"Derisive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pandemonium broke loose. Members rushed up the aisle as if to attack the Speaker, but Reed, huge, fearless and undisturbed, stood his ground. The Democrats hissed and jeered and denounced him with a wrath which was not mollified by the derisive laughter of the Republicans, who were surprised by the ruling, but rallied to their leader. Two days later, when a member moved to adjourn, the Speaker ruled the motion out of order and refused to entertain any ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... by poverty, his iron spirit rose, Unbroken and undaunted by the world's derisive blows, Spurred on by opposition, through the sharp furnace leapt, Strengthened and sharpened—a great ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... derisive cheers. About five minutes afterwards, in some intermittent flash of reason, he found he had got hold of something. He opened his hand, and lo, a note! On this he chuckled unreasonably, and distributed sage, cunning winks around, as if he, by special ingenuity, had caught a nightingale, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... swag over his shoulder, and Tony did the same. Their action was greeted with derisive cheers from the men scattered along the banks of the creek. Palmer Billy, beaten in the matter of words, came to meet them as they started up the rise beyond ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... moment one of the missing shells was rolled with great violence into the middle of the group of adventurers. Before they had recovered from their astonishment a strange sharp scream filled the forest. There was a derisive note ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and peered through the blackness. For a careless and half-derisive, half-contemptuous laugh sounded through the room. Pobloff, obviously, had never moved from where ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... catastrophe (un bouleversement universel) with the result that a multitude of species of animals and plants were consequently absolutely lost or destroyed, and remarks in the following telling and somewhat derisive language: ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... of the stricture may safely be left to be measured by its logical value. For the rest, to say that Roderigo Borgia was wanting in energy and in will is to say something to which his whole career gives the loud and derisive lie, as will—to some extent at least—be seen in the course ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... such seemingly plain indications as this are discarded in favour of entirely unknown quantities like the 'Gospel according to the Hebrews.' If the author of 'Supernatural Religion' were to turn his own powers of derisive statement against his own hypotheses they would present a ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... an hour later, another shock of cannon shook his chamber, followed immediately by what sounded to him like a derisive blast of fish-horns, there was no more irresolution left in him. Hastily arising and throwing a coat over his shoulders, and dashing a hat over his eyes—the first one that came to hand, and which happened to be a tall beaver—Mr. ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... chutes. The curtain falls. This stirring and technically excellent comedy has never been a favourite in Germany. Perhaps its cynicism is too crass. It achieved only a few performances in Berlin to the accompaniment of catcalls, hisses, and derisive laughter. I wonder why? It is entertaining, with all its revelation of a rascally mean soul and ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... address the class when the door opened and Mignon La Salle sauntered in. She threw a quick, derisive glance at his back, which caused several girls to giggle, then strolled calmly to a seat. A shade of annoyance clouded the instructor's genial face. He eyed his countrywoman severely for an instant, then went on ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... absently sipping his coffee, flung a faintly-derisive, patient smile at his accuser. A perfect understanding seemed to exist between the two men. Redmond, musing upon the pathetically-sordid drama he had witnessed not so many hours since, relapsed ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... avalanche. The man at whom they raged did not give an inch. He leaned forward slightly, his weight resting on the balls of his feet, alert to the finger tips. But in his eyes a grim little smile of derisive amusement rested. ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... But they also drove the old women away, and Paul was let alone for the time. As he stood on one side, gasping as much with anger as with pain, Braxton Wyatt, who had not been persecuted at all, came to him again with ironic words and derisive gesture. ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of this is seen in the derisive gesture of the street Arab who closes all of his fingers, except the middle one, on his palm. The middle finger he holds stiffly erect and the hand is then extended towards the object of his contempt. This gesture, once performed as a deeply religious rite, has now become the contemptuous sign ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... in a point with a suggestion of intolerable length. The other vehicle was becoming so small that Stimson could no longer see the derisive eye. