hospitals in the field, although these functions furnish the humorist with just that opportunity which his soul craves for. My experience, however, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... as I am, miss!—at least she was when we were at school. And Fanny Parker—Mrs. Mountain who now is—was seven months older, and we were in the French class together; and I have no idea that our age is to be made the subject of remarks and ridicule by our children, and I will thank you to spare it, if you please! Do you consider your mother ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... succeed, and no one suffered anxiety on his account. As Dr. Spencer said, he was as sure to fall on his legs as a sandy cat, and so nobody cared for him. At home he was sufficient to himself, properly behaved to his father, civil to Richard, unmerciful in ridicule, but merciful in dominion over the rest, except Ethel, whom he treated as an equal, able to retort in kind, reserving for her his most highly-flavoured sallies, and his few and distant approaches to such confidence as showed her how little she knew him. His father esteemed but ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of South, And the Syrian's golden mouth, Doth the homely pathos add Which the pilgrim preachers had; Breaking, like a child at play, Gilded idols of the day, Cant of knave and pomp of fool Tossing with his ridicule, Yet, in earnest or in jest, Ever keeping truth abreast. And, when thou art called, at last, To thy townsmen of the past, Not as stranger shalt thou come; Thou shalt find thyself at home With the little and the big, Woollen cap and periwig, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that he may only have confused his readers and himself by his bold but poor attempt to express in a few lines the meaning of six hundred pages. He would be the last to ridicule the "folly" of a great man, whose system he has made no very laborious effort to understand, for it seems to be built on sand, on a classification of things superficial, imperfect, and capricious, which would not have been accepted by learned men, and if accepted would have become obsolete ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... effort, amidst the tumult of a riot and the clamours of intemperance. In the neighbourhood of Lichfield, the sportsmen of the party appeared in the Highland taste of variegated drapery; and their zeal descending to a very extraordinary exhibition of practical ridicule, they hunted, with hounds clothed in plaid, a fox dressed in a red uniform. Even the females at their assembly, and the gentlemen at the races, affected to wear the chequered stuff by which the prince-pretender and his followers had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... afterwards took from Augustus himself Varus with three legions. [202] Nor did Caius Marius [203] in Italy, the deified Julius [204] in Gaul, or Drusus, [204] Nero, [204] or Germanicus [204] in their own country, defeat then without loss. The subsequent mighty threats of Caligula terminated in ridicule. Then succeeded tranquillity; till, seizing the occasion of our discords and civil wars, they forced the winter-quarters of the legions, [205] and even aimed at the possession of Gaul; and, again expelled thence, they have in latter times been rather triumphed ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... ridicule by his readiness in proposing constitutions. His antagonist, like a hornet, instantly fixed his sting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... thousands and tens of thousands of the best mothers and wives and daughters in America, the most intelligent and upright and pure- minded women in the land, loaded down with their hopes, wet with their tears—if they turned their hearts', prayers and deepest desires into ridicule, throwed 'em round under their feet, they wouldn't pay no attention to Dorlesky's errents, they wouldn't notice one little vegitable widow, humbly at that, and sort o' disagreeable." And says I, "I don't want Dorlesky's errents throwed round under foot, and she made fun ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... of the story; but those who knew him best fully acquitted him of any thing of the kind, inasmuch as he had not courage sufficient to offer violence to a hen and chickens. A true version of the story soon after came out, and Mr. George Frederic was compelled to undergo the ridicule of all ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... is, in Germany, a crime to criticise or ridicule any proposition uttered by the sacred lips ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... Charley with zest. It was no fun to talk to his wife, who never could be drawn into a discussion, but held her husband's vagaries in check as far as possible by little touches of gentle ridicule. But Mr. Martin was sure that he could overwhelm Charley Millard, even though he might not convince him. So when he had said, "How-are-yeh, and glad to see yeh, Charley, and hope yer well, and how's things with you?" he sat down, and presently ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... set me thinking of it," I returned. "Somehow the law doesn't appeal to me any more. The truth is—" I hesitated, recalling how Boller's subtle ridicule had shaken the purpose so carefully nourished by my parents and Mr. Pound. Though his talk that night had been filled with high-flying phrases about ideals of citizenship and useful manhood, I still had lingering doubts ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... Galileo? Not a school boy or girl six years old in this land but what knows that Catholicism was wrong, as she usually is, but she would not have acknowledged her wrong had not the world-at-large been thoroughly convinced of her error, which would have brought her to the very feet of ridicule had she persisted in teaching the doctrine promulgated by Pope Urban that "the sun did move, and that the earth ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... mediating European powers, the several great exertions making by the Continental Union, to prosecute the war with vigor against her, I make no doubt, will shortly undeceive them, and expose our enemy to the just contempt and ridicule he will draw upon himself by such ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... which was to call some persons by their own names, and to expose their defects to the laughter of the people (the examples of which we have in the fore-mentioned Aristophanes, who turned the wise Socrates into ridicule, and is also very free with the management of Cleon, Alcibiades, and other ministers of the Athenian government). Now if this be granted, we may easily suppose that the first hint of satirical plays on the Roman stage was given by the Greeks—not ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... Shepphird, is a thoughtful and pleasing essay, whose second half well describes the individuality of the various amateur authors and editors. "The Kingly Power of Laughter," by Louena Van Norman, is no less just and graphic, illustrating the supreme force of humour and ridicule. Leo Fritter, in "Concerning Candidates," points out some important details for office-seekers, whilst Ira A. Cole, in "Five Sticks on Finance," gives some interesting suggestions for economy. "Opportunity," an essay by Mildred Blanchard, concludes the issue, and successfully ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... wrong—he must be wrong! The committee were honorable men; they held a position of trust. Surely they could see how much better his plans were than Dick's. And surely they could not be tricked into passing them by for a hodgepodge that would only bring ridicule down ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... were laughed at, and many, if not all of them, deserved ridicule. But see how even this trivial superstition illuminates our knowledge of the human mind! A mere residuum of a forgotten impression, a lost memory which Brown would have sworn, in a court of justice, had never been in his mind at all, can work his muscles, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... neighborhood there was but one person with whom Jacob felt completely at ease—but one who never joined in the general habit of making his name the butt of ridicule or contempt. This was Mrs. Ann Pardon, the hearty, active wife of Farmer Robert Pardon, who lived nearly a mile farther down the brook. Jacob had won her good-will by some neighborly services, something ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... with scornful and mocking words the lady who was the leader of the band fixed on his breast the hump she had taken from Friedel. Immediately the clock struck one, and all disappeared. The poor man's rage was boundless, for he found himself now saddled with two humps. He became an object of ridicule to the townsfolk, but Friedel pitied him, and maintained ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... had told him he was going to be stunned for five or six minutes, cut about the brow and face and have a bone in his wrist put out, and that as a consequence he would find himself pleased and exhilarated, he would have treated the prophecy with ridicule; but here he was lying stiffly on his back with his wrist bandaged to his side and smiling into the darkness even more brightly than he had smiled at the Essex landscape two days before. The fact is pain hurts or irritates, but in itself it ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... azure cowl is implied the cloak of deceit and false humility. Hafiz uses this expression to cast ridicule upon Shaikh Hazan's order of dervishes, who were inimical to the brotherhood of which the poet was a member. The dervishes mentioned wore blue to ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Millville wants to see his or her name in print every day, whether he or she has done anything worthy of publication or not. If the name isn't printed, we've made an enemy; and, if it is, the paper is sure to suffer more or less ridicule." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... teased with Whiggish discourse by Mrs. Barton and Lady Betty Germaine, never saw the like. They turn all this affair of the Pope-burning into ridicule; and, indeed, they have made too great a clutter about it, if they had no real reason to apprehend some tumults. I dined with Lady Betty. I hear Prior's commission is passed to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary for the peace; my Lord Privy Seal, who you know is Bishop of Bristol, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... poor Dermot's mirth, that all the good effect of the feeling he had previously displayed for his uncle was lost, and Lord Erymanth observed, in his most dry and solemn manner, "There are some people who can see nothing but food for senseless ridicule in the ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Julie Father, do not ridicule two children who love each other with a passion which is true and pure, because it is founded upon a knowledge of each other's character; on the certitude of their mutual ardor in conquering the difficulties of ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... Legislature setting forth the grievances you labour under in connection with this very 'mill-lot'—and serious losses do they bring to you, let me tell you, though grievances, in the proper sense of the term, they are not—you and your memorial would be met with a general and merited shout of ridicule and derision. One man has no rights, as opposed to ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... ridicule; but I intend writing a poem. All the ridicule you cast upon me will make me but ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... Nonsense hear; Indure your worse than womanish Affectation, Which renders you the Nusance of the Nation; Scorn'd even by all the Misses of the Town, A Jest to Vizard Mask, the Pit-Buffoon; A Glass by which the admiring Country Fool May learn to dress himself en Ridicule: Both striving who shall most ingenious grow In Leudness, Foppery, Nonsense, Noise and Show. And yet to these fine things we must submit Our Reason, Arms, our Laurels, and our Wit. Because we do not laugh at you, when leud, And scorn ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... this unfortunate victim, I solicited very hard for her life; but the murderers made no reply till they had stuck both their spears through her body, and transfixed her to the ground. They then looked me sternly in the face, and began to ridicule me by asking if I wanted an Eskimo wife; and paid not the smallest regard to the shrieks and agony of the poor wretch, who was twining round their spears ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... find themselves at Mr. Browne's elbow; he is, however, so far lost in his kindly ridicule of the poor silly revolving atoms before him, that it is not until Miss Kavanagh gives his arm a highly suggestive pinch that he learns that ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... an admirable sketch of natural history, in his second book concerning the nature of the Gods; and that in a style so raised by metaphors and descriptions, that it lifts the subject above rallery and ridicule, which frequently fall on such nice observations when they pass through the hands ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... broken the canvas that he, had drawn up, and whom should I perceive at some distance but your old friend Mr Burchell, walking along with his usual swiftness, with the great stick for which we used so much to ridicule him. As soon as we came within hearing, I called out to him by name, and entreated his help. I repeated my exclamations several times, upon which, with a very loud voice, he bid the postillion stop; but the boy took no notice, but drove on with still greater ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... well might laugh. If any other wife So sighed, I'd say: Out of a thousand darts But one could touch him, and that one would break. But thee I ridicule and must advise Let thy stray ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learned. And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so many ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... the attempt to arrange genealogical trees involving hypothetical groups has come to be the subject of some ridicule, perhaps deserved. But since this is what modern morphological criticism in great measure aims at doing, it cannot be altogether profitless to follow this method to its logical conclusions. That the results of such criticism must be highly speculative, and often liable to ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... only trying to add to the luster of their respective cities. Take away the legendary treasures of Greece, and you condemn the whole race of ciceroni to starvation: sightseers do not want the truth; they would not take it at a gift. However, I surrender to your ridicule any one who has no such motive, and yet ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... began hauling up her skirts and Eleanor, remembering Mr. Davidson's face, went into gales of laughter. Aunt Basha baited, looked at her with an inquiring gaze of adoration. "Yas'm, my young miss. He name dat. I done put the cyard in my ridicule. Yas'm, it's here." The antique bead purse was opened and Lance's card ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... that Edward could be very fond of presenting himself in this lamentable plight before the duke of Burgundy; and that having so suddenly, after his mighty vaunts, lost all footing in his own kingdom, he could be insensible to the ridicule which must attend him in the eyes of that prince. The duke, on his part, was no less embarrassed how he should receive the dethroned monarch. As he had ever borne a greater affection to the house of Lancaster ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... my collecting these relations may expose me to the railery and ridicule of a very numerous tribe of wits in this age, who value themselves extremely on their contempt of supernatural stories, and their disbelief of all things which relate to apparitions or returns from that state in which souls go when they depart from the body. Yet the following ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... our belongings Cheon thoroughly approved of; others were passed over as unworthy of notice; and others were held up to chuckling ridicule. A silver teapot was pounced upon with a cry of delight (tinware being considered far beneath the dignity of a missus, and seeing Sam had broken the china pot soon after its arrival, tinware had graced our board for some ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... that we do not value better the thought of these calmer things, because the least effort to reach them seems to pull down about us a whole cluster of wholesome fruits, grapes of Eschol, apples of Paradise. We are kept back, it seems to me, by a kind of silly fear of ridicule, from speaking more sincerely and ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that of the moralist and even of the general author for the next fifty years, a style which was that of Montesquieu and Voltaire, and superseded the broad, sustained, balanced, harmonious, and measured style of the majority of the writers of the eighteenth century. In the field of ridicule, wherein he sowed copiously, more so even than Moliere, the comic poets of the eighteenth century came to glean copiously, which did them less credit (for it is better to observe than to read) than it conferred on the wise and ingenious ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... tell you he pulled it down—or thought he did. He kept his temper, hunted up the servant's record, proved her a liar and dishonest, cast grave doubts on the discretion of the cure's housekeeper, and poured such a flood of ridicule over the whole flimsy fable, and those who had believed in it, that in sheer shamefacedness at having based her objection on such grounds, his grandmother gave way, and brought his parents ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... Lord's sake] [i.e. to beg for the rest of their lives. Warburton.] I rather think this expression intended to ridicule the puritans, whose turbulence and indecency often brought them to prison, and who considered themselves as suffering ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... that will at times arise to explore the mysterious labyrinths of knowledge, yet, even such, can hold sweet communion with the works of creation. The great volume of nature lies open before them, and though, in studying its pages, they often make wild mistakes, yet they fear no ridicule. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... Perces of that and neighboring villages kept a large number of dogs, which were used as beasts of burden and otherwise, but were not eaten. The travelers bought some of these for food, and found them palatable and nutritious; but this practice excited the ridicule of the savages, who gave to the whites the name Dog-Eaters,—an odd reversal of the condition of to-day. The men were proof against scorn, however, so long as the supply of dog-meat held out; and when they were ready to embark, they bought as many dogs as they could carry, ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... from now, J. G.," said the Governor, "and you know they're riding me hard. Let me make one false move—just one—anything that the opposition can use for a campaign of ridicule, and my goose is cooked ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... to be seen far oftener walking about with his hands in his pockets, and his gaze bent on the ground, or turned up to the clouds, than joining in any of the boyish sports of those of his own age. A nervous dread of ridicule would deter him from taking his part, even when for a moment the fountain of youthfulness gushed forth, and impelled him to find rest in activity. So the impulse would pass away, and he would relapse into his former quiescence. But this partial isolation ministered to the growth of a love of Nature ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... impression on the appearance of this singular document was surprise; the next, of course, was ridicule. The man must have utterly lost his senses. He has been for some months playing the most fantastic tricks in his capital: cutting off people's beards if they happen to displease his taste as a barber, cutting off coat-skirts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... life and all the works of Cervantes, but chiefly of his Don Quixote. The ridicule of knight errantry shewn to have been but a secondary object in the mind of the author, and not the principal cause of the delight which the work continues to give to all nations, and under all the revolutions of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... school of (so-called) philosophy still meets at Concord in July—the last survival of the speculative ignorance of the dark ages, and the worship of Greek literature. The copious ridicule of the press has no effect upon this serious gathering. Its verbose platitudes and pretentious inanities continue to be repeated, furnishing almost as good an antithesis to science and philosophy as Mrs. Eddy and her disciples. There is no lack of fluency and ingenuity ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... distinguishes a man from the present crowd,—in short, the only life for which a young man should even think of resigning his bachelor blessings. Thus established, the Comte de Manerville may advise his epoch, place himself above the world, and be nothing less than a minister or an ambassador. Ridicule can never touch him; he has gained the social advantages of marriage while keeping all the privileges of ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... witnessed, you have to confess. But some of you carry your Christianity in secret, and button your coats over the cockade that should tell whose soldiers you are, and are ashamed, or too shy, or too nervous, or too afraid of ridicule, or not sufficiently sure of your own grip of the Master, to confess Him before men. I beseech you remember that a Christian man is no Christian unless 'with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,' as well as 'with the heart' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... ostentation, every enormity on good taste, was followed with ceaseless vigilance. Excesses that would have startled the most thoughtless were pursued with restless activity; absurdities that drew forth a shout of ridicule were committed with provoking good humor. No freak seemed exuberant, no folly preposterous, no extremity extravagance. The joy of paternity, sinking deep into his nature, made every peculiarity more glaringly apparent. Money had been his idol, its accumulation the summit of his ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... continue to make sounds of some kind, and the Lord will make a language of it." It was not necessary that the words should be understood by the congregation; some other Mormon would undertake their interpretation. Much ridicule was incurred by the church because of this kind of revelation. Gunnison relates that when a woman "speaking in tongues" pronounced "meliar, meli, melee," it was at once translated by a young wag, "my leg, my thigh, my knee," and, when he was ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... and portrayed this common national power has been the saving of the principal French historians, notably of Michelet. It has furnished them with the key by which alone the history of their country could be made plain. Nothing is easier than to ridicule or deny so mystical a thing. Taine, by temperament intensely anti-national, ridiculed it as he ridiculed the mysteries of the Faith; but with this consequence, that his denial made it impossible for him to write the history of his country, and compelled ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... laughter and of fun, which, had it been published and explained in Locke's lifetime, would have tainted his whole philosophy with suspicion. It relates to the Aristotelian doctrine of syllogism, which Locke undertook to ridicule. Now, a flaw, a hideous flaw, in the soi-disant detecter of flaws, a ridicule in the exposer of the ridiculous—that is fatal; and I am surprised that Lee, who wrote a folio against Locke in his lifetime, and other examiners, should have failed in detecting this. I shall expose ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... would hurt Irene Lepelletier's amour propre to make herself conspicuous, to be held up to ridicule or blame. She does not care for marriage; her position is infinitely more delightful in its variety. She can make a world of her own without being accountable to any one, but she has come perilously near to loving Floyd Grandon, when she considered love no longer a temptation, had dismissed ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... unless they are also remunerative; where public applause is the meed of cricketers, hostile guerillas, clamorous authors, yacht-racing grocers, and hopelessly incapable generals, and where suspicion and ridicule are the lot of every man working hard and living hard for any end beyond a cabman's understanding; in this world-wide Empire whose Government is entrusted as a matter of course to peers and denied as a matter of course to any man of humble ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... que vous croyez en Dieu. N'allez pas dans vos vers en consigner l'aveu; Craignez le ridicule, et respectez vos maitres. Croire en Dieu fut un tort permis a nos ancetres. Mais dans notre age! Allons, il faut vous corriger Et suivre votre siecle, au lieu de ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... passed and March came and the clay feet that Amory looked for failed to appear. About a hundred juniors and seniors resigned from their clubs in a final fury of righteousness, and the clubs in helplessness turned upon Burne their finest weapon: ridicule. Every one who knew him liked him—but what he stood for (and he began to stand for more all the time) came under the lash of many tongues, until a frailer man than he would have ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... who acted as department spokesman, accepted. During the (p. 307) inquiry, which Evans estimated was attended by 180 persons, little attention was given to Randolph's civil disobedience pledge, but Evans himself came in for considerable ridicule, and there were headlines aplenty in the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... sharp, corroding ridicule. The comedy of the Greeks ridiculed everything,—persons, characters, opinions, customs, and sometimes philosophy and religion. Comedy became, therefore, a sort of consecrated slander, lyric spite, aesthetical buffoonery. Comedy makes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... cases to which the reason of them does not extend. I need not look for a proof beyond the case before us. What is the reason on which this proverbial observation is founded? No man will subject himself to the ridicule of pretending that any natural connection subsists between the sun or the seasons, and the period within which human virtue can bear the temptations of power. Happily for mankind, liberty is not, in this respect, confined ...
— The Federalist Papers
... highly-wrought imaginative temperament. He had not heard more than those few words, but his mind was quick to take in the whole situation. He could hear the lengthy speeches of ridicule and sarcasm aimed at him from every possible standpoint, and he felt the more determined to live down the scathing thoughts. The man did not hear the reply by Marguerite Verne to her arrogant sister, but he calmly ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... observed, that drollery and ridicule is the most easy kind of wit: let it be added that contempt and arrogance is the easiest philosophy. To find some objection to every thing, and to dissolve in perpetual laziness under pretence that occasions are wanting to call forth activity, to laugh at ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the tithe or tenth part of the treasure is due to the sovereign. He was treated as a visionary, and the matter of treasure was regarded as an unheard-of thing. In the mean time, he laughed at the anticipated ridicule, and asked me if I would go halves with him. I did not hesitate a moment to accept this offer; but I was much surprised to find there were some little earthen pots full of gold pieces, all these pieces finer than the ducats of the fourteenth and ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... individually and collectively left in the lurch. After this initial shot, everybody considered himself at liberty to let off his rusty old blunderbuss, and there was a constant peppering. But my veil never lowered its colors nor curtailed its resources. Alas! what ridicule and contumely failed to effect, destiny accomplished. Softness and plenitude are no shields ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... that I would not touch the stolen property. I keep these tongs for such occasions. And thus I thrive in the fear of God, and manage to turn an honest penny." You talk of morality. What can be more immoral than to bring ridicule on the very name of morality, by drawing distinctions where there are no differences? Is it not enough that this dishonest casuistry has already poisoned our theology? Is it not enough that a set of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... handling such people, in that his civilized inhibitions restrain him from pushing them off the cliffs or entombing them in a crevasse. I was too small to do them physical violence anyway, so I had to resort to more subtle weapons, the most effective being ridicule. If a joke could be turned on the disturber he generally subsided. The rest of the crowd were profuse in their expressions of gratitude to me for such ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... I'm called.' The man's face was an unhappy one, and he seemed to be the butt of his comrades, for they poured forth such a volley of good-natured ridicule on his appearance that Teddy looked from one to the ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre |
