"Cynic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... persons of note near Corinth came to congratulate him on this occasion; but Diognes of Sinope who was then living in one of the suburbs of Corinth, did not make his appearance. Alexander therefore resolved to pay a visit to the eccentric cynic, whom he found basking in the sun. On the approach of Alexander with a numerous retinue, Diogenes raised himself up a little, and the monarch affably inquired how he could serve him? "By standing out of my sunshine," replied the churlish philosopher. Alexander was stung with surprise at a behaviour ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... A cynic, considering the fact that women was the last thing made by God, asserts that the product shows both His experience ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... professor in Trinity College, Dublin, a cynic and a humorist, is reported once to have wondered "why the old Irish, having a good religion of their own, did not stick to it?" Living in the "Celtic twilight," and striving to pierce backward into the dawn, reading romance, tradition and history, I have endeavoured to ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... by a cynic that Banker Sanford had all the virtues of a defaulting bank cashier. He had no bad habits beyond smoking. He was genial, companionable, and especially ready to help when sickness came. When old Freeme Cole ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... rather reminds one, in his evident contempt for Epitaphs, of the cynic who asked, "Where are all the bad people buried?" ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... expects the Hindoos to accept her view of politics has herself accepted their view of religion. She wants first to steal their earth, and then to share their heaven. The same Imperial cynic who wishes the Turks to submit to English science has himself submitted to Turkish philosophy, to a wholly Turkish ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... you should find that bushmen — spite of all the poets say — Are just common brother-sinners, and you're quite as good as they — You're a drunkard, and a liar, and a cynic, and a sneak, Your grammar's simply awful and your intellect ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... feeling that man is a poor mean creature. He may be wretched and he may be awful, but he is not small. His lot may be heart-rending and mysterious, but it is not contemptible. The most confirmed of cynics ceases to be a cynic while he reads these plays. And with this greatness of the tragic hero (which is not always confined to him) is connected, secondly, what I venture to describe as the centre of the tragic impression. This central feeling is the impression of ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... play the spy, Lay traps for fancied frailty, disenthrall "Manhood" by "playing for" a woman's fall; Redeem the wreckage of a "noble" name By building hope on sin, and joy on shame; Redress the work of passion's reckless boldness By craven afterthoughts of cynic coldness; Purge from low taint "the blood of all the HOWARDS" By borrowings from the code of cads and cowards! Noblesse oblige? Better crass imbecility Of callow youth—with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... inspiration of it; those of the later wanderings are mainly filled with brief, terse records, interspersed with satire and denunciation. In the 'Innocents' the writer is the enthusiast with a sense of humor. In the 'Tramp' he has still the sense of humor, but he has become a cynic; restrained, but a cynic none the less. In the 'Innocents' he laughs at delusions and fallacies—and enjoys them. In the 'Tramp' he laughs at human foibles and affectations—and wants to smash them. Very often he does not laugh heartily and sincerely at ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... books, right is right, and wrong wrong, and he is never tempted to jingle his jester's bell out of season, and make right look ridiculous. And if the humour of "Pickwick" be wholesome, it is also most genial and kindly. We have here no acrid cynic sneeringly pointing out the plague spots of humanity, and showing pleasantly how even the good are tainted with evil. Rather does Dickens delight in finding some touch of goodness, some lingering memory of better things, some hopeful aspiration, some trace ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... lifeless in the dust, Wagner suddenly leaves tragedy and gives us a melodious duet between the brother and sister on the theme: "What can equal a brother's love?" This duet and finale unite to form a masterpiece; a deserved rebuke to any cynic who may consider that Wagner could not adopt the enervating methods of the Italian school if he desired. His cadenzas here are miracles of compressed technique, and, although the melody is conventional, the music itself is never for a moment simple ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is a nom de plume that is known and loved by almost every boy of intelligence in the land. We have seen a highly intellectual and world-weary man, a cynic whose heart was somewhat embittered by its large experience of human nature, take up one of OLIVER OPTIC'S books, and read it at a sitting, neglecting his work in yielding to the fascination of the pages. When a mature and exceedingly well-informed mind, long despoiled of all its ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... indifferent to the appreciation of their fellows. He could, indeed, in a mock-cynical humour, write of what a man must do 'if he thinks it worth while to stand well with others:'[1] but in himself there was nothing of the cynic, and to stand well with others was to his genial nature a source of genuine and undisguised gratification. It was well said of him afterwards in reference to the honours paid to him at this period, that while he did not require the stimulus of praise, or even ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... church how new and still more malignant kinds of poison begin to distil out of our incurably wicked hearts to eat out the heart of our own nearest and dearest friendships. Envy, for one thing, which no preacher, not even Pascal or Newman, no moralist, no satirist, no cynic has yet dared to tell the half of the horrible truth about: drip, drip, drip, its hell-sprung venom soaks secretly into the oldest, the dearest and the truest friendship. Yes, let it be for once said, the viper-like venom of ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... Like It,' which quickly followed, is a dramatic adaptation of Lodge's romance, 'Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie' (1590), but Shakespeare added three new characters of first-rate interest—Jaques, the meditative cynic; Touchstone, the most carefully elaborated of all Shakespeare's fools; and the hoyden Audrey. Hints for the scene of Orlando's encounter with Charles the Wrestler, and for Touchstone's description of the diverse shapes of a lie, were clearly drawn from a book called 'Saviolo's ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... The cynic is ever ready to say that the tyrant living within a man declares only for those things which represent great sacrifice of time and effort on the part of other men. Perhaps it is true, and that therein lies the preference of the connoisseur in tapestry for the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... to go. He is the Patient Plodder, symbol of mature intelligence. And he has in his company two small boys who exhibit an incorrigible {5} naughtiness. The one of these is called Destruction; his other names being Cynic, Sceptic, and Nihilist. He it is that mocks and cries, "Go up, thou bald head! go up, thou bald head!" Mankind does not curse him in the name of the Lord, but invites him to play with another small boy, named Obstruction, and whose other names are Vested Interest, Reactionary, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... mines of Nihilists till they felt like the House of Lords, this great game of dishing the anarchists continued for some time to be his most effective business. It would be untrue to say that he was a cynic; he was never a cynic, for that implies a certain corrupt fatigue about human affairs, whereas he was vibrating with virtue and energy. Nor would it be fair to call him even a sceptic, for that implies a dogma of hopelessness and definite belief in unbelief. But it ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... January, 1790. It has never been so successful as its two predecessors, chiefly on account of its libretto, which, though a brisk little comedy of intrigue, is almost too slight to bear a musical setting. The plot turns upon a wager laid by two young officers with an old cynic of their acquaintance to prove the constancy of their respective sweethearts. After a touching leave-taking they return disguised as Albanians and proceed to make violent love each one to the other's fiancee. The ladies at first resist ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... right pleasant tales Of bonnes fortunes! Here a quaint cynic rails, There an enthusiast gushes. Gay talk flows on, not in a rolling stream, But with the brooklet's intermittent gleam And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... sometimes to a cynic that there go two words to a bargain. In the convent of St. Sebastian all was gratitude; gratitude (as aforesaid) to the hidalgo from all the convent for his present, until at last the hidalgo began to express gratitude ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... many years ago. He was suffering very much at the time through a woman. Now he will tell you he has become a cynic." ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... indeed the statesmen of the Georgian era were no worse than their predecessors; while in fidelity to principles and a desire for the public good they stood immeasurably above them. The standard of political action had risen with the Revolution. Cynic as was Walpole, jobber as was Newcastle, it would be absurd to compare their conception of public duty, their conduct of public affairs, with that of the Danbys ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... a cynic, but there is a glimmer of truth in his idea that makes it worth repeating. But beyond the natural religion, which is a passion for oneness with the Whole, all formalized religions engraft the element of fear, and teach the necessity of placating a Supreme Being. Our ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... social reformer bitter upon Christmas drunkenness; our economist indignant upon Christmas charities. Only one argument of any weight with us was advanced in favour of the festival, and that was our leading cynic's suggestion that it was worth enduring the miseries of Christmas, to enjoy the soul-satisfying comfort of the after reflection that it was all over, and could not occur ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... motion, and followed her beloved George Louis. One seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. The king we had selected; the courtiers who came in his train; the English nobles who came to welcome him, and on many of whom the shrewd old cynic turned his back—I protest it is a wonderful satirical picture. I am a citizen waiting at Greenwich pier, say, and crying hurrah for King George; and yet I can scarcely keep my countenance, and help laughing at the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sire-sown tree, And the hieroglyphs of this spouse tied to that, With offspring mapped below in lineage, Till the tangles troubled me, The branches seemed to twist into a seared and cynic face Which winked and tokened towards the window like a Mage Enchanting me to ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... never been attained in a degree so eminent. This first interchange of thought upon a topic of literature did not tend to slacken my previous disposition to retreat into solitude; a solitude, however, which at no time was tainted with either the moroseness or the pride of a cynic. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... ear, a souvenir of a bullet or a knife, and a scar just under the edge of his chin to the right. When he compressed his lips, this scar, not especially noticeable at other times, lifted up into his face, became of a sickly, bluish white, and transformed a careless, good-humored cynic into a man ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... obviously imply a gross misunderstanding, whether Bentham, not a good observer of men, said so or not. But it indicates the side of Mill's character which made him unattractive to contemporaries and also to posterity. He partook, says his son,[31] of the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Cynic character. He was a Stoic in his personal qualities; an Epicurean so far as his theory of morals was concerned; and a Cynic in that he cared little for pleasure. He thought life a 'poor thing' after the freshness of youth had passed; ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... the new order that would any more do so. While the universality of culture and refinement vastly widens the circle from which one may choose congenial associates, there is nothing to prevent anybody from living a life as absolutely unsocial as the veriest cynic of the old time ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... upon his dress; and the man of sense laughs at it, at the same time that he knows he must not neglect it. There are a thousand foolish customs of this kind, which not being criminal, must be complied with, and even cheerfully, by men of sense. Diogenes the cynic was a wise man for despising them; but a fool for showing it. Be wiser than other people if you can; but do ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... in greatest reputation among them, and lived a private quiet life, he sent Onesicritus, one of Diogenes the Cynic's disciples, desiring them to come to him. Calanus, it is said, very arrogantly and roughly commanded him to strip himself, and hear what he said, naked, otherwise he would not speak a word to him, though he came from Jupiter himself. But Dandamis received him with more civility, and hearing ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... wry smile at Kit, and a touch of cynic humor, "you had right in going. The lieutenant would have had no pleasure in adding me to his elopement, and, as we hear,—your stolen trail carried ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... cases, they may believe that society is served by the maintenance of a national faith, and accordingly preach with all manner of mental reserves and symbolical interpretations. These are in reality politicians, not priests. But Peak belongs to neither class. He is an acute cynic, bent on making the best of this world, since he believes in no other. How he must have chuckled after every visit to this house! He despises you, one and all. Believe me, he regards you ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... of the untruths published in the French press during the war has been reproduced by the Paris journal, Bonsoir. It contains abundant pabulum for the cynic and valuable data for the psychologist. The example might be followed in Great Britain. The title is: "Anthologie du Bourrage de Crane." It began in ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... your sleeve, you wretched old cynic, if you knew how I lie awake nights, with my gas turned down to a star, thinking of The Pines and the house across the road. How cool it must be down there! I long for the salt smell in the air. I picture the colonel smoking his cheroot on the piazza. ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... long ere we arrived at the place of destination. Of course nothing could be said in my defence. Hanging was my inevitable fate. I resigned myself thereto with a feeling half stupid, half acrimonious. Being little of a cynic, I had all the sentiments of a dog. The hangman, however, adjusted the noose about my ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... absolutely necessary to adorn any, or all other good qualities or talents. Without them, no knowledge, no perfection whatever, is seen in its best light. The scholar, without good-breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... like that, he ought to pay the indemnity. Isn't it his place rather than ours to look after the girl?—who, to tell you the truth, seems to me rather questionable; there are plenty of better men in Alencon than that cynic du Bousquier. A girl must be depraved, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... upon the brilliant combination which had resulted in the capture of the army, he added these words: "But, after all, your excellency's achievements in the Jerseys were such that nothing could surpass them!" And the witty and wise old cynic, Mr. Horace Walpole, with his usual discrimination, wrote to a friend, Sir Horace Mann, when he heard of the affair at Trenton, the night march to Princeton, and the successful attack there: "Washington, the dictator, has shown himself both a Fabius and a Camillus. His march ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... mournful and unpleasant to pass through life burdened with the reflection that it would have been better not to have been born, albeit such sentiments are not altogether inconsistent with the power of deriving a certain amount of enjoyment from living. It was that pleasure-loving old cynic, Madame du Deffand, who said: "Il n'y a qu'un seul malheur, celui d'etre ne." Nevertheless, the avowed joyousness bred by the laughing tides and purple skies of Greece is certainly more conducive to human ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... among the choice representatives of the class in question,—ay, and find it, too. Nor would the ardor of search be chilled by the suggestion of scarcity conveyed in the practical sarcasm of the sly old cynic, when he scorched human nature with a horn lantern by instituting a search with it on the sun-bright highways for an unauthenticated type of man. And yet the rowdy, like many another ugly and repulsive thing, may have his use. In the East Indies, it is customary to keep a live ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Cynic perforce from studying mankind In the false volume of his single mind, He damned his fellows for his own unworth, And, bad himself, thought nothing good on earth. Yet, still so judging and so erring still, Observing well, but understanding ill, His ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... spoke, the long-pent murmur went forth, and the philosophers that were mingled with the people, muttered their sage contempt; there might you have seen the chilling frown of the Stoic, and the Cynic's sneer; and the Epicurean, who believeth not even in our own Elysium, muttered a pleasant jest, and swept laughing through the crowd: but the deep heart of the people was touched and thrilled; and they trembled, though they knew not why, for verily the stranger had the voice ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... telling of a length of years beyond what is lived now. Surely, past ages, could one get at the historic soul of them, were not dead but living, rich in company, for the entertainment, the expansion, of the present; and Duke Carl was still without suspicion of the cynic afterthought that such historic soul was but an arbitrary substitution, a generous loan of ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... of truth. In private life a girl of this description embroils the peace of families, walks attended by a troop of scowling swains, and passes, once at least, through the divorce court; it is a common and, except to the cynic, an uninteresting type. On the throne, however, and in the hands of a man like Gondremark, she may become the authoress ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Maria Edgeworth, the woman, one cannot easily say too much in praise. That home life, so loving, so wise, and so helpful, was beautiful to its end. Miss Zimmern has treated it with delicate appreciation. Her book is refined in conception and tasteful in execution,—all, in short, the cynic might say, that we expect a woman's book to ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... remnants of newspaper cynicism occasionally appear in their outspoken philosophy. But be not deceived by this, for even in the newspaper office the half-baked cub who is getting his first glimpses of woman's frailties and man's weak will is the only cynic who means all he says. All reporters who are worth their salt mellow with the years; and editors who amount to much usually are ex-reporters trained to their jobs by long experience. The biggest editors ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... severely. "Remember this: I didn't marry you because I thought you were a cynic. Now Walter as a ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... cynic," remarked Dr. Theophilus, smiling, "and I don't doubt that she has her excellent reasons, as usual; most cynics have. A woman, however, has got to believe in love to the point of lunacy or become a scoffer. What I contend, now, is that love isn't moonshine, but that however ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... the philosopher that the great lady took to ride with her in her coach, and would needs have him carry her little dog, which he doing officiously and yet uncomely, the page scoffed and said, "That he doubted the philosopher of a Stoic would turn to be a Cynic." But, above all the rest, this gross and palpable flattery whereunto many not unlearned have abased and abused their wits and pens, turning (as Du Bartas saith) Hecuba into Helena, and Faustina into Lucretia, hath most diminished the price ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... thou furnish them with fresher prey? Alas! thou wilt not conquer, but purvey. I am Diogenes, though Russ and Hun[324] Stand between mine and many a myriad's sun; But were I not Diogenes, I'd wander Rather a worm than such an Alexander! Be slaves who will, the cynic shall be free; 480 His tub hath tougher walls than Sinope:[en] Still will he hold his lantern up to scan The face of monarchs for an ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... himself; and the anxious shade that came upon his contented face when, after wandering round the room, exulting in its uninvaded snugness, his glance encountered the dull brow of his companion; no cynic in the world, though in his hatred of its men a very griffin, could have withstood these things in ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... of God. These were the instructions he gave, thinking that the favors he granted this man were granted to a good man, and one that deserved to have such care taken of his affairs. This man was Nabal, for that was his name,—a harsh man, and of a very wicked life, being like a cynic in the course of his behavior, but still had obtained for his wife a woman of a good character, wise and handsome. To this Nabal, therefore, David sent ten men of his attendants at the time when he sheared his sheep, and by ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... A Necromantic Experiment." Translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler. Menippus was a Cynic philosopher, originally a slave, born in Syria. He lived about 60 B.C., and wrote much, but all his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... answered Barker, with a perfect placidity. "Suppose he is a tyrant—he is still a check on a hundred tyrants. Suppose he is a cynic, it is to his interest to govern well. Suppose he is a criminal—by removing poverty and substituting power, we put a check on his criminality. In short, by substituting despotism we have put a total check on one criminal and a partial check on all ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... and repulsive forces (more commonly the latter, the cynic will say) in our social system, but each individual is the centre of various forces acting upon him. In nature all matter possesses the force of gravity, and whatever the size of two particles may be, they mutually attract each other. The earth ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, 85 Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, Something that gives our feeble light 90 A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; A seed of sunshine that doth leaven Our earthly dulness with the beams ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... love letter was left in pawn because she could not find her purse? The grizzled veteran never collects the "two cents due" on the love letters that are a little overweight. He would not put a value upon anything so precious, and he is seldom a cynic—perhaps because, more than anyone else, he is ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... "Cynic! The thought seems to please you! You want to see me discomfited and defeated. Very well; you can drop me right here if you like, but I'll wager something handsome that you'll regret your skepticism all the rest of your days. Resistance ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... hear!' That shibboleth of shallow souls Around his ears in clamorous cadence rolls; He swells, he glows, he twinkles; The sapient Chairman wags his snowy pate, Whilst cynic triumph, cautious yet elate, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... to face the new day with such a bubbling cheerfulness. It is certainly congestion that makes night hideous with visions, all the chambers of a many-storeyed caravanserai, haunted with vociferous nightmares, and many wakeful people come down late for breakfast in the morning. Upon that theory the cynic may explain the whole affair—exhilaration, nightmares, pomp of tongue and all. But, on the other hand, the peculiar blessedness of boyhood may itself be but a symptom of the same complaint, for the two effects are strangely similar; and the frame of mind of the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... years dipped deeply into things mundane, and had come to the surface, sputtering and blowing, with his face well smeared with mud from the shallow depths. Whereupon he remarked that such an existence was a poor way of serving the Lord, and turned cynic. His wit was his saving grace. It was likewise his capital and stock-in-trade. By it he won a place for himself in the newspaper world, and later, as a credit asset, had employed it successfully in negotiating for the Social Era. It taking over the publication of this sheet he had remarked ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... for him. . . . Has she not matured? might it not have "done," after all? The nosegay was not so insipid! . . . But suddenly, while she mocks, the deeper "truth of that" invades her soul, and she must cease from cynic gibes, and yield the word to something ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... politics,—acknowledged no leader, had himself no followers. A chief without a party, an apostle without disciples, a critic without the merest ordinary penetration, a cynic whose bitterness was not enlivened by wit or humor, a spouter whose arguments, when he had any, were usually furnished from the mint, John Arthur Roebuck was for many years that impersonation of terrific honesty, glaring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... house was so good-natured, comfortable, and well-conditioned, that a cynic would have ceased to growl there. Mrs. Laura was all graciousness and smiles, and looked to as great advantage in her pretty morning-gown as in her dress-robe at Mrs. Perkins's. Mrs. Chuff fired off her stories about the 'Nebuchadnezzar,' 74, the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... under the shadow of his penthouse brows with the deep speculative interest she had aroused in him from the first. He had theories upon several subjects, which she seemed to be going to show the result of in practice—and in his kindly cynic's heart she was now enshrined in a ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... his neighbors. The association between these two widely-dissimilar men had lasted for many years, and was almost close enough to be called a friendship. They had acquired a habit of meeting to smoke together on certain evenings in the week, in the cynic-philosopher's study, and of there disputing on every imaginable subject—Mr. Vanstone flourishing the stout cudgels of assertion, and Mr. Clare meeting him with the keen edged-tools of sophistry. They generally ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... skilful as Salmasius or Scaliger, but still more learned in the language of abuse. This cynic was the Attila of authors. He boasted that he had occasioned the deaths of Casaubon and Scaliger. Detested and dreaded as the public scourge, Scioppius, at the close of his life, was fearful he should find no retreat in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of his dialogue—Addison, whose fame as a poet greatly exceeded his genius, which was cold and enervate; though he yielded to none in the character of an essayist, either for style or matter—Swift, whose muse seems to have been mere misanthropy; he was a cynic rather than a poet, and his natural dryness and sarcastic severity would have been unpleasing, had not he qualified them, by adopting the extravagant humour of Lueian and Rabelais—Prior, lively, familiar, and amusing—Rowe, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... celebrated cynic philosopher and magician of Ephesus, instructed the Emperor Julian in magic. Certain historians say it was through his teaching that the apostacy of Julian originated. When the emperor went in search of conquests, the magician promised him success, and even predicted ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... settlement of the matter in the speculum of a telescope, it may be some time before we have done with what Guillemin calls "the interesting, almost insoluble question, of the existence of living and organized beings on the surface of the satellite of our little earth." [425] Some cynic may ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... his Proverbs. Her maid-servants arose at six in the morning and called her blessed, for though her rule was strict it was just and loving. She was at once the mistress and the friend of her household; no Yankee captain so audacious that he ventured to oppose her law; no cynic so cold as not to be melted by her tenderness. She was clad always in black, with a white cap and ribbons, always spotless amid the grime of Liverpool; in her more active moments—though she was always active—she added a white apron to her attire. She was ever anywhere ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... world, why indeed he expended so much of his mind and art on the analysis and dissection of every kind of evil, laying bare for us the working of the mind of the criminal, the hypocrite, the weakling, and the cynic; because he ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... of vision, and to invite that devastating disease of our time and of all times, morbid self-consciousness. The man who lives exclusively in thought becomes a theorist, an indifferent observer, or a cynic; he who lives exclusively in feeling becomes a sentimentalist or a pessimist; he who lives exclusively in action becomes a mere executive energy, a pure objective force in society. These types are found in all times, and exhibit in a great ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... seen near and at a distance. The testimony of Xenophon is thus confirmed by that of Plato, and we are therefore justified in calling Socrates the first utilitarian; as indeed there is no side or aspect of philosophy which may not with reason be ascribed to him—he is Cynic and Cyrenaic, Platonist and Aristotelian in one. But in the Phaedo the Socratic has already passed into a more ideal point of view; and he, or rather Plato speaking in his person, expressly repudiates the notion that the exchange of a less pleasure for a greater can be an ...
— Philebus • Plato
... "Cynic," he said, pulling the bedclothes away from my face. I consider this the lowest form of horseplay I know of. "How quickly your ideals have been tarnished by contact with the vulgar world of newspaperdom. Front and center, Bertie lad, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... forefathers rebel against that conception again and again, till they finally trampled it under their feet, and so appear, prima facie, as offenders to be judged at its bar; but the conception itself is one which takes the very same view of nature as that cynic conception of which we spoke above. Man, with the Romish divines, is, ipso facto, the same being as the man of Voltaire, Le Sage, or Beaumarchais; he is an insane and degraded being, who is to be kept in ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... your physiognomy of disease includes not merely its face, but its voice; not only the picture that it draws, but the sound that it makes. For, when all has been allowed and discounted that the most hardened cynic or pessimistic agnostic can say about speech being given to man to conceal his thoughts, and the hopeless unreliability of human testimony, two-thirds of what your patients tell you about their symptoms will be found to be literally the voice of ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... given to analyse human hearts and discover their misery, to look deeply into the lives of his fellow creatures, below the platitudes and conventionalities. He is richly endowed with the divine gift of sympathy, the supreme art of discrimination, yet occasionally reveals the witty spirits of the cynic, who is cynical ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... legions Caesar would still be master of three-fourths of the earth. Rome thought more in her latter days of grapes and oysters and mullets, that change colour as they die, and singing girls and flute-playing, and cynic verse of Horace—anything rather than corn. Rome is no more, and the lords of the world are they who have mastership of wheat. We have the mastership at this hour by dint of our gold and our hundred-ton guns, but they are telling our farmers to cast aside their corn, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... gambled with life as easily and readily as with the cards which fell from her jewelled fingers. In her face, although it was still the face of a child, there was the same inscrutable expression, the same calm languor of one who takes and receives what life offers with the indifference of the cynic, or the imperturbability of the philosopher. There was little of the joy or the anticipation of youth there, and yet, behind the eyes, as they looked out into the darkness, there was something—some such effort, perhaps, as one seeking to penetrate the ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... (The), Diog'enes, the Cynic philosopher lived in a tub, and it is to this fact that illusion ...
— 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.
... a wonder that his parents should have given to him such a name, and a greater wonder that Abigail should have married him. He inherited Caleb's estate; but he was far from inheriting his virtues. His wealth was great; but he was a selfish, snarling cynic. Abigail's name signifies "the joy of her father;" but he could not have promised himself much joy in her, caring more for the wealth than for the wisdom of her husband. Many a child is thus thrown away—married ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... matters much better in the Middle Ages. For the Greeks and Romans contented themselves with mocking at rich people, and constructing merry dialogues between Charon and Diogenes or Menippus, in which the ferryman and the cynic rejoiced together as they saw kings and rich men coming down to the shore of Acheron, in lamenting and lamentable crowds, casting their crowns into the dark waters, and searching, sometimes in vain, for the ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... church, and people listened for familiar sentences with something like the composed gravity with which they heard on Sundays the reading of the second lesson. But as the stage-talk went on, the slave-maidens announcing themselves without delay comfortably modern and commonplace, and Pilate a cynic and a decadent, though as distinctively from Melbourne, it was possible to note the breaking up of this sentiment. It was plain, after all, that no standard of ideality was to be maintained or struggled after. The relief ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... desire to help gifted men to find their true place in the world where they might do their largest work. This, in an age when competition and jealous rivalry in public and in private life was as common as it is now, may give pause to the cynic and joy to the ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... not many, but the seeds were sown which will bring forth a rich harvest in the future. In that noble crusade, which he undertook single-handed against tyranny and oppression, he supplied the best possible answer to the cynic's question whether or ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... kind, you old cynic! I shan't tell you another thing about it." But still she went on: "We've taken the old Laurence house on the corner of Garfield Avenue and Pine Street, and it's to be fitted up to ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... note on these lines, quotes the proverbial saying 'As wise as the Waltham calf that went nine times to suck a bull.' He quotes also from The Spectator, No. 138, the passage where the Cynic said of two disputants, 'One of these fellows is milking a ram, and the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... sneering cynic—write nonsense and fiction On champagne and velvet, on satin and sin; Though the joke may be able, 'tis false as a fable, And shows what a fog ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... of Warehold, they had only words of praise for the turnout. Uncle Ephraim declared that it was a "Jim Dandy," which not only showed his taste, but which also proved how much broader that good-natured cynic had become in later years. Billy Tatham gazed at it with staring eyes as it trundled down the highway and turned into the gate, and at once determined to paint two of his hacks bright yellow and give each driver a lap-robe with the letter "T" ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... need it," replied the cynic; "without it, few pursue successfully, and fewer are themselves pursued.—Stop!" he said to Miss Vere, as her companions moved off, "With you I have more to say. You have what your companions would wish to have, or be thought to have,—beauty, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... been the cynic he is often called, he would have borne with callous indifference, as he did bear in dignified silence, the attacks made upon him for his revelations of Carlyle. But Froude was not what he seemed. Behind his stately presence, and lofty manner, and calmly audacious speech, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... into that category many things which have hitherto been considered far less occasional. What is honour but a garment? What money but a walking-stick? What are fine manners but a wig? If I professed, instead of abhorring, the Cynic school of philosophy, I might go on to ask what were love but an ointment, or religion but a tinted glass. I can thank my Redeemer, as I sit here in my green haven, with the stormy sea of my troubles afar off, beating in vain against the walls ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... were again and from that time forward closed. Isidorus the platonist and Salustius the Cynic were among the learned men of greatest note who then withdrew from Alexandria. Isidorus had been chosen by Marinus as his successor in the platonic chair at Athens, to fill the high post of the platonic successor; but he had left the Athenian school to Zenodotus, a pupil of Proclus, and had ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... great wisdom of that sturdy beggar the Cynic with the long beard; for at first he abstained from lupines and radishes, saying that Virtue ought not to be a slave to the belly; but when he saw a snowy womb dressed with sharp sauce before his eyes, which ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... uncovering some new tragic element in life. Anything optimistic falls flat. The literary men of Europe are recklessly underbidding each other in the attempt to show that life is sadder, or meaner, or baser, or emptier than had been supposed. The cynic and the pessimist share public attention. Not that European writers are insincere. The authors and thinkers themselves have been the first to feel the Zeitgeist. They have written as they have because they have found the melancholy view of life the most fruitful thing in recent culture. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... in consequence of having been bitten by dogs. What does it matter whether they were the victims of bodily disease or mental irritation? The life of the most humble human being is of more value than all the dogs in the world—dare the most brutal cynic say otherwise?" ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... and ridicule will justly reveal the unbalanced judgment of the sentimentalist. Nor must it ever be far from laughter, or it will collapse under its own strain, and we may be betrayed into thinking that the cynic is the best judge of life. It is the imagination exercising itself among things real, but not of the first order of importance. If you attribute to them that importance, you are guilty of false sentiment. The ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... present occasion Johnson defended luxury, and said that he had learnt much from Mandeville—a shrewd cynic, in whom Johnson's hatred for humbug is exaggerated into a general disbelief in real as well as sham nobleness of sentiment. As the conversation proceeded, Johnson expressed his habitual horror of death, and caused ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... him, greater and wider opportunities to serve his state. His business grows and multiplies, and he becomes a strong man among men; always reserved, always cautious, a man whose self-poise makes people take him for a cynic, though his heart is full of hope and of the joy of life to the very last. Let us lift up one more rag—one more painted rag in the scenery of his life—and see him a reformer of national fame; see him with an unflinching ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Had a cynic been peeping into the library of The Towers a few minutes later, he would have discovered three Cabinet Ministers bending over a New Testament, which Sir Lyster had fetched from his wife's boudoir, and the words they read were: "Wherefore I say ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... and unforgotten friend, Whose presence change and chance deny; If angels turn your soft proud eye To lines your cynic playmate penned, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... presence of this one young man seemed to put all the servants on their mettle. The cook sent up such meals as she did not at any other time. "Sure Sir Shawn and her Ladyship never minded what they would be atin," she said. The gardener, a gruff old cynic usually, gave his best grapes and peaches for "Master Terry"; even the small sewing maid who sat in a slip of a room at a remote corner of the house, mending the house-linen under the supervision of the housekeeper, was known to have said that though she ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... as I returned from a long walk, Mrs. Purblind ran over to see me, and soon afterward, Mrs. Cynic dropped in. I never could bear this latter woman; something malevolent seems to emanate from her; something that is more or less unhealthful to the moral nature of all who come in contact with it, just as the miasma from a swamp is ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... was Tim. What a man Tim was, and how blind I had been and selfish! He stood before me tall and strong, watching me with his quiet eyes, and as I looked at him I thought of Weston, the lanky cynic, with his thin, homely face and loose-jointed, shambling walk. Then I wondered at it all. Then I said to ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... with whom once more I hope to sit, [liv] And smile at folly, if we can't at wit; Yes, Friend! for thee I'll quit my cynic cell, And bear Swift's motto, "Vive la bagatelle!" Which charmed our days in each AEgean clime, As oft at home, with revelry and rhyme. Then may Euphrosyne, who sped the past, Soothe thy Life's scenes, nor leave thee in the last; But find in thine—like pagan Plato's bed, [lv] ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... lady's hand, with that decision and positiveness which a hesitating and undecided sex know how to admire, and in an instant had dexterously and gracefully swung her to the ground and again lifted her to the platform. An audible chuckle on the box, I fear, came from that other cynic, Yuba Bill, the driver. "Look keerfully arter that baggage, Kernel," said the expressman, with affected concern, as he looked after Colonel Starbottle, gloomily bringing up the rear of the triumphant procession ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... fresco, and the whole company are to display all their charms in puris naturalibus. The pantheon of the heathen gods, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Titian's prints, will supply them with sufficient variety of undressed characters." A cynic might harbour the suspicion that this critic was in the pay ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... conservation for the eugenic good of the race and mental dominance over matter. But I'm infernally lazy myself, and it's easy to preach. It's even easier to create a counter-philosophy of condonance and individualism, and I'm alternately an ethical egoist, a Fabian socialist and a cynic. Moreover, I'm a creature of whims and inconsistencies and there are black nights in my temperament when John Barleycorn lightens the gloom; and there are other nights when he treacherously deepens it—but I'm peculiarly balanced and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... I think, will strike. The fashion, you know, now, is to do away with old prejudices, and to rescue certain characters from the illiberal odium with which custom has marked them. Thus we have a generous Israelite, an amiable cynic, and so on. Now, Sir, I call my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... Diogenes (400?-323?), Greek cynic philosopher who affected great contempt for riches and honors and the comforts of civilized life, and is said to have taken up ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is L. Aelius Stilo or Praeconinus, the master of Varro, and the earliest systematic grammarian of Rome. See Quintil. Inst. Or. X. 1, 99, Gellius X. 21, Sueton. Gramm. 3. Occasum: an unusual metaphor. Menippum: a Cynic satirist, see Dict. Biogr. Considerable fragments of Varro's Menippean Satires remain, and have often been edited—most recently by Riese (published by Teubner). Imitati non interpretati: Cic. D.F. I. 7, gives ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... half-jealous wife to whom he is so rude while he strives to be courteous, and to the bold, free, conscienceless child of nature whose favour he buys, and with whom, after all his barren metaphysics, he departs, only to attain, when his brief spell of foolish freedom is over, loneliness and cynic satiety. It may amuse us to circle with him through his arguments, though every one knows he will yield at last and that yielding is more honest than his talk; but what we ask is—Was the matter worth the trouble ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... the abilities of two Secretaries of War. The first, Simon Cameron, owed his place in the Cabinet to the double fact of being one of the ablest of political bosses and of standing high among Lincoln's competitors for the Presidential nomination. Personally honest, he was also a political cynic to whom tradition ascribes the epigram defining an honest politician as one who "when he is bought, will stay bought." As Secretary of War he showed ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... with that young lady—and am in love with this little creature of fifteen and a half, who has passed me every morning and evening, going to school. Going to school! there it is! I, the great political thinker, the originator of ideas, the student, the philosopher, the cynic—I am in love with a school-girl! Well, I am not aware that the fact of acquiring a knowledge of geography and numbers, music, and other things, has the effect of making young ladies disagreeable. Therefore I uphold the doctrine that love for young ladies who attend school is not ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... "you talk so like a cynic and an old bachelor, and you look so little like either, that it ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... is, of course, one of his usual commonplaces. The statement that 'whatever is, is right,' may be verbally admitted, and strained to different purposes by half-a-dozen differing schools. It may be alleged by the cynic, who regards virtue as an empty name; by the mystic, who is lapped in heavenly contemplation from the cares of this troublesome world; by the sceptic, whose whole wisdom is concentrated in the duty of submitting ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... that he thought it a puzzling head; if he had known nothing previously of the original's character; he could not have read it in his features. I wonder at this. To me the broad brow seems to express intellect. Certain lines about the nose and cheek, betray the satirist and cynic; the mouth indicates a child-like simplicity—perhaps even a degree of irresoluteness, inconsistency—weakness in short, but a weakness not unamiable. The engraving seems to me very good. A certain not quite Christian expression—'not to put too fine ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... surely the Blue-Grass Aristocracy is giving way to purslane or asphalt, moving into flats, and allowing the boomer to plat its fair acres—running excursion-trains to attend auction-sales where all the lots are corner lots and are to be bought on the installment plan, which plan is said by a cynic to ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... tempted to go about philandering. The society of a wife I loved and respected would be sufficient. But there's that need in me—the incessant hunger for a woman's sympathy and affection. Such a hideous mistake as mine when I married would have made a cynic of most men; upon me the lesson has been utterly thrown away. I mean that, though I can talk of women rationally enough with a friend, I am at their mercy when alone with them—at the mercy of the silliest, vulgarest creature. After all, isn't it very much the same with ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... replied the old Cynic, "that if you wait till you find an honest man for your husband, ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... characters from those who were in a world sense undistinguished. On this position Chesterton lays great stress. It was this, he thinks, that made him an optimist. It was the same position that made Browning an optimist. It is the disbelief in the Divine image in Man that makes the cynic and the pessimist. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... licking your raw tongue up and down the cynic's saw edge! Put a spur to your broncho there ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... at very rare intervals, Nature seems to select a favoured man and woman to uphold the torch of the ideal, lest it be reduced to sparks and smoke, to refute the cynic and the pessimist; to hearten a world nauseated and discouraged by the eternal tragi-comedy of marriage, with the spectacle of a human relationship of unsullied beauty: a relationship that passes, by imperceptible degrees, from the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... call should instantly bring all who love me most,— For ne'er were seen such arch delights from Greek or Roman host; Nor at the free, control-less jousts, where, spite of cynic vaunts, Austere but lenient ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... in that it raises him for ever incontestably above the beasts that perish, and stands serene and steadfast as the Rock of Ages, the one barrier past which the materialists and the scientists cannot go: the divine spark within the human, which no theory can account for and no learning of sage or cynic obliterate. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... appears for five hundred years after his birth. This faultlessness is more peculiar than we are apt to imagine. Some stain pollutes the morals or the morality of almost every other teacher, and of every other lawgiver.* Zeno the stoic, and Diogenes the cynic, fell into the foulest impurities; of which also Socrates himself was more than suspected. Solon forbade unnatural crimes to slaves. Lycurgus tolerated theft as a part of education. Plato recommended ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... great friend, unfortunately,' sighed Eglantine. 'Oh, my dear' (with the usual cheap, ready-made knowingness of the cynic), 'I've seen so much of that. Now I'm going to help you. I'm determined to leave you two dear, charming people without a ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... Louisa;—when shall I forget Those Tilsit gatherings in the long-sunned June! Napoleon's gallantries deceived her quite, Who fondly felt her pleas for Magdeburg Had won him to its cause; the while, alas! His cynic sense but posed ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... that Harry's blood seethed. The Tim Botkins alluded to had been dubbed by Basil Wurmset, the cynic and wit of the village, "apt appreciation's artful aid." Red-haired, soft eyed, moon-faced, round of belly and lymphatic of temperament, his principal occupation in life was to play fiddle in the Sardis string-band, and in the intervals of professional ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... The two keenest pleasures a man can attain are for a woman to call him a cynic and for a woman to call him a devil with ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... old cynic, "matters can't be mended by swearin' at 'em, is advice I often give myself, but never take. I s'pose it's bed-time. To-morrow we will take another squint at your ugly fortunes, and see which side pints toward daylight. Would you mind readin' a chapter ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... that now my Vajramukut knows every corner of his little Padmavati's heart, he will never expect her to do anything but love, admire, adore and kiss him!'' Then suiting the action to the word, she convinced him that the young minister had for once been too crabbed and cynic ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... a Sophist!' no man saith. But the true sons of perfidy refined Forge theologic lies the soul to blind, Calling themselves evangels of the faith. Aretine with his scoundrels blew his breath, And in the cynic orgies boldly joined; His ribald jests had flowers and thorns combined— A frank fair list including life and death, For fun, not fraud. It shames him to be found Less vile than those who cannot bear to see Their sink of ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... (especially when we know the result) to guess at the canons of taste which will pass muster in such regions. Enthusiastical politicians of recent days have been much given to denouncing modern clubs, where everybody is a cynic and unable to appreciate the great ideas which stir the masses. It may be so; my own acquaintance with club life, though not very extensive, does not convince me that every member of a London club is a Mephistopheles; but I will admit that ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... The cynic may speak of the now obsolete sentiment of friendship, and he can find much to justify his cynicism. Indeed, on the first blush, if we look at the relative place the subject holds in ancient as compared with modern literature, we might say that friendship is a sentiment that ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... Marcia. "He says, 'Give me either a firebrand or a cynic!' He has no use for other sorts of people. And perhaps Sir Wilfrid will help us, too—with Arthur." ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seems to have bound him to his brother, and up to this hour he had never yet slept one night under the paternal roof. These were no ordinary trials; and if the youth who was subjected to them became in after-life a cynic, is it to be wondered at? Indeed, a hasty view of this remarkable man's character might lead to the conclusion of M. Colmache, that the untoward accidents of his infancy and boyhood afforded an explanation of all his adult peculiarities; but we can not allow ourselves to accept this inference, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various |