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... of the State Department of Charities. But not by any such device, either, can a man elude his Fate. On the day following his conversation with Mrs. Paynter's agent, Fortune gave Queed to hear a portion of his article on the Bavarians read aloud, and read with derisive laughter. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... but derisive jeer concealed in that smooth assent? Bromfield did not know, but he took away with him an unease that disturbed his sleep ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... A derisive shout from her sisters stopped her, and even Billiard had to smile, though he felt grateful toward the little twin who was sorry he was hurt. By this time the pale candle flame had ceased to sputter and flicker uncertainly, but burned with a steady ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... long, derisive laugh. The wit was indifferent, but by one stroke Ralph had carried the whole school to his side. By the significant glances of the boys, Hartsook detected the perpetrator of the joke, and with the hard and dogged look in his eyes, with just such a look as Bull would ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... stopped and stood pointing at the advertisement, with shaking derisive finger, his eyes aflame, the whole man quivering with what looked ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unhealthily sedentary, ourmoderns who write verse; sedentary young people, whose environment is the self-conscious Bohemia of artificial Latin Quarters. They are too clever, too artistic, too egotistic. They are too afraid of one another; too conscious of the derisive flapping of the goose-wings of the literary journal! They are not proud enough in their personal individuality to send the critics to the devil and go their way with a large contempt. They set ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... have become quite white-livered," she exclaimed to him with a harsh, derisive laugh. "You were not so a year ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... world was indignant at that violation; so were the Irish, of course, vehemently; and it was on the spur of this publicly indignant movement that I wrote what I did,—as angrily and as much in earnest in the serious part of what I said as I was derisive in the rest. I did not care for any factious object, nor was I what is called anti-monarchical. I didn't know Cobbett, or Henry Hunt, or any demagogue, even by sight, except Sir Francis Burdett, and him by sight alone. Nor did I ever see, or speak a word with ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... words: "Truth began to be obscured and literature to fade; supernatural religions sprang up on all sides, and many eminent scholars failed to oppose their advance, until Han Yu, the cotton-clothed, arose and blasted them with his derisive sneer." ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... engaged in restoring the coins to the bag, the only sound came from the derisive click and fall of the gold-pieces as they chinked their mockery into the ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... sunken. She seemed to have but half as much hair as Babbitt remembered, and that half was stringy. She sat in a rocker amid a debris of candy-boxes and cheap magazines, and she sounded dolorous when she did not sound derisive. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... RICHARD (boisterously derisive). Now then: how many of you will stay with me; run up the American flag on the devil's house; and make a fight for freedom? (They scramble out, Christy among them, hustling one another in their haste.) Ha ha! Long live the devil! (To Mrs. Dudgeon, ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... came about that early on Monday morning Jim and Bob fixed swags more or less scientifically to their saddles—Jim made his disciple unstrap his three times before he consented to pass it—and rode away from Billabong, amidst derisive good wishes from Norah and Tommy, who kindly promised to feed them up on their return, prophesying that they would certainly need it. They took a westerly direction across country, and after two or three hours' riding came upon a small farm ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... quit. In the month of August, Meeres audaciously arrested the rival bailiff, whereupon Raleigh had Meeres himself put in the stocks in the market-place of Sherborne. The town took Raleigh's side, and when Meeres was released, the people riotously accompanied him to his house, with derisive cries. When Raleigh was afterward attainted, Meeres took all the revenge he could, and succeeded in making himself not a little offensive to Lady Raleigh. Sir Walter Raleigh's letters testify to the great annoyance this man gave him. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... transgression of thine and on that Brahmana who hath bestowed the mantras on thee without knowing thy disposition and character! Yonder are all the celestials in heaven, with Purandara at their head, who are looking at me with derisive smiles at my being deceived by thee, O lady! Look at those celestials, for thou art now possessed of celestial sight! Before this I have endued thee with celestial vision, in consequence of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Sunny Isles returning, From the Summer-Land of spirits, On the poles of Panther's wigwam Sang Opee-chee—sang the robin. In the maples cooed the pigeons— Cooed and wooed like silly lovers. "Hah!—hah!" laughed the crow derisive, In the pine-top, at their folly— Laughed and jeered the silly lovers. Blind with love were they, and saw not; Deaf to all but love, and heard not; So they cooed and wooed unheeding, Till the gray hawk pounced upon them, And the old crow shook ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... a slightly derisive inclination of the head; "why for no seem nat'ral? De frigate hersef she sleep on de water widout sails set,—not eben a stitch ob her canvas. Well, den: why no dem frigate-birds in de air? What de water am to de ship de air am to de birds. What hinder 'em to take dar nap ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... chaffing Dunstan could not brook, His clenched fist, his crabbed look Betrayed his irritation. 'Twas nuts for Nick's derisive jaw, Who fairly chuckled when he saw ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... herself a thin, derisive cackle, drowned hurriedly in a clatter of tea-cups as her husband turned and looked angrily up ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... the essay on war, when bombardiers no longer claimed my attention, and the knightly words of sergeant instructors were taking a needed rest. I pondered over that essay, and concluded that though plainly I was very young and very wrong to feel puzzled and even derisive over English prose which fascinated a learned lecturer into solemnity, yet I would sooner learn to make imitation flowers of wool than read that essay to a critical audience, especially if I had written ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... moved on to the doors of the citadel, and, pausing there, Doltaire turned round and made a motion of his hand to Gabord. I was at once surrounded by the squad of men, and the order to march was given. A drum in front of me began to play a well-known derisive air of the French army, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in this room, Wintzingerode and Stein were deliberating," continued Napoleon with the same derisive and self-confident smile. "What I can't understand," he went on, "is that the Emperor Alexander has surrounded himself with my personal enemies. That I do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may do the same?" and he turned inquiringly to Balashev, and evidently ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... two—an' yo' mean dawg," he said to Daws; and the two Dillons—the one sullen and the other crying with rage—moved away with Whizzer slinking close to the ground after them. But at the top of the hill both turned with bantering yells, derisive wriggling of their fingers at their noses, and with other rude gestures. And, thereupon, Dolph and Rube wanted to go after them, but the tall brother ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... three years from the moment when the pale penitent was hooted through Assisi amid the derisive shouts of the people, and driven with blows and curses into confinement in his own father's house, we find that it has already become his custom on Sunday to preach in the cathedral; and that, from his little convent at the Portiuncula, Francis has risen into influence ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... with the rest, but made no attempt to communicate to others what was passing in his mind. The day was drawing on, when Paul, who, with the rest of the party, had dropped off into a drowsy state of unconsciousness, was aroused by a shout of derisive ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... shore than at sea, and swayed doubtless also by the prospect of a powerful patron, in the days when patronage had so much to do with men's careers, was on the point of accepting; but his messmates chaffed him so mercilessly upon adopting a profession which habitually supplied them with derisive illustrations and comparisons, that he finally declined. Many years later, when Saumarez was among the senior captains of the navy, the two gentlemen met as guests at the table of the head of the Admiralty, who upon hearing the incident from Cornwallis ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... the low carriage to the ground, and with quick strides was walking back to the Witton house. Dora turned in the seat, looked after her, and laughed. It was a sudden, bitter laugh, which the circumstances made derisive. ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... at the time when half the distance was covered, it seemed as if at least four hundred were always hovering around in bands of twenty or forty, making dashes down as if they meant to ride through the camp or cut the body of lancers in two. For they would come on yelling and uttering derisive cries till pretty close, and then wheel round like a flock of birds and gallop off again into ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... brutal, derisive. The submarine glided away. Thomson's face as he looked after it, was black with anger. The next moment he recovered himself, however. He had need ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the day of departure, when they gathered at the white gate to see the wagonette pass. The little girls were feeling even more dignified and grown-up than usual, for it was a great event to drive over to Nearminster quite alone; therefore it was all the more trying to be greeted by a derisive song: ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... A derisive shout came back from the fugitive. He was now out of range of the officer's revolver, and knew it. The constable, too, realized the fact. He started in pursuit as rapidly as he could make it, calling to ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... snapped his fingers, as if Paul and his people were annihilated by a single derisive gesture. Paul reddened and a dangerous flash came into his eyes. But the natural diplomatist in him took control, and he replied ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... colouring is often brilliant. And even his positive faults, the faults of his age, the crowding of detail, the rhetoric, the bombast, offend rather by their quantity than quality. Alone of the epic[543] writers of his age he rarely raises a derisive laugh from the irreverent modern. Again, his average level is high, higher than that of any post-Ovidian poet. And yet that high level is due to the fact that he rarely sinks rather than that he rises to sublime heights. His brilliant metre, always vivacious and vigorous, seldom ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... monkeys, a supply of the nuts in the half-ripe state, when filled with milk. I held Fritz's arm, who was preparing to shoot at them, to his great vexation, as he was irritated against the poor monkeys for their derisive gestures; but I told him, that though no patron of monkeys myself, I could not allow it. We had no right to kill any animal except in defence, or as a means of supporting life. Besides, the monkeys would be of more use to us living than dead, as I would show him. I ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... stationed there for his defense; that his presence might possibly awaken sympathy and enthusiasm in his behalf. The king and queen, with their son and daughter, and Madame Elizabeth, went down with throbbing hearts to visit the ranks of their defenders. They were received with derisive insults and hootings. Some of the gunners left their posts, and thrust their fists into the face of the king, insulting him with menaces the most brutal. They instantly returned to the palace, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... other aghast for a minute. "Back again!" cried the fellows. "Well, I guess not!" "Not much!" "Hardly!" and all sorts of derisive refusals went round. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and derisive behavior felt sadder and more melancholy than he had ever been in his life before; and, turning to Pinocchio, ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... was the grasp made at the outstretched arm by the practised Brahmin. His tenacious fingers closed tightly round the other's wrist. One sudden wrench, and he had the blacksmith's arm bent back and powerless, held down on the little fellow's own shoulders. Pat smiled a derisive smile, K. uttered what was not a benison, while the Brahmins in the crowd, and all Pat's men, raised a truly Hindoo howl. The position of the men was now this. The stout little man was flat on his face, one of his arms bent helplessly round on his own back. Roopnarain, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... day's work. While he was speaking, they went into the house after his wife and the girl, leaving Gowan and Ashton alone. Equally sullen and resentful, the rivals exchanged stares of open hostility. Ashton pointed a derisive finger at the ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... held it. He seemed quite aware of the ridiculous aspect of an awkward squad of pedagogues paraded like chorus girls before an audience invited to watch the display; but, also, he actually enjoyed the comedy of it—and that is a distinction when you are an actor in the comedy! His quietly derisive strut altogether fascinated me. "Hurrah! Aren't we fine!" he ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... a derisive laugh beneath his breath, and waited for her to speak again. This she did as she moved towards the ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... this time Florence had regained her derisive superciliousness. "There's a few things you could help," she said; and the incautious Herbert challenged her with the inquiry ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... had more than any other woman!" he had exclaimed to her one day; and her smile flashed a derisive light on his blunder. Fool that he was, not to have seen that she had not had enough! That she was young still—do years count?—tender, human, a woman; that the living have need of ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... enacted the same act of horrid butchery upon the struggling priests crowded into the carriages, with no shield and with no escape. Thus he went, from one to the other, through the whole line of coaches, while the armed escort looked on with derisive laughter, and shouts of fiendish exultation rose from the phrensied multitude. The mounted troops slowly forced open a passage for the carriages, and they moved along, marking their passage by the streams of blood which dripped, from their dead and dying inmates, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... be a wealthy one; nor is it essential that he should have made his mark at school as a scholar, an athlete, or a social success. Indeed, nothing is more common than to hear a former school-fellow express himself in terms of derisive amazement when he is informed that So-and-So is now in the Guards. "What, that scug?" he will observe with immeasurable contempt, and will proceed to express his surprise how one who neither played cricket, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... to the people of Harmouth. Men stood at shop doors and street corners, women (according to their social standing) hung out of bedroom windows or hid behind parlour curtains to look after him as he went. Here and there Rickman caught sullen and indignant glances, derisive words and laughter. Evidently the spirit of Harmouth was hostile to Dicky. A Harden was a Harden, and Sir Frederick's magnificently complete disaster had moved even ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the darkness in the direction of the noise, uttering a shout for the man to stop or be shot. But after the taste of liberty that he already had had Sorenson was prepared to take further chances; the engine's roar burst into full volume and the car leaped ahead, while its driver sent back a derisive curse to the cabin. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... had planned that campaign well; he had figured the possibilities of his rivals, and knew that they had exhausted their strength too early in the game. And so he had come in first with every other team at least six hours behind; and the cry "'Scotty's' sleeping the race away at Candle" became the derisive slogan of ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... observing that he had not let go my hand, I pulled on it a little, but unsuccessfully. He simply held on, saying nothing, but looking down into my face with some kind of a smile—I didn't know— how could I?—whether it was affectionate, derisive, or what, for I did not look at him. How beautiful he was!—with the red fires of the sunset burning in the depths of his eyes. Do you know, dear, if the Thugs and Experts of the Blavatsky region have any special kind of eyes? Ah, you should have seen ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... was talking about our present junior estate. What I wonder is, whether being a junior will go to my head and make me vainglorious or whether I shall wear the honor as a graceful crown," ended the stout girl with an affected smile, which changed immediately to a derisive grin. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... Commander describes how the manuscript of it had been brought to him, and how he had revelled in the cutting out of all the sentimentalisms. Two men in the play—friends—going into action—shake hands with each other "with tears in their eyes." A shout of derisive laughter goes up from the tea-table. But they admit "talking shop" off duty. "That's the difference between us and the Army." And what shop it is! I listen to two young officers, both commanding destroyers, describing—one, ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... half-dozen exploding muskets instantly followed the word, ringing out and reverberating along the mountain like the shock of a field-piece; while, with the dying sound, a hoarse shout of derisive laughter from the cave greeted the ears of the awe-struck and ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... hunters on the opposite side of the fire, who had not caught Dan's precautionary wink, laughed good-humouredly, and made derisive comments. At this Dan seemed much vexed, and getting up, he strode over to them to argue it out. It was surprising how easily they were brought round to his ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... azure; his own defects, like vanquished difficulties, becoming things on which to plume himself. Only when he thought of Miss Mackenzie there fell upon his mind a shadow of regret; that young lady was worthy of better things than plain John Nicholson, still known among schoolmates by the derisive name of 'Fatty'; and he felt, if he could chalk a cue, or stand at ease, with such a careless grace as Alan, he could approach the object of his sentiments with a less ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... known a place with such echoes. They shook from a footstep like nuts rattling out of a bag; a mouse behind the skirting led a whole camp-following of them; to ask a question was, as in that other House, to awaken the derisive shouts of an Opposition. Yet, in the intervals of silence, there fell a deadliness of quiet that was quite appalling ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... a derisive smile, that it was not his custom to give credit, or rely upon promises; that I must find something to do, or he should be compelled to turn me out of his house! "Did you ever do any thing but go to sea?" he ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... that were considering him, and he began to fear he had been a fool. There was his dwarf Eastern revolver, slack in his inefficient fist, and the singular person still holding its barrel and tapping one derisive finger over the end, careless of the ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street, and the huge new Plaza Hotel facing them from across the square. When the St. Regis was first opened popular fancy ascribed to it a scale of prices crippling to the average purse. The idea was the subject of derisive vaudeville ditties. When a "Seeing New York" car approached the Fifty-fifth Street corner the guide invariably took up his megaphone and called out, "Ladies and gentlemen! We are passing on the right the far-famed St. Regis Hotel! If you order beefsteak it will cost you ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... die!—Nay, I want not your idle words. Can good destroy? Can love persecute? I was a worm that turned. What then? Why not have crushed me to annihilation? Oh, no, not that! He took me up and shook me before the world, clipped me, and let me fall. A derisive Deity,—why, the words give each other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the voices, continued his appeal, the interruptions came with more frequency, accompanied now by groans, shouts, hisses and derisive laughter. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... another man. 'I am blind, and I hurt my hip. And I have a brother fighting for the Queen and for the King, and a son fighting against the Boers, and neither of them ever sent me anything.' (But this was received without much sympathy, and with what I imagine to represent derisive cheers.) ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... with bands and banners, music and song from train to theatre, Town Hall, or whatever the meeting-place might be for the day. When he was received, however, not as in later years with universal acclamations, but with derisive shouts and groans and sometimes with showers of stones and mud, he smiled to see the commotion, and took every opportunity to show his enemies how much he loved them. Already more than fifty years old, and looking decidedly ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... of laughter, mingled with various derisive cries, broke out just then, now from very near. The next minute the two men reached the brow of the hill, and both stopped involuntarily, arrested by the tableau ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... exclaimed the Dominie, with a derisive laugh. "If that isn't depravity, I don't know what is.... Now, then, miss, put down that ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... How were we to reach the camp? One of the men had evidently seen us and was pointing us out to his companion. We rushed down the Jacob's Ladder, but by the time we reached the river bank they were in midstream and heading rapidly northward. Our shouts merely brought forth derisive laughter. We were certainly in a predicament. First we ran back up the cliff, and tried from there to gain the attention of the rest of the fellows. They evidently saw us but couldn't make out what we wanted. Then we ran down to a point opposite the island and called to them. But the wind was ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... hav'n't seen him yet, have ye? No, we hav'n't. He's sick they say, but is getting better, and will be all right again before long. All right again before long! laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. Look ye; when captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will be all right; not before. What do you know about him? What did they tell you about him? Say that! They didn't tell much of anything ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... o't. We canna leave Bridesdale unproteckit, that means Sylvanus and Tryphena 'll be pit in chairge till we're back, and they gang to Sylvanus' ain fairm. Ony mair intentions?" Mr. Perrowne sought the chairman's eye, and addressed him. "Mr. Chairman, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking (derisive cheers), and unwilling as we are to obtrude our private affairs upon what Virgil calls the ignobile vulgus (hisses from Messrs. Errol and Bangs and the doctor), nevertheless, on this festive occasion, we owvercome our natural modesty and spirit of self-effacement (more ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... She noticed a curious, derisive contempt in the man's voice, and laid it to his vanity. "I don't mean that they are. I mean that you are sure to get him," she hastened to add. "Father thinks ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... was driven from New York, interested persons used to cross over to New Jersey to witness the drawing, and the numbers were taken from the wheel amid the greatest noise and excitement. Some numbers were received with derisive hoots and howls, and others applauded; and all through the drawing certain favorites would be loudly and continually called for, and if they failed to appear curses filled the air. After being driven out of New Jersey, the lottery men found refuge in several other places, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... his entire mental outlook. I have been told by an authentic witness that the Archduke, when suffering and combating his terrible disease, saw one day an article in a Hungarian paper which, in brutal and derisive tones, spoke of the Archduke's expectations of future government as laid aside, and gloated openly, with malicious delight, over the probable event. The Archduke, who while reading the article had turned ashen grey with rage and indignation, remained silent for a moment and then made ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... of extreme humiliation and shame. I fancied that the passers-by must all be aware of what had transpired, and of the precise situation in which I stood. I saw, moreover, the heads of several of the sailors as they stood looking at me over the bulwarks, and upon their faces I could perceive a derisive expression. Some of them were still ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... mansion, or a sheep station, or a stud of racehorses," meekly suggests a tired-looking South Australian, with a derisive twist of his ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... presents the keenest edge of Milby wit, does not strike you as lacerating, I imagine. But hatred is like fire—it makes even light rubbish deadly. And Mr. Dempster's sarcasms were not merely visible on the walls; they were reflected in the derisive glances, and audible in the jeering voices of the crowd. Through this pelting shower of nicknames and bad puns, with an ad libitum accompaniment of groans, howls, hisses, and hee-haws, but of no heavier missiles, Mr. Tryan walked ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Girdlestone would like a moment's conversation with Mr. Ezra. The latter gave a keen glance at his subjects and withdrew into the back office, a disappearance which was hailed by ten pens being thrown into the air and deftly caught again, while as many derisive and triumphant young men mocked at the imploring efforts of old Gilray in the interests of ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I'll be here," promised the boy, and ran off into the bushes with a derisive grin which Madge did ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... other, their eyes luminous with intense and quickening emotions. Fortune had been so derisive that Mike feared Frank would break into foolish anger, and that only a quarrel and worse hatred might result from his ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... of the passions, and to render them effeminate, by putting extravagant lamentations in the mouths of their heroes, may, I think, be justly referred to Euripides alone; for, with respect to his predecessors, the injustice of it would have been universally apparent. The derisive attacks of Aristophanes are well known, though not sufficiently understood and appreciated. Aristotle bestows on him many a severe censure, and when he calls Euripides "the most tragic poet," he by no ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... vanquished in Lorraine and in Belgium at the same time. A body of the army had deserted the colors; many prisoners, many cannon were captured. "Lies! German exaggerations!" howled Desnoyers. And Chichi with the derisive ha-ha's of an insolent girl, drowned out the triumphant communications of the aunt from Berlin. "I don't know, of course," said the unwelcome lodger with mock humility. "Perhaps it is not authentic. I have heard ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... coming on, and they could not tell what assistance might be sent to the inhabitants of the castle, as they knew that the sound of their firing must have given notice to the neighbouring population that something unusual was going on. With some derisive expressions, the meaning of which Lawrence alone, of those who heard them, could understand, they left the party in the room, simply turning the key on them, and took their way to their boats. Just as they were shoving ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... misfortunes. He summoned the magistrates before him, and gave them over to the executioner without deigning to listen to their explanations. He next caused the priests to be brought to him, and when they had paraded the Apis before him, he plunged his dagger into its flank with derisive laughter: "Ah, evil people! So you make for yourselves divinities of flesh and blood which fear the sword! It is indeed a fine god that you Egyptians have here; I will have you to know, however, that you shall not rejoice overmuch at having deceived ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ridicule on our unfortunate nature instead of our conventional life, provoke derisive laughter, which thwarts the Comic idea. But derision is foiled by the play of the intellect. Most of doubtful causes in contest are open to Comic interpretation, and any intellectual pleading of a doubtful cause contains germs of an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the derisive, incredulous look on the young medical man's face which stung him into adding: "If I understand rightly"—he turned to Varick—"something very like what I should call an impromptu materialization took place in the hall yesterday—is that ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... He should have bluffed; and not been bluffed. Said Kwaiba in lowered voice—"Kakusuke could see nothing of her. She disappeared into the waters of Warigesui. Suppose O'Iwa appears as a ghost, to take vengeance on Kwaiba...." He straightened up in astonishment and some anger at the derisive smile playing over the face of Iemon. Indeed Iemon was more than amused. Not at the circumstances, but at finding at last this weak spot in the man who had dominated him. Conditions, however, controlled him. It was fact ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... own inadequacy, his stupid inability to rise to the height of her passion. His egoism was not of a kind to mirror its complacency in the adventure. To have been loved by the most brilliant woman of her day, and to have been incapable of loving her, seemed to him, in looking back, the most derisive evidence of his limitations; and his remorseful tenderness for her memory was complicated with a sense of irritation against her for having given him once for all the measure of his emotional capacity. It was not often, however, that he thus probed the past. The ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... enacted, as surpassed conception, and left her horrified senses no calm refuge except in unbelief. The gorgeous feasts, the night-long libations, the social intimacy with dancing girls and gladiators, the mockery of all that was pure and holy, the derisive insults to the gods themselves—these were practices which the public voice connected with the house of Emilius, not as occasional outbreaks of wild frivolity, but as the fixed habits of his daily life. And if these things ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... privacy. Her possessions were limited in number. The crude square table she had constructed herself. Upon it was a little old-fashioned walnut-framed mirror, a brush and comb, and a dilapidated ebony cabinet which contained odds and ends the sight of which always brought a smile of derisive self-pity to her lips. Under the table stood an old leather trunk. It had come with her from Texas, and contained clothing and belongings of her mother's. Above the couch on pegs hung her scant wardrobe. A tiny shelf held ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... exceedingly foolish thing, just to humiliate Happy Jack, who, he afterwards said, still looked unconvinced. He coolly got upon his feet in the saddle, stood so while he saluted the Happy Family mockingly, lighted the cigarette he had just rolled, then, with another derisive salute, turned a double somersault in the air and lighted upon his feet—and the roan did nothing more belligerent than to turn his head ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... rustics and savages call wedge-shaped objects that fall from the sky, "axes": that scientific men, when it suits their purposes, can resist temptations to prolixity and pedantry, and adopt the simple: that they can be intelligible when derisive. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... out a derisive "Poor innocent!" Then, with a change of tone: "The shop's for business. Why don't you go to the shop to ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... thousands of her people, their neat, comfortable little homes burned to the dust, are wandering homeless in their own land. What was their crime? Their crime was that they trusted to the word of a Prussian King. [Applause.] I do not know what the Kaiser hopes to achieve by this war. [Derisive laughter.] I have a shrewd idea what he will get; but one thing he has made certain, and that is that no nation will ever ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... to draw breath and take a pinch of snuff, and she was upon him like a flail. With a terror stricken cry he leaped once more upon his horse and fled, but not without leaving his snuff-box in the hands of the derisive enemy. Meggy has long gone to the kirk-yard, but the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... not stop to thank you," he said, with a curious joy in his voice, "for the great good for the world you have actually wrought. All that I think of that I have said to you a moment ago, even when I thought that your voice was the voice of a derisive omnipotence, its laughter older than the winds of heaven. But let me say what is immediate and true. You and I, Auberon Quin, have both of us throughout our lives been again and again called mad. And we are mad. We ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... slavery, as the people might desire; and that slavery should be prohibited in such States as might be formed out of the portion lying north of that line. The opponents of slavery regarded this provision, with good reason, as derisive. Slavery already existed in the entire territory by the act of the early settlers from the South who had brought their slaves with them, and the State of Texas had no valid claim to an inch of ground north of the line of 36 degrees 30' nor anywhere ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... care?" he asked himself, fastening his scorn on the backs of an unconscious group of country-people who had raced one another uphill from an excursion steamer and halted panting and laughing half-way up the slope. It irritated him the more when he thought of Casey's pale, derisive face. He and Casey had often argued about patriotism; or rather he had done the arguing while Casey sneered. Casey was a stoker, and knew how ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... into one of her derisive laughs. "YOU WILL! Ain't that good of ye? Ye'll give him enough to starve on, that's what it is. Ye ought to be ashamed ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... lost its usual roughness. His mind had leapt back over many years to a time when he had been concerned for that name in a way that had stirred him to great warmth. He smiled. It was a baffling, somewhat derisive smile. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... beautiful brazen front and flashed on his brother a haughty and disdainful smile. "You can accept her? Will you please tell me what you mean by that? And 'better at home'!" He burst into open and derisive laughter. "What new Arcadia is this, where even the lawyers walk about with their beribboned crooks and the little baa-lambs following behind them? We have been sitting in conclave, have we, on a mossy bank in some sylvan shade, with ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... for rotten eggs, derisive scorn, and hisses? In him "at last the scornful world had met its match." Were Beecher and Gough to be silenced by the rude English mobs that came to extinguish them? No! they held their ground and compelled unwilling thousands to hear and to heed. Did Anna Dickinson leave the platform when ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... year,—crawling one of two roads. Either I should become a political scullion, a wretched party hack, despising myself and despised by those who used me, or I should develop into a lackey's lackey or a plain lackey, lieutenant of a boss or a boss, so-called—a derisive name, really, when the only kind of boss-ship open was head political procurer to one or more rich corporations or groups of corporations. I felt I should probably become a scullion, as I thought I had no taste or instinct for business, and as I ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips |
