"Sneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Nonconformists from the Church of England. As the gospel spreads, it humanizes and softens the hearts even of the rebellious. The dread fire no longer consumes the cedars of Lebanon. Still there remains the contemptuous sneer, the scorn, the malice of the soul, against Christ and his spiritual seed. Not many years since the two daughters of an evangelical clergyman, a D.D., came out, from strong and irresistible conviction, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... like: and I suppose she is peculiar. But why shouldn't she try to keep young for the sake of her dream? I think it's romantic and beautiful, and all one with her efforts to become the intellectual equal of her lost husband. Grandma and Heppie sneer after Mrs. James has been and gone, at the long words she uses, and condemn her for wanting to deceive people into thinking she's much younger than she is. But that is because they've no romance in them, and can't ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Billiard, frowning darkly, advanced threateningly toward his outspoken cousin, with fists doubled up and an ugly sneer on his face. But Susie was no coward, and when he shook his knuckles close to her little pug nose to emphasize his words, the girl's arm shot out unexpectedly and landed a blow fair ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the last words with a taunting sneer. Constance realized suddenly the truth. The whole affair had been a plant ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... more vain. His pretensions were scanned with eyes more jealous and less tolerant than at first. Proud aristocrats began to recollect that a mushroom peerage was supported but by a scanty fortune; the men of more dazzling genius began to sneer at the red-tape minister as a mere official manager of details; he lost much of the personal popularity which had been one secret of his power. But what principally injured him in the eyes of his party ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Forum like King Tarquin in his pride: Twelve axes waited on him, six marching on a side; The townsmen shrank to right and left, and eyed askance with fear His lowering brow, his curling mouth which always seemed to sneer; That brow of hate, that mouth of scorn, marks all the kindred still; For never was there Claudius yet but wished the Commons ill; Nor lacks he fit attendance; for close behind his heels, With outstretched chin and crouching pace, the client ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the voice of Whisky Jim that thus greeted Albert. If there was a half-sneer in the words, there was nothing but cordial friendliness in the tone and the grasp of the hand. The Superior Being was so delighted that he could only express his emotions by giving his leaders several extra ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... delicate men, were ordered to drop out of the ranks at places further along the beach. If it was Janet's luck to reach the furthest casualty she would walk, carrying a stretcher, about a mile and a half altogether. When she got home she would be less inclined to sneer at people who catch cold in the ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... in vain to page 312 of "Household Words" for the sneer to which you call my attention. Nor have I, I assure you, the least idea where else it ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... repudiating debts, and distributing embassies in Washington, May 1, 1861. And as to La' Davis, there seems to be documentary evidence that she meant to be "At Home" in the capital, bringing the first strawberries with her from Montgomery for her May-day soiree. Bah! one does not like to sneer at people who have their necks in the halter; but one happy result of this disturbance is that the disturbers have sent themselves to Coventry. The Lincoln party may be wanting in finish. Finish comes with use. A little roughness of manner, the genuine simplicity of a true soul like Lincoln, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Mordred hated the two knights more than ever. Of a slight frame was Mordred, but tall, with dark hair, sallow face, and deep-set grey eyes beside a thin long nose. Few loved him, for he was never cheery nor very friendly, and ever seemed to sneer with his thin lips and ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... mercy on a hand that has thrown the die and has lost; no tolerance for the player who, holding fine cards, will not play them by the rules of the game. "Manquee!" the world says, with a polite sneer, of the lives in which it beholds no ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... of things come out of it was in no wise short of magic. It was not for many, many years that I observed that Francis sat on this bag in his tub, as they sailed to the shore. In those later years, however, I also noticed a sneer of Ernest's which I had overlooked before. He says, "I do not see anything very wonderful in taking out of a bag the same thing you have put into it." But his wise father says that it is the presence of mind which in the midst of shipwreck put the ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... wonder and tried to listen. It was all about a mysterious companionship with God, stuff that sounded like "rot" to him; uncanny, unreal, mystical, impossible! Could it be true that Court, their peach of a Court, whose sneer and criticism alike had been dreaded by all who came beneath them—could it be that so sensible and scholarly and sane a mind as Court's could take up with a superstition like that? For it was to ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... term "Epic Satire" (p. 6) certainly seems to refer to the wedding of two disparate genres in The Dunciad, lifting it above satire that is merely "rugged" or "mischievously gay" (p. 8). (The epithet is also, perhaps, a thrust at Edward Ward, who had pinned it on The Dunciad with a sneer.)[22] Harte's claim that ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... up; the wide lips twisted over formless words; there was no sound from his mouth. Someone was holding a lantern whose light fell full on the silent struggle. It was Nash, his habitual sneer grown more ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... signs of life about the place. Only at the gate was the slouching figure of Jerome Conners, the overseer, who, waving his hat at the column, recognized Chad, as he rode by, and spoke to him, Chad thought, with a covert sneer. Farther ahead, and on the farthest boundary of the Buford farm, was a Federal fort, now deserted, and the beautiful woodland that had once stood in perfect beauty around it was sadly ravaged and nearly gone, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... twelve years old; in a short time she will be a marriageable girl. I have not come to this house to make a scene, nor do I wish to preach about morality, or religion, or God, or maidenly innocence, subjects which great men and grand gentlemen simply sneer at as the stock-in-trade of hypocrites. I will therefore tell you in a couple of words why I have come. All I ask is that you deliver over to me your youngest daughter. I will engage to bring her up honourably as a respectable middle-class girl should be brought up. Her mind is still ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... one would think, might know better. Who is called there "the man according to God's own heart"? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to God's heart? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, what are the outward details of a life; if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... are days in which we are too apt to sneer at those who have gone before us; to look back on our forefathers as very ignorant, prejudiced, old-fashioned people, whose opinions have been all set aside ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... think so," said the quarryman, with a savage sneer. Then raising his weapon, he shook it in Agricola's face, exclaiming: ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... fellow," retorted Rosenheim, with an oily sneer, "I owe the money all right, but I don't own a thing in the world. Everything in this room belongs to my wife. The amount of money I owe is really something shocking. Even what is in the safe"—he nodded to a large affair on the other side of ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... laugh or sneer, yawn or cavil. But as literature it looks back to Sappho and Catullus and the rest, and forward to all great love-poetry since, while as something that is even greater than literature—life—it carries us up to the highest Heaven and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... one voice; "Turn him out!" yelled another; while the object of this outburst of animosity, recovering himself sufficiently to glance round with a contemptuous sneer on his face, fell back, and endeavoured to hide his confusion by entering into conversation ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... be swollen, but I can talk all right; so I will teach;" thus scratching my face with some warmth. The principal smiled and remarked, "Well, you have the strength." To tell the truth, he did not intend remark to be a compliment, but, I think, a sneer. ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... to my estate without a touch of a sneer, when we were alone; but with strangers, he rang the ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... insolent smile in those prominent eyes of his, and a sneer bared his tobacco-stained teeth. Slamming the door, he came sauntering toward the scoutmaster, who had risen; he halted without speaking, then deliberately, impudently, he stared Mr. Perkins from ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... which is not a mere application of force from without, but dwells as a vital principle in the will of every citizen. Our enemies—and wherever a man is to be found bribed by an abuse, or who profits by a political superstition, we have a natural enemy—have striven to laugh and sneer and lie this apparition of royal manhood out of existence. They conspired our murder; but in this vision is the prophecy of a dominion which is to push them from their stools, and whose crown doth sear their eyeballs. America lay asleep, like the princess of the fairy ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... discovered that the brig, to say the best of her, was excessively crank. The two lieutenants and the master had served chiefly on board line-of-battle ships and frigates before they got their promotion, and were inclined to sneer at the commander's caution, and I know that during their watch they carried on much longer than ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... torn away by shell-fire, and there were gaping holes in the walls through which could be caught glimpses of sentries going backwards and forwards. Sometimes a grey battalion swung by; sometimes a German officer peered in curiously, with a sneer on his lips. The drone of aircraft came from above, through the holes where the rafters showed black against the sky. Ever the ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... at Mr. King's portrait of me because he has not painted me as I am! What would you have said if he had painted me as I am? What would you say if Conrad Lagrange should write the truth about us and our kind, for his millions of readers? You sneer at me because I cannot uncover my shoulders in the conventional dress of my class, and so make a virtue of a necessity and deceive the world by a pretense of modesty. Go look in your mirror, you fool! ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... and deep seclusion from general society, had done nothing, apparently, to lower the tone of his happiness. The expression of this happiness was noiseless and unobtrusive; no marks were there of vulgar uxoriousness—nothing that could provoke the sneer of the worldling; but not the less so entirely had the society of his young wife created a new principle of life within him, and evoked some nature hitherto slumbering, and which, no doubt, would else have continued to slumber till his death, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Generous tear will Caledonia shed? Her ancient foe, illustrious Johnson's dead; Mac-Ossian's sons may now securely rest, Safe from the bitter sneer, the cynick jest.[21] The song of triumph now I seem to hear, And these the sounds that vibrate on my ear: "Low lies the man, who scarce deigns Gray to praise, But from the tomb calls Blackmore's sleeping lays; A passport grants to Pomfret's dismal chimes, To Yalden's ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... sometimes vouchsafed revelations to which the most devout believer may not aspire. It is, for instance, always the young man who scoffs at ghosts that the family spectre chooses as his audience. But it required more than a mere sneer or an empty gibe to pump information out of Bradshaw. He took me ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... hardly ask me to call you a humane man," returned the doctor with a sneer, "and so my feelings may surprise you, Master Silver. But if I were sure they were raving—as I am morally certain one, at least, of them is down with fever—I should leave this camp, and at whatever ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be compared for an instant in importance with that of preserving these individual rights. No nation is free in which this is not the paramount concern. Woe to America when her sons and her daughters begin to sneer at rights! Just so long as the citizens are protected individually in their rights, the towns and counties and States cannot be stripped; but if the former lose all love for their own liberties as equal units of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... resolutions with one breath and avowing his indifference to a platform with another, especially as Yancey and his own followers had seceded on the platform and not on the man; but he did not press his adversary to the wall, as he might have done, on the insincerity which Davis's sneer exposed. He was hampered by his own attitude as a candidate. Douglas, who had received 150 votes at Charleston, and who expected the whole at Baltimore, could not let his tongue wag as freely as Davis, who had received ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... know it," he answered with a sneer, "and I'll do with it what I've done with many others—see that ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... tempers were getting frayed and thin. The Colonel's sneer was like a match to a magazine, and in an instant the Frenchman was dancing in front of him with a broken torrent of angry words. His hand was clutching at Cochrane's throat before Belmont and Stephens could pull ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seedsmen, and some publishers, mostly those interested in securing patronage through seed premiums, or which are run in the interest of seed dealers, who grumble a great deal about this matter, and who sneer at the department and derisively call it the "Government seed store." But I imagine if the public was thoroughly informed of the good the department has done by its seed distributions, it would have a great deal better opinion ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... hard-hearted, and to hold up as an example his bugbear and opponent, Bill Howroyd. Horatia returned his look with a perfectly fearless one. 'So you prefer Bill Howroyd's way? Perhaps you prefer his home to mine? He'll never build himself a Balmoral,' said the millionaire with a sneer. ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... Word of God was read and prayer was offered regularly; and every man who could read had the Ten Commandments staring him in the face from the tablets on the wall behind the Holy Table. The individual might scorn and sneer but in the end the Law of God became the law of ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that smile, too, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... us not be too supercilious and ready to sneer. It is only bad taste. It may have been very true devotion which ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Anglo-Saxon race having a singular aptitude to turn up their nose's at everything but their own possessions, and everybody but themselves. I looked at Lucy, with sensitive quickness, to see how she received this sneer on my birth-place; but, with her, it was so much a matter of course to think well of everything connected with the spot, its name as well as its more essential things, that I do not believe she perceived ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... pretensions to anything beyond mediocrity. They are written in a style of flashy harpsichord virtuosity such as Liszt never descended to, even in those of his works at which so many persons are accustomed to sneer. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... conquered great difficulty; the very angels in heaven rejoice over him; and this child, this blushing, trembling, self-condemning, but self-corrected child, has done this. Look up, my dear Matilda! let who will sneer at you, I am proud of you; and there is not one person present who would not honour themselves, if they could secure your friendship. I was the first to correct you, nor will I ever flatter you; but I will always protect and defend you, so long as you continue to ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... not come," said Stukeley, with a sneer at the Captain's avowed mistrust of him. "Yet now, I trust, you'll do me the justice to admit that I have shown myself ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... from pillar to post and wait in antechambers where the air stifles, and doff cap—who have been captain of ships!—to chamberlain, page and lackey? To be called dreamer, adventurer, dicer! To hear the laugh and catch the sneer! To be the persuader, the beggar of good and bad, high and low—to beg year in and year out, cold and warmth, summer and winter, sunrise, noon and sunset, calm and storm, beg of galleon and beg of carrack, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... False to the heart, distorts the hollow cheek, To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak! Still o'er the features, which perforce they cheer, To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique; Smiles form the channel of a future tear, Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer. ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... with a laugh that had a little sneer in it, "put them to the test! I will not object to that, if you will only keep your notions to yourself. Now, Christian, give me your word for silence, and we will freeze here ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... it all. As I revise this copy, a rumor is current in the town in which I am resting to the effect that foreigners are buying children and using their heads to oil the wheels of the new Yuen-nan railway, and I despise him for believing it. The Chinese will not fight, and I sneer at him; he abhors me because I do. I ridicule his manner of dress; he thinks mine grossly indecent. I consider his flat nose and the plaited hair and shaven skull as heathenish; but the Chinese, eating away with his to me ridiculous chopsticks, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... destiny awaits them all. The gods created with the nations must perish with their creators. They were created by men, and, like men, they must pass away. The deities of one age are the by-words of the next. The religion of our day, and country, is no more exempt from the sneer of the future than others have been. When India was supreme, Brahma sat upon the world's throne. When the sceptre passed to Egypt, Isis and Osiris received the homage of mankind. Greece, with her fierce valor, swept to empire, and Zeus put on the purple of authority. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... exaltation of the night before had dropped, and she said to herself that he had gone away, indifferently, almost callously, and that now her life would lapse again into the narrow rut out of which he had lifted it. For a moment she was inclined to sneer at herself for not having used the arts ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the play and had been set to music by Robert Johnson, a lutenist in high repute. {255b} Like its predecessor 'A Winter's Tale,' 'The Tempest' long maintained its first popularity in the theatre, and the vogue of the two pieces drew a passing sneer from Ben Jonson. In the Induction to his 'Bartholomew Fair,' first acted in 1614, he wrote: 'If there be never a servant-monster in the Fair, who can help it he [i.e. the author] says? nor a nest of Antics. He is loth to make nature afraid in ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... sensibilities of his neighbours. More than once he deliberately recommended wickedness so horrible that wicked men recoiled from it with indignation. But they could not succeed even in making their scruples intelligible to him. To every remonstrance he listened with a cynical sneer, wondering within himself whether those who lectured him were such fools as they professed to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Major Overstone with a sneer, "you've come to the last place to recover your deserter. We don't give up men in Wynyard's Bar. And they didn't teach you at the Academy, sir, to stop to take prisoners when you were outflanked ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... not break in upon your repose." Bellarmine rose from his chair, traversed the room in a minuet step, and hummed an opera tune, while Horatio, advancing to Leonora, asked her in a whisper if that gentleman was not a relation of hers; to which she answered with a smile, or rather sneer, "No, he is no relation of mine yet;" adding, "she could not guess the meaning of his question." Horatio told her softly, "It did not arise from jealousy."—"Jealousy! I assure you, it would be very strange in a common acquaintance to ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... violence, I sat down breathless and trembling. He on the contrary had grown calm, and there was almost a sneer on his lips as he answered, "Those vulgar ruffians are relatives of the Tracys, and, for their sakes, I wished to spare them an exposure which would have been of no use to any one. I believe that they meant no more than a foolish practical joke, of which the account was highly coloured ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... But everlasting Dictates croud his Tongue, Perversely grave, or positively wrong. The still returning Tale, and ling'ring Jest, Perplex the fawning Niece and pamper'd Guest, While growing Hopes scarce awe the gath'ring Sneer, And scarce a Legacy can bribe to hear; The watchful Guests still hint the last Offence, The Daughter's Petulance, the Son's Expence, Improve his heady Rage with treach'rous Skill, And mould his Passions till they make his Will. ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... and falsehood was used against him by "Liberals", who employed their Christianity as an electioneering dodge to injure a man whose sturdy Radicalism they feared. Over and over again Mr. Bradlaugh was told that he was an "impossible candidate", and gibe and sneer and scoff were flung at the man who had neither ancestors nor wealth to recommend him, who fought his battle with his brain and his tongue, and whose election expenses were paid by hundreds of contributions from poor ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... out of their less fortunate hedge-bottom brethren and the British public, who delight in calling them either 'the King,' 'Queen,' 'Prince,' or 'Princess.' It is true also that there are vast numbers of the Gipsies who, with a chuckle, tongue in cheek, wink of the eye, side grin and a sneer, say they have these important personages amongst them; and if any little extra stir is being made at a fair-time in the country lanes, in the neighbourhood of straw-yards, they will be sure to tell them that either the 'king,' ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... famous than pleasant, I'd rather be rude than polite; It's easy to sneer When you're witty and queer, And I'd rather ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... half That all things hold of Deity. So let the dull crowd sneer and laugh— Their eyes are ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... he moves with easy mien; Politely on the left he takes his place; The ivory pin is at his girdle seen:— His dress and gait show gentlemanly grace. Why do we brand him in our satire here? 'Tis this—-his niggard soul provokes the sneer. ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... writing-desk, and discovered that six hundred doubloons had in reality been shipped in St. Thomas. Of course, their production was imperiously demanded; but Brulot swore they had been landed, with his supercargo, in the neighboring Rio Nunez. I was near crediting the story, when a slight sneer I perceived flickering over the steward's face, put me on the qui vive to request an inspection of the log-book, which, unfortunately for my captor, did not record the disembarkation of the cash. This demonstrated Brulot's falsehood, and authorized ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... cried Bob with a sneer, for somehow, though he could easily have taken us one under each arm, Bigley used to ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... do not understand?" he said, with a covert sneer, that had the keenness, and hardness, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... very different notions to others as to what is an insult," said the officer, with a sneer, intended to excite Morton's anger. "My friend Maguire is exceedingly sensitive as to his honour. Not to lose time, sir, by any circumlocution in my remarks, you are, sir, I am led to understand, Lieutenant Morton, of ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... it will purge of coarseness the picture-sheets of that artistic nation, which will hardly be able to caricature the new wife as it did poor plebeian Josephine. Such starched and ironed monarchists cannot sneer at a woman of such a divinely dry and crusted line like ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... completed, who never wasteth his time, and who hath his soul under control, is regarded wise. They that are wise, O bull of the Bharata race, always delight in honest deeds, do what tendeth to their happiness and prosperity, and never sneer at what is good. He who exulteth not at honours, and grieveth not at slights, and remaineth cool and unagitated like a lake in the course of Ganga, is reckoned as wise. That man who knoweth the nature of all ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... had expended my own money on his account, and had asked no reimbursement; but what was my astonishment when this wicked man said to me, with a sneer, "Since, good cousin, you have got into a quarrel without consulting me, you will also get out of it without my aid!" As I left him, he called me back to tell me, "I will take care and pay your undertaker;" for he certainly believed I should ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... Had Mr Paton sent Walter out of the room before; had he at the end said, "Evson, you are not yourself to-day, and I forgive you," Walter would have been in a moment as docile and as humble as a child. But as it was, he left the room quite coolly, with a sneer on his lips, and banged the door; yet the next moment, when he found himself in the court alone, unsupported by the countenance of those who enjoyed his rebelliousness, he seated himself on a bench in the courtyard, hung his head on his breast, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... try to write it for two voices before attempting it in twelve?' was his only comment, uttered in a sharp tone, in which sarcasm was too plainly apparent. Joseph blushed deeper than before. 'Oh,' he said simply; it was all he could say, for the master's sneer had struck home. 'And if you must try your hand at composition,' continued Reutter in a somewhat kinder tone than before, as he observed the tears spring to the boy's eyes, 'let me advise you to write variations ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... Doe treated as though he had not heard it; and Penny, certain that his victory was won, and that he had no further need of my support, kicked it away with the sneer: "Hit Doe, and Ray's bruised! What a David and Jonathan we're going to be! How we agree like steak and kidney!... Rather a nice ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... It was Hunt-Goring's turn to look surprised. He did so with an accompanying sneer. "How did you describe me, I wonder? You ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... just answered when the unpopular freshman broke through the line, grasped Jane's hand and deliberately forced a folded slip of paper into it. Then, with a mocking smile that ran into an audible sneer, she turned and sped away. Her awkward gait and frank romping so close to Wellington Hall brought questioning glances from the ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... who broke the silence. "Your god ignores you Lu-don," he taunted, with a sneer that he meant to still further anger the high priest, "he ignores you and I can prove it before the eyes of ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... learned to beg, and forgotten to command and to exact?" he answered with half a sneer. "See, she still extends her hand to ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... over this he said: "I am beginning to understand, Miss Worth, that the ideal American, whom we are always hearing about but never meet, must be a Westerner; he couldn't possibly be of the East, could he?" His words were almost a sneer. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... cruelly sarcastic his voice, that he became hideous in my eyes. A bleached skull grinning over a tall collar could not have seemed more repulsive than the pink, healthy features of that young man with his single eye-glass and his sneer. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... of the hexameter in modern poetry is due to Johann Heinrich Voss, a man of genius, an admirable metrist, and, Schlegel's sneer to the contrary notwithstanding, hitherto the best translator of Homer. His "Odyssey," (1783,) his "Iliad," (1791,) and his "Luise," (1795,) were confessedly Goethe's teachers in this kind of verse. The "Hermann and Dorothea" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... all sneer again" is to carry canvas to such an extent as to strain the ropes and spars to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... top button of his cape, watching, meanwhile, the terrified woman, and, with a sneer, said: "Oh, stop that, will you? I've had enough of it. You thought you could get away, did you? Well, you can't, and the sooner you find that out the better for you." He glanced coolly around the room. "So this is where you are, is it?—a rotten hole, anyhow. You might ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... have your hands full," said Jack, repressing an angry sneer; "if you wish, my aunt De Morteyn will charge herself with Mademoiselle de ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... Chihli. There Chang Fei, a butcher, who had been selling his meat all the morning, at noon lowered what remained into a well, placed over the mouth of the well a stone weighing twenty-five pounds, and said with a sneer: "If anyone can lift that stone and take my meat, I will make him a present of it!" Kuan Yue, going up to the edge of the well, lifted the stone with the same ease as he would a tile, took the meat, and made off. Chang Fei pursued him, and eventually the two came to blows, but no ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... he was puzzled; but presently came to the conclusion that Werper had been frightened by the approach of the lion, and had sneaked off in terror. A sneer touched Tarzan's lips as he pondered the man's act—the desertion of a comrade in time of danger, and without warning. Well, if that was the sort of creature Werper was, Tarzan wished nothing more of him. He had gone, and for ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... at him for an undecided moment and replied, "I'm not paid to think, Mr. Barclay," and went past him with her work. But he knew the truth. He went to his bed, and threw himself upon it, a-tremble with remorse and fear, and the sneer in his heart stilled his lips and he could not look outside himself for help. So the morning came, and another day, bringing its thousand cares, faced him, like a ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... indeed separately printed and illuminated, is "The Seven Ages of Man," a passage full of inhuman contempt for humanity and unbelief in its destiny, in which not one of the seven ages is allowed to pass over its poor sad stage without a sneer; and that this passage is given by Shakspere to the blase sensualist Jaques in "As You Like it," a man who, the good and wise Duke says, has been as vile as it is possible for man to be, so vile that it ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... dropped his eyes, and adjusted his neckcloth again, the smiling face of Mr Carker the Manager became in a moment, and without any stage of transition, transformed into a most intent and frowning face, scanning his closely, and with an ugly sneer. As Mr Dombey raised his eyes, it changed back, no less quickly, to its old expression, and showed him every gum ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... thoughtfully. "You may sneer, Pope, my boy," he commented. "But this sort of thing has come to stay. The infants are imbibing it with their bottles—self-expression, self-analysis ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... women as members of the chorus of the prevailing Revue, one of them Celeste La Rue, an aggressive blonde with thin lips and a metallic voice, whose name was synonymous with midnight escapades and flowing wine. His contemptuous smile at the sight of them deepened into a disgusted sneer when he saw that one of the men ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... by no means ended the debate. It brought Mr. Powell to his feet with a long and elaborate contention against the general proposition, in the course of which he took occasion to sneer at Sumner's "most remarkable effort," as one of his "long illogical rhapsodies on ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... people asked with a sneer, when Franklin told of his discovery that lightning and electricity are identical. "What is the use of a child?" replied Franklin; "it may ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... rat, "always speak of it with a sneer—as though it were something disgraceful. But you can't blame us, can you? After all, who WOULD stay on a sinking ship, if he could ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... praise, assent with evil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer. Pope, Prologue to the Satires, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... contrast between this man's occupation at the moment, and the expression of his countenance, which was singularly repulsive and malicious. His beetling brow almost obscured his eyes; his lip was curled contemptuously; his very shoulders seemed to sneer in stealthy whisperings with his ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... I waited at Apollo's shrine; I told him what the world would sa If Stella were unsung to-day; How I should hide my head for shame, When both the Jacks and Robin came; How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer, How Sh—-r the rogue would sneer, And swear it does not always follow, That Semel'n anno ridet Apollo. I have assured them twenty times, That Phoebus helped me in my rhymes, Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove. But finding me so dull and dry since, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... mind, and had always objected to marrying a woman so far beneath him. The sight of his bride, with her rustic air, and the ill-made commonplace-looking clothes in which she was dressed, made his face burn with shame, for he knew that a sneer was lurking on the face of everyone who had gathered to ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... be produced against some of our sex, who join too readily to droll upon, and sneer at, the misfortune of any poor young creature, who has shewn too little regard for her honour: and who (instead of speaking of it with concern, and inveighing against the seducer) too lightly sport with the unhappy person's fall; industriously spread the knowledge of it—" [I would ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... friendship, she is secretly fomenting opposition to legitimate Italian aspirations in the Balkan peninsula and in the Middle Sea. (Again let me remind you that I am giving you not my own, but Italy's point of view.) You will sneer at this, perhaps, as a phantasm of the imagination, but I assure you, with all the earnestness and emphasis at my command, that this distrust of one great Latin nation for another, whether it is justified or not, forms a deadly menace to the ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... sacrifices, those untiring exertions, that zeal which has never wavered, that hope so steadfast, since it is that of an Englishwoman for her husband, that patience under misconstruction, that forgiveness for the sneer of jealousy, and that pity for the malicious, which you have so pre-eminently displayed, may yet, by God's help, one day reap its reward in the accomplishment of your wishes, is the ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... Knowledge, Brotherhood; The ignorant may sneer, The bad deny; but we rely To see their triumphs near. No widow's groans shall load our cause, Nor blood of brethren slain; We've won without such aid before, And so we ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the judge was hardly civil to Pupkin. He hadn't asked him to the house till Zena brought him there, though, as a rule, all the bank clerks in Mariposa treated Judge Pepperleigh's premises as their own. He used to sit and sneer at Pupkin after he had gone till Zena would throw down the Pioneers of Tecumseh Township in a temper and flounce off the piazza to her room. After which the judge's manner would change instantly and he would relight his corn cob pipe and sit and positively beam with contentment. In all ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... how greatly he had exaggerated the effect to be produced by his act. For a few nights there was a sneer or a laugh when he knelt down, but this passed off soon, and one by one all the other boys but three or four followed ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... and Zambos, naked, emaciated, scarred with whips and fetters, and chained together by their left wrists, toiled upwards, panting and perspiring under the burden of a basket held up by a strap which passed across their foreheads. Yeo's sneer was but too just; there were not only old men and youths among them, but women; slender young girls, mothers with children running at their knee; and, at the sight, a low murmur of indignation rose from the ambushed Englishmen, worthy of the free and righteous ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... bit of it. You've told me to go, and I'm going at once—this very day. The police will find me at my father's for the next fortnight," said Hutchings with a sneer. "And when I go to London I'll ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... and I have had to wipe up many a sneer and many a sarcasm on his account; but up to now I have always been able to reply that this five feet one of egotism loves me sincerely; and the moment I doubt this, I give him ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... is utterly in vain to think of giving them chase, or of preventing them from going and coming, and doing just as they their selves please. This is the occasion that, when at any time the Christian galleys chase them, their custom is, by way of game and sneer, to point to their fresh-tallowed poops, as they glide along like fishes before them, all one as if they showed them their backs to salute: and as in the cruising art, by continual practise, they are so very expert, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... a sneer, "are you so little skilled in the ways of the woods, as to mistake the voice of a vile animal for that of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... indicating Clayton with an angry shake of his head, " air a-tryin' to spile ever'body's fun. Both of ye air too high-heeled fer us folks. Y'u hev got mighty good now that ye air a preacher," he added, with a drunken sneer, irritated beyond endurance by Raines's silence and his steady look. "I want ye to know Bill Hicks air a-runnin' things here, 'n' I don't want no meddlin'. I'll drink right here in front o' ye "-holding a bottle defiantly above his head-" 'n' I mean to ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... returns the sorceress with a sneer, evidently in anger at having her offer so rejected. "If Kaolin can right your wrongs, let him." And she adds, making to move off, "I suppose you haven't any more need for ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... same formula and arguments were used. At last he heard a voice in challenge that he knew. It was that of Maillot. This was a more difficult game. His order was taken with a malicious sneer by the sentinel. At that instant Laflamme threw his arms swiftly round the other, clapped a hand on his mouth, and, with a dexterous twist of leg, threw him backward, till it seemed as if the spine of the soldier must break. It was impossible to struggle against this trick of wrestling, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the island, clad in another pair of white trousers and another sweater. He carried his wet garments at arm's length. Jimmy Kinsella went to meet him. They talked together as they walked down to the boats. Then the two ladies kissed each other warmly. Priscilla watched the performance with a sneer. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... which had been looked for at the Christmas holidays, and they then increased their exertions to make Mr. Lincoln issue a proclamation abolishing slavery. At the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, held at Boston, in January, 1862, Wendell Phillips, with a sneer, expressed himself thus: "Mr. Seward had predicted that the war would be over in ninety days, but he didn't believe, as things were going, it would be over in ninety years. He believed Lincoln was honest, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... die even the undertaker will be sorry Whereas we can think, we generally don't do it Which was which? Woman a eulogy of the fair sex Woodrow Wilson Wouldn't read that book again without a salary. Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is. You must never ask for wages You sneer, you ships that pass me by ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... Ex Oriente lux; ex Oriente gaudia seraglii! It is in our blessed epoch that atheism, by some, and pantheism, by others, are boldly taught and vindicated, as once they were by Greeks or Orientals, and with an earnestness and enthusiasm very different from the sneer with which Encyclopaedists of Voltaire's time attacked Christianity and Deism. To prove, however, the magnificent many-sidedness of our noble times, it is we that have returned once more to pictures of the Virgin Mary with winking and with weeping eyes, or to her apparitions talking patois, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... an insufferable insolence in the smile, an insufferable sneer in the compliment. Ethel had half extended a timid hand—Victor had wholly extended a pleading one. She took not the slightest notice of either. She lifted the white veil, and looked down at the ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... had better answer that question," suggested Barraclough with a little sneer. Day moved some papers ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... adulation. Daily, semi-weekly, or weekly did Fenno, Porcupine Cobbett, Dennie, Coleman, and the other Federal journalists, not content with proclaiming him an ambitious, cunning, and deceitful demagogue, ridicule his scientific theories, shudder at his irreligion, sneer at his courage, and allude coarsely to his private morals in a manner more discreditable to themselves than to him; crowning all their accusations and innuendoes with a reckless profusion of epithet. While at the same times and places the whole company of the Democratic press, led by Bache, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... reverse of this. I had neither simplicity of aim, nor stability of affection. One slip from the path, and I hadn't energy to take the road again. One vicious inclination, and the virtuous resolves of years melted before it. The sneer of a fool could frighten me from rectitude—the smile of a girl render me indifferent to the pangs that tear a parent's heart. Look at us both. Look at him—the man whom I treated with contemptuous derision. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... will be able to judge how well qualified the author is to sneer at Mr. Newman's metaphysics, which are far more accurate than his own, or to ridicule his logic. The tone of contempt which he habitually assumes preposterously reverses the relative intellectual status, so far as sound systematic ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... from any scientific spirit or scientific acumen that this materialistic coterie avoid psychometric and spiritual facts. The newspapers which ignore or sneer at such knowledge are easily gulled in matters of science. A writer in the Open Court upon the possibilities of the future, which he presents as being confined "strictly to legitimate deductions from present knowledge," exhibits an amount and variety of ignorant credulity which ought ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... for Sam to go after the sneer. He hesitated. But he had promised. He looked at Bela, but she would not meet his eye. Finally he shrugged and went out. They heard him talking to his horses outside. Joe, scowling and avoiding Bela's eye, dropped into the seat the other ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... them thus modified, and lay on the lash of sarcasm with unsparing hand. They would feel the sting, perhaps wince a little under it; but they bore no malice against this sort of attack, provided the sneer was not sour, but hearty, and that it held well up to them, in a clear, light, and bold type, so that she who ran might read, their incapacity, ignorance, and sloth. They would riot for three additional lines to a lesson; but I never knew them rebel ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... occurs to him to give a reason for or to justify his pursuits. Another subsequently utilizes his results, and applies them to the benefit of the race. Meanwhile, however, it may happen that the yet unapplied and unfruitful results evoke a sneer, and the question: "Cui bono?" the only answer to which question seems to be: "No one is wise enough to tell beforehand what gigantic developments may not spring from the most ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... combined the two methods, which was doubtless as well as if they hadn't, because for some time they accomplished nothing whatever, and so neither one was able to sneer ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... try some of his impudence on me!" commented Bibot with a sneer, "he'll soon find out that he no longer has a Ferney to deal with. Take it from me, citizen Marat, that if a batch of aristocrats escape out of Paris within the next few days, under the guidance of the d—d Englishman, they will have to ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... no one sneer at the bruisers of England—what were the gladiators of Rome, or the bull-fighters of Spain, in its palmiest days, compared ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... air of triumphant glee in her manner, an open and mocking sneer, which dismayed him. He was sure that he had erred in telling her his secret; yet he reflected that he could hardly have done otherwise, and that she surely would not dare to refuse to give up a legal ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... himself well, and choosing to imagine that all mankind were cast in the same mould, hated them; for, though no man hates himself, the coldest among us having too much self-love for that, yet most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens |
