"Mirthless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his face, a white cameo against a grey velvet pall, grinned like a mask of mirthless death, as slowly he raised one clenched fist and shook it weakly until it fell back with a dull thud, useless, ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Lennop! Ah, that was it. She remembered now. She had broken down his prejudice; she had partially won him over; she had been the "hit" of the evening; further conquests were in sight and within easy reach if she played her cards right. And Essie Tisdale—her long upper lip stretched in its mirthless smile—she would not have her feelings this ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... was as mirthless as the cackle of a guinea hen. "But I 'm going to die hard, believe me! And if I go down, if they think they can throw me on that, I 'm going to take a few of ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... be utterly useless," he replied with quiet conviction. "He wouldn't pay. He said he wouldn't, last time. And he meant it.... You'd better have let me blow out my brains while I was about it, Ann"—with, a mirthless laugh. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... looking round with a mirthless smile. "Sorry can do no better. And you can't hang him, either. As you observe, gentlemen," he added gravely, "there is no ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... the last sound I expected to hear in so still a region, a laugh, struck my ear. It was a curious laugh; distinct, formal, mirthless. I stopped: the sound ceased, only for an instant; it began again, louder: for at first, though distinct, it was very low. It passed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber; though it originated ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a little mirthless laugh, and her eye roamed restlessly up the street, as if contemplating ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... hours of the clock he never guessed before— Dumb, dragging, mirthless hours confused with dreams and fear, Bone-chilling, hungry hours when the gods sleep and snore, Bequeathing earth and heaven to ghosts, and will not hear, And will not hear man groan chained to the sodden ground, Rotting alive; in feather ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... laughed again her caustic, mirthless laugh. "No! My acquaintance with Brennerstadt is of a less amusing nature. When I go there, I merely go to be ill, and as soon as I am partially recovered, I come back—to this." There was inexpressible bitterness in her voice. "Some ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... glance at the mirthless face of the reverend gentleman beside her, she added, "And on the dome of the college shall be a colossal statue of Father Burke, in solid gold. He has not uttered a word in half ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... was where he would have placed it himself. She had laughed!—and the novelty of being laughed at was refreshing. He and Thatcher had laughed in secret at the confusion of their common enemies in old times; but most men feared him, and he had the reputation of being a mirthless person. He had rarely discussed politics with women; he had an idea that a woman's politics, when she had any, partook of the nature of her religion, and that it was something quite emotional, tending toward ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Corrigan while Braman examined the paper, his eyes alight with the mocking, unfearing gleam that had been in them during the fight. Corrigan scowled and Trevison grinned at him—the indomitable, mirthless grin of the reckless fighting man; and Corrigan filled his lungs slowly, watching him with half-closed eyes. It was as though both knew that a distant day would bring another ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... evenness. That's why I read him here. The noise of this place breaks the rhythm. He's tolerable here.' Soames took up the book and glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames' laugh was a short, single and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. 'What a period!' he uttered, laying the book down. And 'What a country!' ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... looking at him with something that was not a smile, rather the faint, mirthless echo of a smile, in ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Grand Duchess, suddenly remembering her lorgnette. The stare became intensified. "Isn't the house attractive, Mr. Van Winkle?" she asked, turning to the old gentleman, with a mirthless smile. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... nonchalantly. "Fact is, on my way out of the country, I thought I'd pay a farewell call on my good friend, Wade. I'm real sorry he ain't here—and then again I'm not. I'll—I'll leave my visiting card for him, anyhow." He chuckled, a nasty, throaty, mirthless chuckle that sent chills up and down the girl's spine. "Say, what's the matter with giving me that kiss now? There's nobody around to ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... not from the stranger you met once. Ah, Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds; People on a lawn—quite a crowd of them. Yes, And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads; And they say, "Hurrah!" To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless, Who ought not ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... were congregated, the air was thick with the vermilion dust. From the water's edge up the steps to the palaces and temples and houses at the top, the terraces swarmed with thousands of people, and the talk and mirthless laughter rose and fell like the continuous clamour from a ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... her without feeling or resentment and speaking slowly, "yes, I'm an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute,'" deliberately accenting each word as he repeated the stinging phrase, "—but—what's the use?" he finished with a mirthless laugh. "Anyhow," he added, glancing again at the cat and Skinny's futile efforts to catch it, "I ain't interferin' this time, at least, with that ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... might do worse.... Yet he was not Harleston; there never was but one equal to Harleston, and that one was lost to her. She shut her lips tightly and a far-away look came into her eyes. And now Harleston, too, was lost to her; and—she lifted her hands resignedly, and laughed a mirthless laugh. As she came back to reality, she met Marston's curiously courteous glance with a ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... you," throws his hat at the back of his head, gulps down half his glass, and, while drawing breath for the other half, takes a hard, indifferent look at her, and in an off-hand voice throws her some fatuous, mirthless jest. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... usual dry, mirthless laugh, he greeted Dan with forced effusiveness, urging him to take a chair, declaring that he hardly knew him, that he thought he was at Gordon's Mills fishing. Then he entered at once into a glowing description of the splendid ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... was thumping fast and his attempt to laugh at his nervousness sounded hollow and mirthless. Something inside or outside the bubble had driven two men insane with its threat and now that he was irrevocably exiled in the bubble, himself, he could no longer dismiss their fear as products of their imagination. Both of them had been rational, intelligent men, as carefully selected ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... you can rope some more of these cayuses. I'd like to have them all tied up here for a while. I've got a few things to say to them. They'd have to listen whether they wanted to or not if they were all in the same fix that fellow is," he added with a short, mirthless laugh. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... think of any calamity befalling her. He hated her for tricking him; feared for her, for the pass to which he had brought her; cared for her beyond the point his liking had reached for any other woman. A mirthless laugh escaped him as he stood at the stairway ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... it was, quite cold, quite mirthless, apparently quite meaningless. Carraby turned back to the letter, tore open the envelope and spread it out before them. He read it out aloud in ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to work off the hollow, mirthless laugh dodge on me," I said, "because it won't do. You're a blackguard, and ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... then the widow next me bit her lip and clenched her fist, but she gave no other sign of emotion. Another film was thrown on the screen, humorous, I believe. Suddenly the woman began to laugh. She did not stop laughing. It was a long, mirthless, dry, uncanny sort of cackle. People stared. She laughed still louder. An usher came down the aisle, and stood there, uncertain what to do. Hysterics had given way to weeping: the tears were now streaming down the ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... Now that it was over the whole affair appalled her more than she could have suspected. When several of the guests of the evening soberly announced that Mohammed was a dangerous man and even an object of worry to the government she felt a strange catch in her throat and her now mirthless eyes turned instinctively to Brewster, who, it seemed, was the ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... I am not an aspirant myself?" he said. He had a mirthless sense of enjoyment in his own brazenness. Only he himself knew ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the fixed, breathless gaze of those wonderful eyes from the other side of the table, and he, too, broke off in the middle of his sentence. He breathed heavily, as though he had been running. His large, coarse lips drew wider apart. Slowly a mirthless and very unpleasant smile dawned ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sense and nerve returned, and he stood. He turned even, and made as if he would re-ascend the staircase. But he had no sooner thrust his head into it, and paused an instant to listen ere he ventured, than a faint echo of the same mirthless laughter reached him, and he turned shuddering, and fled—fled out of the room, out of the house, out of the light, to the same spot under the trees whence he had started with so bold a heart a ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... all well," said the doctor, facing Rainey, his face away from the girl. As he spoke he left his mouth open for a moment, his tongue showing between his white teeth, in a grin that was as mocking as that of a wolf, mirthless, ruthless, triumphant. And for a fleeting ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... woman's way she meant it, I suppose, yet as I looked at her, where she sat beyond the bowl of jonquils, in one of her old Paris gowns, which she had told me she was wearing out, I broke into a short, mirthless laugh. She held her head high, with its wreath of plaits that made a charming frame for her arched black eyebrows and her full red mouth. On her bare throat, round and white as a marble column, there was an old-fashioned necklace of wrought gold, which had belonged to some ancestress, who was ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... mirthless laugh, the assent of his egoism. But his satisfaction had nothing personal in it. He was pleased because justice, abstract justice, had been done. But she suspected his sincerity. He did things for you, not because he liked you, but for some ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... Sir Norman looked helplessly round, as if for relief; and Miranda, after a moment's silence, broke into another mirthless laugh. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... of the overworked phrase, "frozen with amazement." Before him stood the most dangerous man in Europe; a man who had done murder and worse; a man only in name, a demon in nature. His long black eyes half-closed, his perfectly chiselled ivory face expressionless, and his blood-red lips parted in a mirthless smile, Antony Ferrara watched Cairn—Cairn whom he had sought to murder by ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... phase and Lynda bent across the dog at her knee and put her hand on the arm of the chair. She was frightened, aroused. Truedale saw this and laughed a dry, mirthless laugh. ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... enjoyed a hearty laugh and I know it will be a darned long space before I'll snicker again. My laugher has gone unused for so long that it's atrophied and won't work. I've tried warming it up by going home at night and guffawing before the mirror, but the result is only a mirthless giggle—a ghostly chortle! Of course, I wouldn't dare ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... answer, but took my hand and examined it closely and curiously. Then she looked up, her lips twitched nervously, and she laughed a little hard mirthless laugh. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... an expression of slow bewilderment, which began presently to soften into a concern whereat, once more, his companion uttered his mirthless laugh. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... satisfy Rhes and his face cracked into a mirthless smile. "They would think that, those junkmen. Can't move a meter outside their own walls without an armor-plated machine as big as a barn. What did they ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... man made any move toward shaking hands, although it was obvious that they were acquainted, at least. The great detective's tone when he greeted his visitor was as distinctly ironical as the latter's was uneasy, although he replied with a mirthless chuckle, which was intended to be ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... can do that, I'll keep my mouth shut," chuckled Hank in his mirthless way; "but if I don't get some money pretty quick, I'm going to make trouble fer ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... to study Cole; to ponder the thin, mirthless smile. The Coroner said, "Mr. Cole, this inquest has been called to look into the death of one Sanford Smith, who was found near your home with a gun in his hand and a bullet in his brain. The theory of suicide ...
— The Smiler • Albert Hernhunter
... have you?" said the Frank, with a mirthless laugh. "Just as if you hadn't done enough already in the way of meddling with my affairs. Go! and may I never see your face again. You will make haste and begone if you're wise. My uncle will be back in half ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... school in the old country, he fought the schoolmaster and leathered him well. A pure lie, but an old favourite of Dad's, and one that never failed to make Joe laugh. He laughed now. And such a laugh!—a loud, mirthless, merciless noise. No one else joined in, though Miss Ribbone smiled a little. When Joe recovered he held out ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... the ranch. I may—I will—That is, if I—" He stopped as if not knowing how to finish, and with a gesture of hopelessness turned away to stand silently looking back toward the town, while his face was dark with painful memories, and his lips curved in that mirthless, self-mocking smile. ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... one thing only to be said, Baltimore," says she, after a slight pause. "This must never occur again. I like you, you know that. I——" she breaks off abruptly, and suddenly gives way to a sort of mirthless laughter. "It is a farce!" she says. "Consider my feeling anything. And so virtuous a thing, too, as remorse! Well, as one lives, one learns. If I had seen the light for the first time in the middle of the dark ages, I should ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... Dartmoor," Stane laughed again his cold, mirthless laugh. "There is no need to mince matters, Ainley. All the world knows I went there, and you need not go to any trouble to spare my feelings. When a man has been through hell ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... in my breast, For mirthless laughter, and I laughed; In mine the phantom's cold hand pressed A cup, and in self's spite I quaffed. It clung like slime; 'twas black like ink: Death is less ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... masculine neophytes, he picked himself up and came back, savagely confident in his humiliation. She tried to guide his first toddling ski-steps, but he was mad all through and would have his own way. With a set and mirthless smile, again and again he gave himself to the slope and the mercy of his insurgent legs, and at length, bearing heavily on his trail-pole, managed to reach the level below ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... their silent, mirthless laugh. By this time Mr. Pike was beside himself with a rage that could find ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... "The Flying Fool" by his comrades in the —th Pursuit Squadron of the American Expeditionary Force, entered the mess hall with lips pressed into a thin, mirthless grin that seemed entirely inappropriate in one who was thirty minutes late to mess and must therefore make out with what was left. The other members of the squadron had finished their meal and were now engaged in the usual after-dinner practice ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... with a smile—mirthless enough, God knows—but he looked at me menacingly. "That's my business," he said. An air of indomitable resolution came and went upon his face like a vain and passing shadow. Next moment he looked ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad |
