"Ridicule" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it saves him from many superstitions, and his silence has won for him a higher name for virtue than his conduct justifies. The faults of the dog are many. He is vainer than man, singularly greedy of notice, singularly intolerant of ridicule, suspicious like the deaf, jealous to the degree of frenzy, and radically devoid of truth. The day of an intelligent small dog is passed in the manufacture and the laborious communication of falsehood; he lies with his tail, he lies with his eye, he lies with his protesting paw; and when ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... let him finish, for a roar of laughter shook the table from one end to the other; while Sparks, horror-struck at the lack of feeling and propriety that could make men treat such a matter with ridicule, glared ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... fortunate for the social welfare of community that all its actions should not be sublime. Mankind would become too serious and morose and cynical, and life would be a burden. The ridiculous makes it enjoyable, but at the expense of those who cause the ridicule. Man must laugh, no matter what the cost to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... Several bishops joined the party of the seceders, and already the towns throughout Hungary had generally declared for the Reformation; in many the "Catholic priests were left, as shepherds without flocks."[15] When Popish ceremonies aroused the ridicule of the people, and when even in country districts the priests who came to demand their tithes were dismissed without their "fat ducks and geese," there was a general outcry against the new heresy. The Romish party knew their strength at the Court of Vienna. At the instigation of the ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... their state and grandeur to uphold the same opinion. It has been continued down to our time; and the practice was first dropped by the present royal family, who observed that it could no longer give amazement even to the populace, and was attended with ridicule in the eyes of all ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... works of His hand: their thoughts, therefore, naturally reverted to another home, compared with which this world is indeed a cold, lonely wilderness; but on such subjects they feared to converse, partly from a dread of the ridicule of reckless companions, partly from ignorance of each other's feelings on religious matters, and although their minds were busy, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... to talk in a sing-song, or whiny voice, with a pathetic drawl, or through their noses, when they have to speak on religious subjects! I once heard an indignant clergyman say that he thought it was a device of the devil to turn sacred things into ridicule, but I cannot agree with that. It seems to me that men are often too ready to saddle Satan with evil devices which they ought to fix on their own stupid shoulders. Captain Bream simply talks when he preaches; just as if he were talking on any business matter of great importance, and he does ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... of heightened speech, half declamatory, half musical. A multitude cringed before upraised knouts and fell on its knees before the approach of a man whose agents swung the knotted cords; anon they acclaimed the man who sought to usurp a throne and overwhelmed with ridicule a village imbecile, who was yet supposed because of his mental weakness to be possessed of miraculous prescience, and therefore to have a prevision of what was to follow the usurpation. They saw the incidents ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of the Romans. Tiberius, jealous of the fame which might be acquired by his generals, made this advice of Augustus a pretence for his inactivity [k]. The mad sallies of Caligula, in which he menaced Britain with an invasion, served only to expose himself and the empire to ridicule: and the Britons had now, during almost a century, enjoyed their liberty unmolested; when the Romans, in the reign of Claudius began to think seriously of reducing them under their dominion. Without seeking any more justifiable ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... stag-horn branches start 520 Out of its leafy brow, the more to awe The younger brethren of the grove. But some— While he forewarns, denounces, launches forth, Against all systems built on abstract rights, Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims 525 Of Institutes and Laws, hallowed by time; Declares the vital power of social ties Endeared by Custom; and with high disdain, Exploding upstart Theory, insists Upon the allegiance to which ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... you are, Berkeley, I am quite aware that when you have once made up your mind to do a thing which your ideas of honor and justice require you to do, argument and reason are (for the time being,) wasted upon you—yes, and ridicule; persuasion, supplication, and command ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... admirer of her poetry, I felt flattered, at finding that Lord Byron fully sympathized with my admiration. He has, or at least expresses a strong dislike to the Lake school of poets, never mentions them except in ridicule, and he and I nearly quarrelled to-day because I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... subject of Re-action. In the meantime Rhoetus, a young Titan, whispered to one of his companions, that for his part he was convinced that the only way to beat the Olympians was to turn them into ridicule; and that he would accordingly commence at once with the pasquinade on the private life of Jupiter, and some peculiarly delicate criticisms on the characters ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... conflict helped forward their cause. Ulrich von Hutten, one of the young knights who belonged to the literary school, and others of the same class, made effective use, against their illiterate antagonists, of the weapons of satire and ridicule. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... one imagines that the pair could not escape ridicule in Paris, where nothing is respected, he cannot know that city. When Schmucke and Pons united their riches and poverty, they hit upon the economical expedient of lodging together, each paying half the rent of the very unequally divided second-floor of a house in the Rue de Normandie in the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... interpretation on which it is pretended. I confess, had I been in Luther's place, I would not have rested so much of my quarrel with the Papists on this point; nor can I agree with our Arminian divines in their ridicule of Transubstantiation. The most rational doctrine is perhaps, for some purposes, at least, the 'rem credimus, modum nescimus'; next to that, the doctrine of the Sacramentaries, that it is 'signum sub ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands helpless, dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boisterous welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black, from ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... nothing could have been more difficult. Italian authorities, and English authorities who had interest with them, alike assured the Englishman that his object was hopeless. He met with nothing but evasion, refusal, and ridicule. His political prisoner became a joke in the place. It was especially observable that English Circumlocution, and English Society on its travels, were as humorous on the subject as Circumlocution and Society may be on any subject without loss of caste. But, the Englishman possessed ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... fruitless search, he was tired of playing the dupe, so giving up the business he returned to Porto Rico on the 5th of October, leaving Perez de Ortubia and the pilot Antonio de Alaminos to continue the search. Pere Charlevoix says, "He was the object of great ridicule when he returned in much suffering, and looking older than ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... proceeded to an angry pamphlet against the Encyclopaedists and the fury for innovation. Then he achieved immense vogue among fine ladies, bishops, and the lighter heads of the town, by the comedy in which he held Diderot, D'Alembert, and the others, up to hatred and ridicule. Finally, after coming to look upon himself as a serious personage, he disappeared into the mire of half-oblivious contempt and disgust that happily awaits all the poor Palissots and all their works. His name only survives in connection with ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... with great erudition from profane history that its events are posterior, and the heathen sages and historians younger than that divine lawgiver, from whom they all borrowed many things. In the second, he compares the sacred history of the creation, which Julian had pretended to ridicule, with the puerilities and absurdities of Pythagoras, Thales, Plato, &c., of whom Julian was an admirer to a degree of folly. In the third, he vindicates the history of the Serpent, and of Adam's fall; and retorts the ridiculous Theogony of Hesiod, &c. In the fourth, he shows that ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... say in censure or ridicule of the luckless Madame Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled merrily, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... very late coming down," he began and paused, probably to tempt me into some ridicule of such a ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... plodding and undramatic notes arouse in Germany a feeling very different from one of ridicule. The resentful respect for our notes is there admirably summed up by a member of the Reichstag who to the correspondent of the United Press exclaimed bitterly: 'Our present navy is held in a net ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... meeting such as we have here tonight. Here, I feel happy in being permitted to meet my neighbors and grateful for the opportunity to give such publicity as I can to the accomplishments of the little people who for centuries were held in a bondage of ridicule and derision, but who now, by industry and mental accomplishments, stand side by side with all who seek to make this a ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... to do was to teach me writing, and I was placed amongst children of five and six years, who did not fail to turn me into ridicule on account ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... carrying out Nipen's cake; and M. Kollsen, from his seat, declared that he could not countenance any superstitious observances,—would not indeed permit any so gross as this in his presence. He requested that the company might have the benefit of the cake, and made a speech in ridicule of all spirits and fairies so very bold and contemptuous, that all present who had to go home that night looked in consternation at their host. If such language as M. Kollsen's were allowed, they looked for nothing ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... protected. In other instances, while professing a willingness to hear—to seek truth—to not be afraid of the light—to boast of science even as the handmaid of religion—they have shown a disposition to decry the alleged discoveries of science, to ridicule its supposed facts, to make light of a whole concatenation of evidence, to prate of the uncertainties and vacillations of science, to sneer at 'sciolists,' or 'mere men of science,' to warn against the 'babblings of science' and 'philosophy falsely so called,' ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Madrid—who has been in this country but one year, and before coming here was only a common soldier—has a third company. I do not mention many others—alferezes and sergeants who are immature boys—at whom all laugh, and who would better be in school than occupying such offices. They are the ridicule and plaything of the soldiers; for the latter see in them no other valor or sufficiency than to be relatives of the auditors or fiscal. The same is true of other honorable and advantageous posts. Mateo de Heredia is alcalde-mayor of La Pampanga. He is the son-in-law of Licentiate Almacan, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... was a character; his eccentricities were three—a humorist, a glutton and an honest man; traits that often caused astonishment and ridicule, especially ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... am not afraid. I have hay the white man will pay me for. If I go, he will not pay me. If I had a father, I would not leave him." He spoke pleadingly, and his prophet bore him down by ridicule. Two Whistles believed, but he did not want to lose the money the agent was to pay for his hay. And so, not so much because he believed as because he was afraid, he resigned ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... would meet your approbation. I found it strongly the sentiment of West, Copely, Trumbull, and Brown, in London; after which it would be ridiculous to add, that it was my own. I think a modern in an antique dress, as just an object of ridicule, as a Hercules or Marius with a periwig ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... that hour. It was perhaps a pity. Had he but talked - talked freely - let himself gush out in words (the way youth loves to do and should), there might have been no tale to write upon the Weirs of Hermiston. But the shadow of a threat of ridicule sufficed; in the slight tartness of these words he read a prohibition; and it is likely that Glenalmond ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to hold up to ridicule the rites of that religion in which I was born and bred. Neither would I disparage its ancient usages, nor its far more modern laws. All religions, as I know, have their peculiarities, all nations their contradictions, but I must be suffered to complain ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the dignity of Eaglenose; and so she had, yet it happened that the dignity of Eaglenose escaped, because it was shielded by a buckler of fun so thick that it could not easily be pierced by shafts of ridicule. ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... contented himself with a kind, or even an unkind word. Incidentally, we learn that he was married; but he devoted his whole life to "deeds of heroism" in honour of his lady. Not the great book of Cervantes, as is commonly believed, held up mediaeval court life to ridicule and destroyed it as an ideal, but the life and exploits of this knight and minnesinger. The same spirit animated Guilhem of Balaun. At the command of his lady he had a finger-nail extracted and sent to her, after which he ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... the next train home to St. Louis, and told the story to his parents. His father was inclined to ridicule him, but his mother nearly fainted. When she could control herself, she said that, unknown to any one, she had accidentally scratched the face of the dead, apparently with the pin of her brooch, while arranging ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... she brought back Jemima, and erected another doll as Miss Jemmy: for though that honest creature had made and given her jelly and cake enough for three children, and a seven-shilling piece at parting, the girl's sense of ridicule was far stronger than her gratitude, and she sacrificed Miss Jemmy quite as pitilessly as ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... controversy involved personal odium and the certainty of social ostracism. It also involved, what is often more fatal to a man's courage and constancy, the sneer and the personal animosity, as well as ridicule, of a powerful party whose right to supremacy is questioned, and whose monopoly of what is common property is in danger of being destroyed. Although Dr. Ryerson was a gentleman by birth, and the son of a British officer ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... me to assure her, that neither Mr. Greville, nor Mr. Fenwick, might be the man. They both took upon them, she said, to ridicule her brother for the profound respect, even to reverence, that he bore me; which, if he knew, might be attended with consequences: for that her brother, mild and gentle as was his passion for me, had courage to resent any indignities ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... volume require some explanation of an historical nature. It is scarcely realised by the present generation that Wilde's works on their first appearance, with the exception of De Profundis, were met with almost general condemnation and ridicule. The plays on their first production were grudgingly praised because their obvious success could not be ignored; but on their subsequent publication in book form they were violently assailed. That nearly all of them have held the stage ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... upon the bundle; astonishment, anger, and self-ridicule made an emotion too strong to stand under. So this was all his Machiavellian scheming had achieved—to bring about the very marriage it was meant to avert! He had dug a pit and fallen into it himself. All this would indeed amuse Rozenoffski and Leopold Barstein. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... and how Mistress Lucy Walters had been secretly married to the King, before ever poor Queen Catherine had been heard of; and the proofs of all this, it was reported, were in a certain Black Box that no one had ever set eyes on; and the matter became so much a thing of ridicule that once at the play, I think, when one of the actors carried on a black box, there was a roar of laughter and jeering from ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... very well, of the art of the great men who had made Barbizon rememberable. And the light tone of banter in which she now admitted her failure seemed to Morton to be just the tone which she should adopt, and her ridicule of the impressionists and, above all, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... intellects, of 'illuminations' obscurer than any darkness, of religious rapture, in its ambitious distrust of reason, lapsing into physical agencies and coarse materialism. They could hold up, in ridicule or warning, profuse illustrations of exorbitant spiritual pride, blind credulity, infatuated self-deceit, barefaced imposture. It was much more congenial to the prevalent temper of the age to draw ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... house of God, and their deportment during the performance of divine service. On one occasion the missionaries remark, "We no longer see bold, undaunted heathen sitting before us, with defiance or ridicule in their looks; but people expecting, a blessing, desirous to experience the power of the word of life, shedding tears of repentance, and their whole appearance ...
— Dangers on the Ice Off the Coast of Labrador • Anonymous
... concerned, the Alighieri, the Portinari, the Bardi. "If the statement was false," argues Dr. Edward Moore, England's foremost Dantian scholar, "it must have been so glaring and palpable that its assertion could only have covered Boccaccio with ridicule." The second authority for the statement that Beatrice Portinari had a real existence and was the object of Dante's love is furnished by Dante's own son Pietro, who wrote a commentary on the Divine Comedy nineteen years after ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... mildly objected already to certain words; but 'exquisite' seemed to her silly; it seemed out of place; she considered that it would merely bring ridicule on her shop. 'Exquisite' written upon a window-ticket! No! What would John Baines have thought ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... days he learned to smile when he was angry, to speak pleasantly while curses were burning on his lips. He was careful not to betray by look, word, or deed what was passing in his mind, as he feared the ridicule that would ensue should he fail to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... first glance from her eyes they became statues of propriety, but she felt their ridicule, and catching the giggles of laughter which followed her retreat blushed over cheek and neck ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... meaning of it all? Who knows anything about it? How is a man to live by listening to such trash as this?" It is thus that Cicero means to be understood. I will agree that Cicero does not often speak out so clearly as he does here, turning the whole thing into ridicule. He does generally find it well to say something in praise of these philosophers. He does not quite declare the fact that nothing is to be made of them; or, rather, there is existing in it all an under feeling that, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... himself a merciless critic of fatuity; he had a faculty of shrewd observation, plenty of caustic common sense. Yet the position into which he had drifted threatened him with ridiculous extremes of self-consciousness. Even in his personal carriage, he was not quite safe against ridicule; and he felt it. This ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... differently; and it was their conduct which induced me to apply myself and encouraged me to exertion. I believe that many a boy, who, if properly patronized, would turn out well, is, by the injudicious system of browbeating and ridicule, forced into the wrong path, and, in his despair, throws away all self-confidence, and allows himself to be carried away by the stream to perdition. O'Brien was not very partial to reading himself. He ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... the war-fever swept down his beautiful valley, and the drum called the young men from villages and farms, this ancient yeoman and miller—for he was both—took a musket at the sprightly age of sixty-five, and joined a Volunteer company. Neither ridicule nor entreaty could bend his purpose; but the Secretary of War, hearing of the case, conferred a brigade quartermastership upon him. He threw off the infirmities of age, stepped as proudly as any youngster, and became, emphatically, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... guards so cautiously against any practical application of that principle, and battles so vigorously against the error which assimilated the witches of modern times to the witches of Scripture, and, denying the validity of the confessions of those convicted, throws such discredit and ridicule upon the whole system, that the popular belief cannot but have received a severe shock from the publication of his work.[18] By an extraordinary elevation of good sense, he managed, not only to see through the absurdities of witchcraft, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... over him, he has sobbed and wept like a child. These feelings returned at length so often and so powerfully, that he felt to resist them was even more difficult and painful than to break from the flowery chains which his gay companions had woven round him. He declared his resolution; he resisted ridicule and persuasion. Almost for the first time in his life he remained steadily firm, and when he had indeed succeeded, and found himself some distance from the scenes of luxurious pleasure, he felt himself suddenly endowed with an elasticity of spirit, which he had not experienced for many a long ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... screen at the altar, and whether she has been always tenaciously exclusive in teaching, worship and organisation. Who of us and of you asks about the integrity of the Christian spirit? If St Paul were amongst us he would ridicule our controversies on Filioque and all the trifles concerning Church organisation and the external expressions of Christianity. He would ask: What happened with the spirit he preached? What happened with this spirit ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... presence of the necessity of granting that bread of falsehood which poor humanity requires in order to be happy? Doubtless, he begged the pardon of Heaven for allowing it to be mixed up in what he regarded as childish pastime, for exposing it to ridicule in connection with an affair in which there was only sickliness and dementia. But his flock suffered so much, hungered so ravenously for the marvellous, for fairy stories with which to lull the pains of life. And thus, in tears, the Bishop at last ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... when Lady Nuneham, mentioned one morning having had an agitating dream, but was met with ridicule. Later in the day Lord Harcourt—her husband's father—was missing. She exclaimed, "Look in the well," and fainted away. He was found there with a dog, which he ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... began to seize upon his mind; the preceding adventures of the night, the unexpected appearance of the crowd, the torches, the confused din and the hush that followed, the spectre of his kinsman reviled by that great multitude,—all this, and, more than all, a perception of tremendous ridicule in the whole scene, affected him with a sort of mental inebriety. At that moment a voice of sluggish merriment saluted Robin's ears; he turned instinctively, and just behind the corner of the church stood the lantern-bearer, rubbing his eyes, and drowsily enjoying the lad's ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at ridicule served to bring me into general notice. I soon found that, by reason of them, and without merit or effort of my own, I had become known throughout the whole country as "the Colored Professor." I had a status. The lady being the daughter of a highly respectable minister, she also ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... French—only French; and for Frederick, an intimate companionship with Voltaire was his supreme desire. But a closer view of the witty, cynical Frenchman wrought a wonderful change. The finely pointed shafts of ridicule when aimed at himself were not so entertaining. And his guest, no longer persona grata, was escorted over the ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... concluded, I glanced at the clock, and determined to devote the remainder of the evening to a little private investigation of my own. From Nayland Smith I had preserved the matter a secret, largely because I feared his ridicule; but I had by no means forgotten that I had seen, or had strongly imagined that I had seen, Karamaneh—that beautiful anomaly, who (in modern London) asserted herself to be a slave—in the shop of an antique dealer not a hundred yards from ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... than her mother. She is the incarnation of haughty highmindedness, raging with the impatience of an impetuous, dominative character paralyzed by the impotence of her youth, and unwillingly disciplined by the constant danger of ridicule from her lighter-handed juniors. Unlike her mother, she is all passion; and the conflict of her passion with her obstinate pride and intense fastidiousness results in a freezing coldness of manner. In an ugly woman all this would be ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... unto this day. I got by heart, not as a task, but almost without intending it, the passages with which I was most pleased, and used to recite them aloud, both when alone and to others—more willingly, however, in my hours of solitude, for I had observed some auditors smile, and I dreaded ridicule at that time of life more than I ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... knew the cheat, he was much displeased; and as Romulus was casting up a ditch, where he designed the foundation of the city wall, he turned some pieces of the work to ridicule, and obstructed others: at last, as he was in contempt leaping over it, some say Romulus himself struck him, others Celer, one of his companions; he fell, however, and in the scuffle Faustulus also was slain, and Plistinus, who, being Faustulus's brother, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... moment. Yet, singular as it may seem, neither conflicted with the other. My enjoyment of the visions was complete and absolute, undisturbed by the faintest doubt of their reality, while, in some other chamber of my brain, Reason sat coolly watching them, and heaping the liveliest ridicule on their fantastic features. One set of nerves was thrilled with the bliss of the gods, while another was convulsed with unquenchable laughter at that very bliss. My highest ecstacies could not bear down and silence the weight ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... Union, said the Tribune, "his pointed utterances have everywhere fired the hearts of patriots." Freedom from the blighting influence of slavery seemed to give him easier flight, and his criticism of the Democratic convention was so felicitous, so full of story and wit and ridicule and the fire of genuine patriotism, that his name was quickly upon every lip, and his happy, homely hits the common property of half the people of the State.[798] The mention of his name for attorney-general, therefore, evoked the most enthusiastic applause. Since ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... a pretty fair subject for ridicule: it seems rather too absurd to teach a bee anything! Nevertheless, it is worth while to think of it a little. Most of us know that by injudicious training, horses, cattle, dogs, &c., may be rendered extremely ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... institution as well as pleasant recreation. Some of the foremost English journals, who devote columns of their best narrative talent to record a horse race, a Scottish highland wrestle, or hideous prize fight with all their accompaniments of vice and brutality, may surely well spare the ridicule and contempt with which they visit the pleasant Welsh eisteddfod. Their shafts, howsoever they may irritate for the time, ought surely not to lower the Welshman's estimate of his eisteddfod, seeing the antiquity of its origin, the praiseworthiness ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... knew that undeceiving fate Would shame us whom he served unsought; He knew that he must wince and wait— The jest of those for whom he fought; He knew devoutly what he thought Of us and of our ridicule; He knew that we must all be taught Like little children ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... qui m'a tombe sous la main m'a toujours revolte par l'emphase ridicule de l'eloge, ou par l'impudeur du blame. II semble que cette nature d'hommes ait toujours ote la raison a ses amis et a ses ennemis. Je voudrais leur consacrer dix annees d'etudes, ne fut ce que pour mon plaisir propre; mais ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... than rumours, which, 'pon my honour, I can hardly credit. One is that Bonaparte's valet has written to say the ex-Emperor is becoming imbecile, and is an object of ridicule to the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... else too dull to understand that he was being made a mark for ridicule, continued to advance upon Butts, who retreated, a look of ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... Which: The said Eleanor Owen agrees never so to comport herself that by word or conduct will she bring ridicule.... dishonor ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... "Aha! Where are thine eyes that thou takest that for water?" Then her eyes were opened, and she saw that she was standing with her clothes lifted up in the middle of a field that was blue with the flowers of blue flax. Then all the people saw it likewise, and chased her away with ridicule and laughter. ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... trap, escaped with the loss of his "brush." Henceforth, feeling his life a burden from the shame and ridicule to which he was exposed, he schemed to bring all the other Foxes into a like condition with himself. He publicly advised them to cut off their tails, saying "that they would not only look much better without them, but that they would get rid of the weight of the brush." ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... of state were concerned, the volatile youth either totally neglected them or treated them with a ridicule that was worse than neglect. Drunk two-thirds of his time, he now dismissed the most serious matters with a rude jest, now met his councillors with brutal fits of rage. The Germans deemed him a fool, and were not far amiss in their opinion; but as he did not meddle ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... is this which renders them incapable of graduating a scale by which to measure themselves. Hence arises that over weening complacency and self-esteem, both national and individual, which at once renders them so extremely obnoxious to ridicule, and so ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... emotions until at last, clenching my hands, I determined I would go on and persevere in the adventure at all hazards; though I must confess I came to this final decision more from pride and fear of ridicule ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Dutch," said he, "have been held up to ridicule because they refused to establish a town until they found a place where dykes had to be built to keep out the sea, though there were plenty of dry places available. These settlers are acting just as ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... Whether you give or refuse your mite to a collection, do so with a polite bow, and never upon any account push or press forward in the house of God, or shew by your manner that you hold in contempt any unaccustomed ceremony you may happen to witness. Never in conversation ridicule or abuse any form of belief; it grieves the sincerely pious, gives rise to the expression of angry feeling in those more fanatical or prejudiced, and offends even the sceptic as a breach of good manners in any one—but in a woman peculiarly disgusting—even when the listeners are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... which had walked with such power among men, was exorcised by the pen of Cervantes. He did but clothe it with the name and images of Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful Squire, and ridicule destroyed what argument could ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... to intensify a peculiar subdued form of laughter through the nose, in hopeless ridicule of a Frenchman's notions of an Englishman's occupations—presumed across Channel to allow of his breaking loose from shooting engagements at a minute's notice, to rush off to a fetid foreign city notorious for mud and mosquitoes, and commence capering and grimacing, pouring forth a jugful ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... embarrassed, and does not free himself from the apprehension that he may expose some weak point to a professional, or he falls into the other extreme—he becomes presumptuous, steps forth as a reformer, and, if he accomplishes nothing, or earns only ridicule, he sets himself down as an unrecognized martyr by ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... with good humour. "By my mine honour," he said, "thou hast reason on thy side, good juvenal—nevertheless, I spoke not as in ridicule of the roof which relieves me, but rather in your own praise, to whom, if this roof be native, thou mayst nevertheless rise from its lowliness; even as the lark, which maketh its humble nest in the furrow, ascendeth towards the sun, as well as the eagle which ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... chronological order, which struck forcibly one so familiar with the events themselves. I thought I could show—or rather that my simple narration, of itself, plainly discovered—that some of the young men embarked in that expedition (which founded our Pacific empire), did not merit the ridicule and contempt which Captain THORN attempted to throw upon them, and which perhaps, through the genius of Mr. IRVING, might otherwise remain as a lasting stigma ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... Convention, the officers brought to the bar the foolish creatures who had called him the Son of God. His thin pride and prudish self-respect were unutterably affronted, and he quite understood that the ridicule of the mysticism of Theot was an indirect pleasantry upon his own Supreme Being. He flew to the Committee of Public Safety, angrily reproached them for permitting the prosecution, summoned Fouquier-Tinville, and peremptorily ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... dress and his appearance generally. He was good-natured and obliging, and withal sensible, so that the young men who envied him and might be inclined to call him a fop or a dandy, could not prefix 'brainless' to these epithets and thus ridicule on him. The fact is, he was shrewder than any of them, and he knew it. They soon discovered it, and so did the girls, to the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... The origin of this nickname is traced to a satire written in the reign of Queen Anne, by Dr. Arbuthnot, to throw ridicule on the politics ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... about in moody silence paying no attention to what was going on around them. Some again were always quarrelling, and seemed to take a delight in stirring up others by giving them unpleasant nicknames, or by turning them into ridicule. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Potter's "English violet" order of design Praise, but not of an intemperate sort Praises to whatever seemed genuine Proceeded from unreasoned selfishness to reasoned selfishness Read not so many books, but read a few books often Ridicule to the things considered sham Selfishness Sketches which every artist has, turned face to the wall Some folks mistake vivacity for wit Terrible death to be talked to death True Story Western humor Wife was ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... Olympian or the Capitoline Jupiter." Upon the same subject Mosheim, in his church history, Book I., chapter 1, says that "The wiser part of mankind, about the time of Christ's birth, looked upon the whole system of religion as a just object of contempt and ridicule." ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... this officer, on the score of veracity, has not been of the highest character. After he assumed command in Virginia, his "Order Number Five" drew upon him much ridicule. Probably the story of the capture of ten thousand prisoners, after the occupation of Corinth, has injured him more than all other exaggerations combined. The paternity of that choice bit of romance belongs to General Halleck, instead of General Pope. Colonel Elliott, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... as blackened and hardened from the forge, with a face red and fiery whilst at his work, and tired and heated after it. He is almost always the subject either of pity or ridicule. In short, the great celestial deities seem to have admitted Vulcan among them as great men used to keep buffoons at their tables, to make them laugh, and to be the butt of the ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... that the knights and nobles generally disliked Sir Miles, were encouraged to be very bold and insolent to him in expressing their ill-will, and when the archers came up they were following him with taunts, and ridicule, and abuse, while Sir Miles was making the best of ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... cherish animosities towards seniors in age possessed of superior qualifications, and while the latter, possessed of virtue and merit, used to speak upon proper topics in the midst of assemblies, the former began to ridicule or laugh at them. When reverend seniors in age came, the younger individuals, seated at their ease, refused to adore the former by rising up and saluting them with respect. In the presence of sires, sons began to exercise power (in matters that concerned sires alone). They that were not in receipt ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much of his time on the phenomena of his own body without some regard for it; whereas the reader sees that, so far from looking upon mine with any complacency or regard, I hate it, and make it the object of my bitter ridicule and contempt; and I should not be displeased to know that the last indignities which the law inflicts upon the bodies of the worst malefactors might hereafter fall upon it. And, in testification of my sincerity ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... was continually plied to drink; each pledging me in turn; their intention being, as Hector had declared, to make me free: that is, as drunk as possible. I had not the courage to incur their ridicule by refusing my glass. Beside my spirits were raised, and my appetite, which travelling had increased, was good. My constitution too was strong; for it had been confirmed by exercise and a cheerful mind, and never injured by excess. For these reasons I stood their attacks far beyond their ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... we cannot help identifying with the Supreme Being and the Creator of the world; his ideas and beliefs have, in consequence, been sadly misrepresented, and by certain writers he has been made an object of ridicule. What, for example, could be a more foolish description of Egyptian worship than the following? "Who knows not, O Volusius of Bithynia, the sort of monsters Egypt, in her infatuation, worships. One part venerates the ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... choice, but at the same time I cannot too strongly advise any one who thinks of following my example to hesitate before engaging himself in tasks that entail time, expense, thankless labour, often ridicule, and not seldom great personal danger. To explain, by the application of science, phenomena attributed to spiritual agencies has been the work of my life. I have, naturally, gone through strange difficulties in accomplishing my mission. I propose in these pages ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... I do not ridicule you. You know I love you for what you are doing. Would not I do the same, and fight for him down to my nails if I had ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... however, Trochu will have an opportunity to carry out his famous plan, by which he asserts that he will raise the blockade in fourteen days, and of which he has given the fullest details in his will. Ridicule kills in France—and since this eminent General, as an evidence that he had a plan, appealed to the will which he had deposited with his lawyer, he lost all influence. I need not say that this influence has not been restored by the absurd ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... 