"Sardonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sardonic laugh.—"Thou hast broke thy lance on me fairly, Oliver; and by Our Lady thou art right, for I defied thee to it. But, prithee, tell me in sadness, dost thou discover anything in these measures towards us which may argue ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... mist of the sea and the rain. It was altogether a bright and beautiful world he had got into, and there was in it but one woman, beautiful beyond his dreams. To doubt her was to doubt all women. When he looked at her he forgot the caution and distrust and sardonic self-complacency his southern training had given him. He believed, and the world seemed to be filled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... and beneath our feet, and to right and left, were great valleys—not smiling like our English vales, where sunlight runs through shadows like laughter through tears, but vast uncultivated gaps that grinned in sardonic silence at conqueror and conquered, as though to remind us that we were but puppets in a passing show. Kopjes and valleys may have looked upon many a grim page in war's history. Savage chiefs, backed by savage hordes, have swept across them many a time and oft. Possibly, if the rocks ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... "I hope Miss Bellingham is not ill," I said with a sudden anxiety that elicited a sardonic smile ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... of yawning and stretching; their eyes closed, their legs gave way and they seemed to suffocate. In vain did musical glasses and harmonicas resound, the piano and voices re-echo; these supposed aids only seemed to increase the patients' convulsive movements. Sardonic laughter, piteous moans and torrents of tears burst forth on all sides. The bodies were thrown back in spasmodic jerks, the respirations sounded like death rattles, the most terrifying symptoms were exhibited. Then suddenly the actors of this strange ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... all cases they have been treated with much respect, and their labour has been repaid with the most sincere marks of gratitude. But I never met with very warm support in carrying on this object, but was often exposed to some sarcastical insinuations or sardonic smiles from those who thought the attempt to ameliorate the condition of the ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... of hostiles. The lives of all the French and Hurons hung by a thread. Ragueneau had been the spiritual guide of the murdered tribe for twenty years; and he was now sobbing like a child. The Iroquois regarded his grief with sardonic scorn; but they misjudged the manhood below the old priest's tears. Ragueneau asked leave to speak. They grunted permission. Springing up, he broke into impassioned, fearless reproaches of the Iroquois for their treachery. Casting ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... light up as in a flash some of the fundamental things of life. I met a man in the town road whom I have come to know rather more than slightly. He is a man of education and has been "well-off" in the country sense, is still, so far as I know, but he has a sardonic outlook upon life. He is discouraged about human nature. Thinks that politics are rotten, and that the prices of potatoes and bread are disgraceful. The state of the nation, and of the world, is ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... suggestion of walking he glanced at her close-fitting dress, and a sardonic grin slightly twitched the corners of his mouth as he dryly answered, "It is thirty miles one way and twenty the ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... powder of stramonium, that grips the lungs like an asthma; and quinia, that shakes its victims like the cold hand of the miasma of the Pontine marshes. The essence of poppies, ten times sublimated, a few grains of which bring on the stupor of apoplexy; and the sardonic plant, that kills its victim with the frightful laughter of madness on ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... contempt and the laugh of exultation and triumph are of a different character. I cannot now discuss them further than to say that they are either genuine or pretended assertions of joy in one's own superior vitality or other superiority. The "sardonic smile" and "sardonic laughter" have been supposed by some learned men to refer to the smiles of the ancient Sardinians when stoning their aged parents. But they have no more to do with Sardinians than they have with sardines or sardonyx. The word "sardonic" is related ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... adverse argument. He belonged to the fierce class of anti-slavery men who were inspired by humane sympathy with the slave and righteous abhorrence of slavery, but also by hatred of the slaveholder. What he himself seemed to enjoy most in his talk was his sardonic humor, which he made play upon men and things like lurid freaks of lightning. He shot out such sallies with a fearfully serious mien, or at least he accompanied them with a grim smile which was not at all like Abraham Lincoln's hearty ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... something of a man of the world. His wife was a woman of great nobility of character and also of considerable mental power. She combined the qualities of a self- sacrificing and devoted mother with a certain ironic, or even sardonic, touch. She was a daughter of Mr. Tattersall, the owner of Tattersall's sale-rooms, and at her father's house she had become acquainted in the latter part of the 'fifties and the early 'sixties with all the great sporting characters of that epoch. Of these she used to tell us boys ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... The scorching torrent was enough to wither the face of the corpse. I should not have been surprised if the wet black beard had frizzled and curled and flared up in smoke and flame. But the dead man was unconcerned. He continued to grin with a sardonic humour, with a cynical mockery and defiance. He was ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... of Briony Lodge was open, and an elderly woman stood upon the steps. She watched us with a sardonic eye as ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... gather the choicest knights-errant of the golden quest. Maxime Valois here develops a social talent as a leader of men, guided by the sardonic Mephisto of his ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... longer marked them. George seemed wound up to an extraordinary state of excitement. Gone was the glazed expression of his eye, which now gleamed like that of a famished eagle. The Maltese leant back in the carriage, with a sardonic smile, his dark face affording a strange contrast to the stained, but yet ghastly hue of ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Tavern Knight laughed an evil laugh—such a laugh as might fall from the lips of Satan in a sardonic moment. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... moral lowness, fairly well concealed, which lies at the source of Moliere, carried this Gallic vein to an extreme in shameless imitations of The School for Women and The Misanthrope (The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer); delightful Congreve, a far more amusing companion—witty, spiritual, sardonic, writing excellently, knowing how to create a type and charming his contemporaries whilst not failing to write for posterity in his Old Bachelor, Love for Love, and Way of ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... seemed to us, was the cleverest writer in his way that has ever contributed to the English periodicals. His fugitive lyrics and arabesque romances, half sardonic and half sentimental, published with Hookham Frere's "Whistlecraft" and Macaulay's Roundhead Ballads, in Knight's Quarterly Magazine, and after the suspension of that work, for the most part in the annual souvenirs, are altogether unequaled in the class of compositions described ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... the matter; the fact was obvious; the girl was hopelessly and utterly compromised; and he, aided certainly by untoward circumstances—for the sardonic interference of which, in such circumstances, a man of sense usually allows—he had done it. They had had their "holiday," without taking thought for the morrow, in the way approved by boys and dogs and creatures without experience. And here was to-morrow, knocking at the door and demanding ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... little pen we wield! What could that have been out of the Sardonic Dean? What other child of that age would have used "beloved" as she does? This power of affection, this faculty of beloving, and wild hunger to be beloved comes out more and more. She perilled her all ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... called Barrel Mirabeau, on account of his rotundity, and the quantity of strong liquor he contains. Among the clergy is the Abbe Maury, who does not want for audacity, and the Cure Gregoire who shall be a bishop, and Talleyrand-Pericord, his reverence of Autun, with sardonic grimness, a man living in falsehood, and on falsehood, yet ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Riccabocca, and the face on which the boy gazed exchanged its usual grotesque and sardonic expression for one animated, noble, and heroic. "Yes, not a revolution for chimeras, but for that cause which the coldest allow to be good, and which, when successful, all time approves as divine—the redemption of our ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... proven in this other and more personal affair? He set his teeth and redoubled his efforts, intent on proving his own power to himself. Even as Napoleon believed in his star, Gard trusted in his luck, and it was with a smothered laugh of sardonic satisfaction that news of the first move in his ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... laid down his rod on the grassy bank and felt for his snuff-box. As he helped himself to a pinch he slyly regarded the faces of his companions; and his own, contracting its muscles to take the dose, seemed to twist itself in a sardonic smile. ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... looks or was greatly attracted by him. He was not prepossessing. Fair, with a flaccid unwholesome complexion, foxy haired, his beard cut to a point, small moustaches curled upward showing thin pale lips, and giving his mouth a disagreeable curve also upwards, a sort of set smile that was really a sardonic sneer, conveying distrust and disbelief in all around. His eyes were so deep set as to be almost lost in their recesses behind his sandy eyelashes, and he kept them screwed up close, with the intent watchful gaze of an animal about to make a spring. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... man as Simon MacTaggart existed, or that a woman named Olivia bloomed, a very flower, among the wilds! At whatever angle he viewed the congregated disasters of the past few weeks, he saw Count Victor in their background—a sardonic, smiling, light-hearted Nemesis; and if he detested him previously as a merely possible danger, he hated him now with every fibre of his being as ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... prepared for that kind of antagonism. In keeping up her preconcerted attitude towards the "Northern hireling," she had been met with official brusqueness, contemptuous silence, or aggrieved indignation,—but nothing so exasperating as this. She even fancied that this elegant but sardonic-looking soldier was mocking her. She bit her red lip, but, with a scornful gesture of ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Lightfoot, nor to Ab. The little lad, of the world, yet not in it, saw vaguely the surprises, lights and shades and contrasts of existence, and sometimes they made him laugh. The laugh of the cave man was not a common event, and when it came was likely to be sober and sardonic, at least it was so when not simply an evidence of rude health and high animal spirits. Humor is one of the latest, as it is one of the most precious, grains shaken out of Time's hour-glass, but Little Mok somehow caught a tiny bit of the rainbow gift, long before its time in the world, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... always; many a road, to shops and the like, he drove her in his cab (Darwingium Cabbum comparable to Georgium Sidus) in those early days when even the charge of omnibuses was a consideration, and his sparse utterances, sardonic often, were a great amusement to her. 'A perfect gentleman,' she at once discerned him to be, and of sound worth and kindliness in the most unaffected form." (Carlyle's 'Reminiscences,' ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... fifteenth century. The whole face of the landscape, town and country side, seemed to us like the back drop of the first act in a comic opera, and we were forever listening for "The Chimes of Normandy!" Instead we heard the noon whistle. It was tremendously incongruous. How American humour cracks into sardonic ribaldry at the spectacle. The French are the least bit unhappy about this American humour. They don't entirely see it. Once outside of a poor French village near the war zone, that had been bombed from the German lines, bombed from the German airships and ravaged ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... being closely watched? Anxiously she studied his face for some intimation of his thoughts. He was standing there smiling at her, and to her agitated brain it seemed that in his smile there was something sardonic, defying, challenging. ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... Then Chance, that sardonic jester who loves best to thwart the dearest desires of men and warp the destiny of nations, became piqued at the peace and the plenty in the land which lay around the bay. Chance, knowing well how best and quickest to let savagery loose upon the land, plucked a handful of gold from the breast ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... a low, mirthless laugh. The picture of the girl he disliked so intensely, writhing in the great hands of the brute opposite him, appealed to the elder's sardonic humor. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... craft watching the shipwrights at work on her deck. From the way they went about their business those men must have been perfectly sane; and I felt greatly refreshed by my company during the day. Dominic, too, devoted himself to his business, but his taciturnity was sardonic. Then I dropped in at the cafe and Madame Leonore's loud "Eh, Signorino, here you are at last!" pleased me by its resonant friendliness. But I found the sparkle of her black eyes as she sat down for a moment opposite me while I was having my drink rather difficult ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... a silk hat, the local physician entered, bowing to Carroll as they passed in the hallway. Almost immediately Perkins emerged. On his face was a sardonic grin. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... head and caught a glimpse of a bareheaded man on his feet, bowing and bowing and bowing, and of a heavy figure with its hat on seated beside him. She speculated upon the sardonic reflections ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... head-foremost into the treacherous pit he has digged for me. In brief, I am there to be sold, and I get my money's worth. No one can thoroughly enjoy riddle stories unless he is old enough, or young enough, or, at any rate, wise enough to appreciate the value of the faculty of being surprised. Those sardonic and omniscient persons who know everything beforehand, and smile compassionately or scornfully at the artless outcries of astonishment of those who are uninformed, may get an ill-natured satisfaction out of the persuasion that ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... satisfaction in going after a not-so-slowly seventy-one. Every ten scores or so average up, and see what you have. Thus one can chart a sort of glacial movement upwards otherwise imperceptible to one's sardonic estimate of himself as the World's ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... poured off the faces of the officers, they were covered with dust, their language grew stronger and stronger, and at last, feeling themselves entirely nonplussed, one of them, looking up at their chief as he sat on his camel with a sardonic smile on his face, observed deprecatingly, "I'm afraid we really can't manage ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... faded gown seated behind her dear friend in the opera-box, or occupying the back seat of the barouche, is always a wholesome and moral one to me, as jolly a reminder as that of the Death's-head which figured in the repasts of Egyptian bon-vivants, a strange sardonic memorial of Vanity Fair. What? even battered, brazen, beautiful, conscienceless, heartless, Mrs. Firebrace, whose father died of her shame: even lovely, daring Mrs. Mantrap, who will ride at any fence which any man in England will take, and who ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... observed a small, red-haired lance-corporal, whose remarks generally had a sardonic touch, "when he said the worse the man the better the soldier. It's only people who have no imagination and no intelligence who are courageous in modern war. Nobody with any sense would expose himself unnecessarily and rush a machine-gun position or do the sort of thing they ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... With a sardonic smile Willie shook his head and took another cigarette; and just then Christina had to go to attend ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... saw Aylmore again before he was removed. He left us with a sort of sardonic remark—'If you all want to prove me innocent,' he said, 'find the ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... exception was Estelle the dancer, with whom Emile allowed her a slight acquaintance. He neither approved of women in general nor of their friendships. Estelle was the bonne amie of the sardonic Manager, who occasionally beat her, after which ceremony it was her custom to drink absinthe. Sometimes, for this reason, she was unable to appear on the stage. She would come into Arithelli's dressing room and weep, and smoke innumerable cigarettes, and when things ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... on his feet; eagerness, sardonic delight, sinister anticipation thrilling from him—and my same glance showed Marakinoff, crouched, biting his finger-nails, glaring at ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... vapors above the ragged maw of the volcano were rent by a flare of crimson, and in the fleeting instant of unnatural daylight I beheld Farquharson barefooted, and dripping with sea-water, confronting me with a sardonic, triumphant smile. The light faded in a twinkling, but in the darkness he swung his other leg over the rail and sat perched there, as if challenging the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... A sardonic grin gave a momentary lurid hue to Mr. Fox's sallow face. Knowing the game to be in his own hands, he could quietly bide his time; so, assuming a tone of much moderation and dignity, he replied, he ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the look of a Mephistopheles—a demon then very much in vogue,—especially when he laughed, his laughter being full of sardonic reserves. If Delsarte's mode of proselyting was almost always gentle, affectionate, adapted to the spirit he aspired to conquer, that of Raymond Brucker had an aggressive fashion; he became brutal and cynical when discussion ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... tears, a sardonic smile. He was watching her, and she turned again, and their eyes met; again he saw the blood mount from her throat to her cheeks. At the same time came the old stirring of the wild beasts within him. He knew that the less time he spent in sympathizing ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... too much surprised by Don Pedro's recognition of Captain Hervey as the Swedish sailor Vasa to move or speak. But the Professor did not seem to be greatly astonished, and the sole sound which broke the stillness was his sardonic chuckle. Perhaps the little man had progressed beyond the point of being surprised at anything, or, like, Moliere's hero, was only surprised at finding virtue in ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... horses, and, if his word could be taken for it, he had adopted Spartan tastes and meant to stick to them. Colonel Fortescue rated Broussard's newly-acquired taste for the simple life at its true value, and was sometimes a trifle sardonic over it. ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... we cannot expect him to rise into lofty enthusiasm or pure views of conduct. His poems are a most valuable adjunct to those of Juvenal; for perhaps, if we did not possess Martial, we might fancy that the former's sardonic bitterness had over-coloured his picture. As it is, these two friends illustrate and confirm ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... substitute for prudence, and to be puzzled was to seem to deliberate. That Harley should have had the playing of a great political game {37} while Swift could only look on, is one of the anomalies of history which Swift's sardonic humor must have appreciated to the full. Swift took his revenge when he could by bullying his great official friends now and then in the roughest fashion. He knew that they feared him, and flattered him ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of Heine as a sardonic smile on the face of the Zeitgeist. Let us say that these modern stories in the heroic vein are a mere heightening of color on the cheeks of that interesting young lady, the Genius of the modern novel—a heightening of color on the cheeks, for the color comes from without and not from within. It ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... more I hope to sit And smile at what our Stage retails for wit. Since few, I know, enjoy a laugh so well Sardonic slave to "Vive la Bagatelle" So that in your's like Pagan Plato's bed They'll find some book ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... water appearing, I made a sketchy toilet, and then descended to the courtyard where I lounged and smoked. My state of mind was peculiar. As I struck a match I noticed with a queer pride that my hand was steady. With a cold, almost sardonic clarity, I thought of Miss Falconer. First a prosperous tourist, next a dweller in an aristocratic French mansion, then a nurse. She equaled, I told myself, certain heroines of our Sunday supplements, queens of the smugglers, moving spirits of ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... of new arrivals, glanced behind at the only other passenger, a man of consular mould, and then looked at Stover in sardonic amusement. ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... said the coast guardsman, with a superior and sardonic smile. "Well, in my 'umble opinion, drowning's too good ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... already mottled with grey. The man's face expressed rather knavery than vice, and a disposition to sharpness, cunning, and roguery, more than the traces of stormy and indulged passions. His sharp quick black eyes, acute features, ready sardonic smile, promptitude and effrontery, gave him altogether what is called among the vulgar a knowing look, which generally implies a tendency to knavery. At a fair or market, you could not for a moment have doubted that he was a horse-jockey, intimate with all the tricks ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... communication had certainly passed between them. Riccabocca was evidently much agitated, and with emotions not familiar to him. The tears stood in his eyes at the same time that a smile, the reverse of cynical or sardonic, curved his lips; while his wife was leaning her head on his shoulder, her hand clasped in his, and, by the expression of her face, you might guess that he had paid her some very gratifying compliments, of a nature more genuine and sincere than those which characterized ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... going to the bedside of the dying woman announces the advent of the holy man. The patient screams in agony: "I am dying!" and she does die, from fright. Bernhardi is enraged, though he never loses his air of sardonic politeness. The act ends. The result of the incident, magnified by a partisan press, is serious. A great lady, an archduchess, refuses to head the list of the Elizabethinum annual charity ball. She also ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... inner source of pleasure that brought out a sardonic smile. "He's a slap in the face at ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... came to announce that the car was ready, and they went out. Farbish watched them with a smile that had in it a trace of the sardonic. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... combat and moved contemptuously to the position where his weapons would be most deadly. His ship's launching-tubes were at the ready. It should be able to pour out a cloud of missiles. In fact, a sardonic ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... images recurred. They were no more than little vignettes—Laurie talking to a severe-looking tall man with a sardonic smile; Laurie having tea with Mrs. Stapleton; Laurie in an empty room, looking ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... so loud, Ahlmann," replied Von Barwig with a sardonic smile. "You laid too many cornerstones; your charities are too well known. You should have kept them a secret and not blazoned your generosity to the whole world. When you fed an orphan or a widow you shouldn't have ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... associations crowd upon her heart, has a second and third time crept noiselessly to his cell, and sought in vain his forgiveness. Yea, she has opened the door gently, but drew back in terror before his dark frown, his sardonic scorn, his frenzied rush at her. Had he not loved her fondly, his hate had not taken such deep root ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... I particularly like about the book is the picture that it gives of sardonic pleasantry and intellectual and sophisticated virtuosity going quietly on side by side with all the splendours and barbarities of absolute autocracy and summary jurisdiction. It throws a new or unaccustomed light on those days. Not even yet—not even in Bloomsbury, ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... but Willet did not reveal his meaning. It was impossible to tell what course he meant to take, and the two lads were willing to let the event disclose itself. The same sardonic humor that had taken possession of Robert seemed to lay hold of the older ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... are always dynamic, and he emerges betimes, as if from Goya's tomb, and etches with sardonic finger Nada in dust. But this spirit of denial is not an abiding mood; Chopin throws a net of tone over souls wearied with rancors and revolts, bridges "salty, estranged seas" of misery and presently we are viewing a mirrored, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... us appearing in a new role to-night, Miss Farnham," he said, with sardonic humor; "I as the hunted criminal, and you as the equally culpable accessory after the fact. If I run away, what shall be done with the—the 'swag,' the bulk of which, as you know, is tied ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... out, however, that strong feeling of almost any kind produces this result. It is not a sense of the ludicrous, only, which does it; nor are the various forms of joyous emotion the sole additional causes. We have, besides, the sardonic laughter and the hysterical laughter, which result from mental distress; to which must be added certain sensations, as tickling, and, according to Mr. Bain, cold, and some kinds ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... question, Cazotte's countenance lost its unnatural expression of awe and sternness; the sardonic humour most common to it came back and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... keep his word as to me, he may do as much for you, or more. Copies are at Cambridge; among the Oxonians too; I have with stingy discretion distributed all my copies but two. Old Rogers, a grim old Dilettante, full of sardonic sense, was heard saying, "It is German Poetry given out in American Prose." Friend Emerson ought to be content;—and has now above all things, as I said, to be in no haste. Slow fire does make sweet malt: how true, how true! Also ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "nothing could be further from my thoughts than to insult you, or to treat you in any way with disrespect. And I will not acknowledge that anything you can say can convey an insult to myself." Lira smiled in a sardonic fashion. "But," added Nino, "if it would give you any pleasure to fight, and if you have weapons, I shall be happy to oblige you. It is a quiet spot, as you say, and it shall never be said that an Italian artist refused to ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... foul blot of shame upon the fall pure page of a girl's existence, and written there the fatal finis? If she died, could he escape the moral responsibility of having been her murderer? Amid the ebb and flow of conflicting emotions, one grim fact stared at him with sardonic significance. If he had ruined her life, retribution promptly exacted a costly forfeit; and his happiness was destined to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... You with the quick sardonic eye For all the mockeries of life, Beware, in this dark masque of things that seem, Lest even that tragic irony, Which you discern in this our mortal strife, Trick you and trap you, also, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... devil he was, laughed when it was too late. He had good impulses, but they never interfered with his sardonic humor. He paced the little room, shrugging his shoulders, offering no explanation. Sally appeared about ready to collapse and I could not have told Sally's lie to Miss Sampson to save ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... us yet," muttered Joe, with a sardonic grin. "If they get near us, Dick, keep yer eyes open an' look out for yer neck, else they'll drop a noose over it, they will, afore ye know they're near, an' haul ye ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... sinister into the wake of the moon under a sable wing, while to them our sail must have been a vision of white and dazzling radiance. Without altering the course a hair's breadth we slipped by each other within an oar's length. A drawling, sardonic hail came out of her. Instantly, as if by magic, our dozing pilots got on their feet in a body. An incredible babel of bantering shouts burst out, a jocular, passionate, voluble chatter, which lasted till the boats were stern to stern, theirs all bright now, and, with a ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... his back to his hearers,— Keeping his hand on the wheel and his eye on the globe of the jack-staff, Holding the boat to the shore and out of the sweep of the current, Lightly turning aside for the heavy logs of the drift-wood, Widely shunning the snags that made us sardonic obeisance. ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... whom he was urging to speak on some public question. "But how can I?" his friend replied; "I know nothing of the subject, and should therefore have nothing to say." "Oh, you can always get up and deny the facts," was the sardonic reply. ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... that "he was exceedingly respected" in the house, and was freely admitted to the inn-keeper's domestic circle. The inn-keeper's wife was credited with a mercurial disposition which contrasted strangely with her husband's sardonic temperament; it was often said in Oxford that Shakespeare not merely found his chief attraction at the Crown Inn in the wife's witty conversation, but formed a closer intimacy with her than moralists would approve. Oral tradition ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... the paving-stones and stopped at my hotel. The driver lifted his hat obsequiously. I, with sardonic smile, entered the hotel, where I was not unknown. No doubt was made as to the character of ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... so is the world. Jim Irwin went home thinking of the "Humph!" of Jennie Woodruff—thinking with hot waves and cold waves running over his body, and swellings in his throat. Such thoughts centered upon his club foot made Lord Byron a great sardonic poet. That club foot set him apart from the world of boys and tortured him into a fury which lasted until he had lashed society with the whips of ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... to use a poetic figure, a good deal of powder-smoke floating in the air to obscure the vision. And so although no men were ever more just in passing judgment than these same old-timers, the story has its sardonic ending. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... answering Henrietta's gay call and taking part in that lady's junketings and jaunts. Sir Charles never refused the requested permission; but, while granting it, did he not tend to retreat into his former sardonic humour, fall into long silences, become inaccessible again and remote? The book went forward; yet, more than once recently, Carteret had questioned whether his friend would ever get himself fairly delivered of the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... acknowledged the introduction. Elias M. Pierce, receding a yard or so into perspective, revealed himself as a spare, middle-aged man who looked as if he had been hewn out of a block, square, and glued into a permanent black suit. Under his palely sardonic eye Hal felt that he was being appraised, and in none ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Opera," by "Jacques Belden" (the first an allegorical fantasy and the second a poetic-romance) are at the head of this division. With these should be included Don Marquis's "Death and Old Man Murtrie," for its sardonic allegory, and "The Designs of Miramon," by James Branch Cabell, for its social satire. Individual members of the Committee would have liked to include these—different members preferring different ones of the four—but the Committee as a whole saw the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... feet, and now and then the voices of the crew answering the shouted orders made themselves hollowly audible. In the cabin there was talking, and sometimes even laughing. Sometimes he heard the click of knives and forks, the sardonic rattle of crockery. After the first insane feeling that somehow he must get ashore and escape from his torment, he hardened himself to it through an immense contempt, equally insane, for the stupidity of the sea, its insensate uproar, its blind and ridiculous and cruel mischievousness. ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... last, a sardonic grin crept over his features. So far, so good. Now for the rest of those bankers and the mayor. Gray was working rapidly, but he knew no other way of working, and speed was essential. It seemed to him ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Evans was a kindly elderly man, whose one affectation was the gruffness which the country doctor of the old school so often assumes as if he wished to emphasize his disapproval of the modern suave manner of his city confrere. He had a sardonic humor and a sharp tongue which had at first quite terrified Nora, until she discovered that they were meant to hide the most generous heart in the world. Many were the kindly acts he performed in secret for the very people he was ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... eyes, long black hair, brushed behind the ears, and thin, sallow cheeks, were not agreeable; but they made up a striking physiognomy. The black eyes glittered with a sullen fire; the thin lips were wreathed with a sardonic smile; and I was informed that the youth lived the life of a solitaire, voluntarily absenting himself from society, to give his days and nights to ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... pretty much the same to me, if you could,' replies the sardonic Pipchin. 'At any rate I'm going. I can't stop here. I should be dead in a week. I had to cook my own pork chop yesterday, and I'm not used to it. My constitution will be giving way next. Besides, I had a very fair connexion ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... make a confession? The thing that a fortnight ago (before I got it) I thought so much of, I give you my word I do not care a pin for. I am sick of it and ashamed of having thought so much of it, and the congratulations I get give me a sort of internal sardonic grin. I think this has come about partly because I did not get the official confirmation of what I had heard for some days, and with my habit of facing the ill side of things I came to the conclusion that Weld had made a mistake, and I went in thought through the whole ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... something extraordinary, but now, when it came, she was taken aback by it. It gave her a start, that toss of black hair, that long, irregular, pale face whose scintillant, sardonic smile was mercilessly upon the poor, inadequate picture-face fronting him. His stoop above the rail was so abrupt that his long, lean back was almost horizontal, yet even thus there was something elegant in the swing of him—in the careless ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... was not allowed to enjoy this illusion long. One day when I innocently asked him if he found my hands improving, he turned upon me his off sardonic eye. 'You'll never improve, old sack-of-beans' (for he had come to address me with a freedom I burned to resent); 'hands! why, you're sawing my mouth off all the time. And your feet "home," and tickling me under my shoulders at every stride—why, I'm ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... speedily apparent, however, that the young gentleman's estimate of their services was not entirely based upon their present performance. With his eyes still fixed upon the almanac and a sardonic smile upon his dark face, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... through the porches of his ears. "And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Could he, he whispered to his soul—could he forgive these devils that sang like angels? He almost shivered in his attempt to smile; and loathing life heard with sardonic amusement: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... spring (she wanted our names), and would not be worth your accepting but for the fact of their not being purchaseable anywhere.[39] A few copies were sent out to us lately. Half I draw back my hand as I give you this little pamphlet, because I seem to hear dear Mr. Martin's sardonic laughter at my phrase about the Czar. 'If she wink, &c.' Well, I don't generally sympathise with the boasting mania of my countrymen, but it's so much in the blood that, even with me, it exceeds ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... that? Have you no learned puzzle-brained metaphysicians who tell you that space is but an idea, all this palpable universe an idea in the mind, and no more? Why am I an enigma as dark as the Sibyls, and your metaphysicians as plain as a hornbook?" Again the sardonic laugh. "Enough: let what I have said obscure or enlighten your guesses, we come back to the same link of union, which binds man to man, bids States arise from the desert, and foeman embrace as brothers. I need you and you need me; without your aid my life is doomed; without ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suppose that he did anything but hide in his clouds of ink. Sir Sidney Colvin thinks that Keats revealed himself in his letters, but I cannot agree with him. Keats is one of the best letter-writers we have; he can be merry, fanciful, witty, thoughtful, even profound. He has a sardonic turn of language hardly to be equalled outside Shakespeare. "Were it in my device, I would reject a Petrarchal coronation—on account of my dying day, and because women have cancers?" Where will you match that but from Hamlet? But Keats knew himself. "It is a wretched thing to confess, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... "lest there be trouble." A number of Suitors show their ill feeling; one of them, named Ktesippus, flings a bullock's foot at Ulysses "for a hospitable present," at which the latter "smiled in sardonic fashion," but said nothing. Telemachus, however, reproves the agressor with great spirit, and asserts himself anew against all deeds of violence. One of the more reasonable Suitors, Agelaus, makes a speech, which commends ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... desirability that its progress and developments should be observed and its history written; also of C. N——, who, it appears, is passing through a new moral phasis. He is silent, inexpressive, talks little or none, and listens without response, except a sardonic laugh; and some of his friends think that he is passing into permanent eclipse. Various other matters were considered or glanced at, and finally, between five and six o'clock, Mr. Emerson took his leave. I then went out to chop wood, my allotted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... anticipated by George Sand—that George Sand whose merits it took them twenty years to recognise. They forgot, too, that compassion is precisely the quality in which they were most lacking. Gavarni had killed the sentiment of pity in them, and had communicated to them his own mocking, sardonic spirit of inhumanity, his sinister delight in every manifestation of cruelty, baseness, and pain. In their most candid moods they confessed that they were all brain and no heart, that they were without real affections; and their writings naturally suffer from this unsympathetic ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... been sardonic, were it not for a few lines around the corners of his eyes which belied any sinister suspicion, spread grimly across the big man's face as he stood looking down on Harry King in the dusk of the unlighted shed. The younger man rose quickly from the fodder where he ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... seen any clouds. For my part it seemed to me that he could never have been anywhere but in the clouds. I explained that when the weather is foggy I walk in clouds, and that when the cloud is condensed it rains. At all such reasoning, being above his comprehension, he only laughed with a sardonic smile. Still less was he satisfied with my explanation how watery bubbles may be lifted into the air. He insisted that the clouds were solid bodies, reinforced his assertion with a text of Scripture, silenced me by authority, and laughed at ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... goes—an' whatever else I say goes." And Purdy, watching narrowly from the corner of his eye, saw that, of the other four only Bill's eyes stood Grimshaw's gaze unflinching, and in the dim shadow his lips twisted into a sardonic grin. What Purdy did not see was that Grimshaw had seen exactly what he saw, and not only that, he had seen Purdy's smile, but with a perfectly impassive face, the leader spread his blanket and stretched himself upon ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... brief return to Corrie's laughing salute, and directed his sardonic black eyes to Gerard's right arm, which the rolled-back sleeve ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... and a sardonic laugh rang through the cave. "Would that I could wed Joanna to Tyrrel, who would give his soul to call her his. Once the wife of a member of the band, and some of her power would go. I misdoubt me if any would long call her queen; and when she had babes to fill her mind and her thoughts, ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... he took the one offered, fumbling painfully with thick fingers, blushing to the roots of his hair. Then he looked with his warm blue eyes at the almost sardonic, lidded eyes of the foreigner. The latter sat down beside him, and they began ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... She was obliged to do some rapid and clever thinking. Fairfax was watching her with a sardonic smile on his lips. Ripton, the manager, peered over his shoulder ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... Why he did it will remain a puzzle for ever. There were many other acts which to foreigners and to those born in later times might seem the result of insanity, but which were really the outcome of a peculiar, sardonic, and somewhat primitive sense of humour on his part which appeals powerfully to the men of the plains, the gauchos, among whom Rosas lived from boyhood, when he ran away from his father's house, and by whose aid he eventually rose ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... wing, which added a good-sized drawing-room to the modest mansion I had before visited. Whatever accession of comfort the house received within from this addition to its size, its beauty, externally, was not improved by it, and Mr. Rogers stood before the offending edifice, surveying it with a sardonic sneer that I should think even brick and mortar must have found it hard to bear. He had hardly uttered his three first disparaging bitter sentences, of utter scorn and abhorrence of the architectural abortion, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... from time immemorial been portrayed upon the stage and in fiction as an irrepressible and inimitably farcical fellow. But the "Southern gentleman" was a man of different kidney from either of these. A sardonic dignity hedged him about with peculiar sacredness. He was chivalrous and baronial in his instincts, surroundings, and characteristics. He was nervous, excitable, and bloodthirsty. He would "pluck up drowned ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... by Herresford!" cried Swinton, hotly. "This is some sardonic jest, in keeping with his donation of a thousand dollars to the Mission Hall, given with one hand and taken away with the other. It nearly ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... before man, and with a strong exertion strove to smother the commotion which swelled his breast. He dashed away the drop that fain would soften the lurid expression of his eye. His pride succeeded in the conflict: soon that lip recovered its sardonic curl, and his features relapsing into their calm and gloomy ferocity, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... this thriving tradesman could not act his part well. In the midst of his prosperity his smiles were ghastly and his laughter was sardonic. Even when commenting on the prosperity of trade his sighs were frequent and deep. One of his friends thought and said that prosperity was turning the poor man's brain. Others thought that he was becoming quite unnatural and unaccountable in his deportment; ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... order in French, and at once some of the cords about Tom's person were cut, and the packet sewed up in his coat was duly brought forth. As it was handed to Sir James and he saw the signet of the Duke, a sardonic smile played over his features, and Tom's eyes gleamed in ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... contempt for a thing, he was always amused at it; and in this tale we can imagine him a gigantic Pantagruel dangling a ridiculous manikin, throwing himself back and roaring out his great bursting guffaws at its pitiful antics. The temptation and the downfall of a whole town was a colossal idea, a sardonic idea, and it is colossally ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... amused her. She was infinitely amused by her nephew and her niece, but often spiteful to them, merely because they were young. To sum up, she was a cynic, a rake, an excellent literary critic, a sardonic and brilliant novelist, and she had a passionate, adoring and protecting affection for Neville, who was the only person who had always been told what she called the darker secrets ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay |