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 than to that of York, nothing but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... as to be able to foresee danger and measure it, the more chance there is of his brute courage giving way. The more feeling a man has, the more keen he is to feel pain of body, or pain of mind, such as shame, loneliness, the dislike of ridicule, and the contempt of his fellow-men; in a word, the more of a man he is, the more chance there is of his brute courage breaking down, just when he wants it more to keep him up, and leaving him to play the coward and ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... uncivil to other women. Every woman is her sister, and should be treated with becoming respect and attention. Your special attentions to her in society should not be such as to make her or you the subject of ridicule. Make no public exhibition of ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... his studio full of resolve. His picture must be finished for one of the winter exhibitions. He did not take up his palette, nor did he sit at his piano for more than a few minutes; and when he met Willy he raged against Lizzie, jeered at her vulgarity, heaped ridicule upon her lover, the waiter; he spoke of writing a novel on the subject; he set out her character at length; and was alarmed when told that Maggie was ill. He must win her. She must be his wife. So he told Willy, so ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the subject, conceal their real sentiments, and the "lord" of the family referring this question to his wife, who has heard him sneer or worse than sneer at suffragists for half a lifetime, ought not to expect an answer which she knows will subject her to his censure and ridicule or even ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... the unknown author of a short answer to the Duke of Buckingham's Paper (1685). In hopes of converting him to Roman Catholicism James sent him a priest, but Buckingham turned his arguments into ridicule. He died on the 16th of April 1687, from a chill caught while hunting, in the house of a tenant at Kirkby Moorside in Yorkshire, expressing great repentance and feeling himself "despised by my country and I fear forsaken by my God."[3] The miserable picture ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... magnanimity, and that an earnest, loving Christian charity is the only safe touchstone, and furnishes (if you will tolerate the simile) the only elective affinity in moral chemistry. Because ingots are not dug out of the earth, is it not equally unwise and ungrateful to ridicule and denounce the hopeful, patient, tireless laborers who handle the alloy and ultimately disintegrate the precious metal? Even if the world were bankrupt in morality and religion—which, thank God, it is not—one ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... for special purposes of good, and in all probability to make men without the least intervention of will or reason, moral guides and instructers to each other. It is allowed by the soundest philosophers that ridicule has a much better effect in curing the vices and imperfections of men, than the most illustrious examples of rigid virtue, whose duties are so sublimed that they rather intimidate the greater part of mankind from the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... to revitalize the materials and methods of the romances Mrs. Haywood was but following the lead of the French romancieres, who had successfully invaded the field of prose fiction when the passing of the precieuse fashion and Boileau's influential ridicule[1] had discredited the romance in the eyes of writers with classical predilections. Mme de La Fayette far outshines her rivals, but a host of obscure women, headed by Hortense Desjardins, better known as Mme de Villedieu, hastened to supply the popular demand for romantic stories. In ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... fool who seeks a poet's fame Must look for ridicule and blame, Like tiptoe dwarf who fain would try To pluck the fruit ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... account of her particular attachment to a certain abbot of Soro, who was her spiritual director. It is, however, true, that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were not all employed about the care of her soul. Afterward, to ridicule her yet more, King Albert sent her a hone to sharpen her needles, and swore not to put on his nightcap until she had yielded to him. But under perilous circumstances Margaret was never at a loss how to act. She acted here with the utmost prudence, trying first to gain the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... are not to hold me up for ridicule. The preacher is the preacher and the theatre is the theatre. One need not weep in order to be saved. One must have faith, and then one is sure to ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... mind of the new case-keeper there was but one thought—Roy must be broken. Humiliation, disgrace, ruin, ridicule were to be his. If he should be downed, discredited, and discouraged, then, perhaps, he would turn to her as he had in the by-gone days. He was slipping away from her—this was her last chance. She began her duties easily, and her alertness stimulated Bronco till his senses, too, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... century B.C.; directed the shafts of his wit, which were very keen, against all of whatever rank who sought in any way to alter, and, as it was presumed, amend, the religious, philosophical, social, political, or literary creed and practice of the country, and held up to ridicule such men as Socrates and Euripides, as well as Cleon the tanner; wrote 54 plays, of which 11 have come down to us; of these the "Clouds" aim at Socrates, the "Acharnians" and the "Frogs" at Euripides, and the "Knights" at Cleon; d. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to bring them to the light of publicity, for fear of sharing the fate of our master, Copernicus, who, although he has earned immortal fame with some, yet with very many (so great is the number of fools) has become an object of ridicule and scorn. I should certainly venture to publish my speculations if there were more people like you. But this not being the case, I ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... scornful looks directed to him from the eyes of many who until that day had called themselves his friends. He had neither eyes, ears, nor understanding, for any creature but the one who had braved the ridicule of the court, and the displeasure of its sovereign, to show her sympathy with a man in adversity. He must—he WOULD see her again! He must thank her for her magnanimity, let the consequences ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach |
