"Mockery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... And clothed their boughs with green; Their leaves the dews of evening quaff,— And when the wind blows loud and keen, I've seen the jolly timbers laugh, And shake their sides with merry glee— Wagging their heads in mockery. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... however, I have no hopes. You have denied your presence at the infamous and sacrilegious mockery ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... to be afflicted with an impediment in their speech, an accidental lameness, or the like; he had the mean barbarity to endeavour to aggravate the misfortune by a coarse imitation, which generally turned the whole ridicule upon himself. He once had the impudence to practise his mockery upon a worthy gentlemen in the neighbourhood, who was so unfortunate as to be unable to speak without stuttering. The gentleman happening to pass by Mr. Fribble's door, at which our little monsieur was then standing with a magpie ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... looking false ingenuity, restlessness, unreason, misery, and mockery, salute you on all highways and byways. The English coachman, as he whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his whip, curses him with his tongue; the Milesian is holding out his hat to beg. He is the ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... up to war in Egypt and South Africa, have shown how little power finance wields in the realm of foreign politics. In the City if one suggests that our Foreign Office is swayed by financial influences one is met by incredulous mockery, probably accompanied by assertions that the Foreign Office is, in fact, neglectful, to a fault, of British financial interests abroad, and that when it does, as in China, interfere with financial matters, it is apt to tie the hands of finance, in order to further what it believes to be the political ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... gentlemen, that foreigners have difficulty in understanding our laws," observed Don Luis. He spoke affably, but mockery lurked in his tones. "Without realizing it you two have committed a serious offense against our laws. You have ventured to arrest ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... it from him and leveled it at him so that it almost touched his forehead. He looked at her and laughed in delighted mockery. ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... of France!" he muttered, when at last the dread and horror of his position had culminated in a feverish fit that seemed as if it would end by his springing out of bed, tearing off the mockery of his disguise, and hurrying through the outer chamber into the corridor to seek the ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... classed as a "monument historique"—but the church of greens was protected by the god of nature, and seemed to laugh aloud, as if with conscious gleeful strength. This gay, triumphant laugh was reflected, as if to emphasize its mockery of man's work, in the tranquil waters of a little pond, lily-leaved, garlanded in bushes, that lay hidden beyond the roadway. Through the interstices of the vines one solitary window from the tower, like a sombre eye, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... saw you to-day, all the light and warmth came rushing back, and I knew that it was you who were my light, my sun, and that without you I was not living, but only a shadow and a mockery ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... mockery of these deadly preparations, I do not recollect to have seen a more heavenly night than the present. The heat of the day was past, a full clear moon shone brightly in a sky where not a cloud could be discerned, and a heavy dew falling appeared to refresh the earth, which had ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... Clement VII not to complain or to think of vengeance, but to forgive, at the moment when the wailings of the devastated city were ascending to the Castel Sant' Angelo, where the Pope himself was a prisoner, is the mockery of a devil or a monkey. Sometimes, when he is forced to give up all hope of presents, his fury breaks out into a savage howl, as in the 'Capitolo' to the Prince of Salerno, who after paying him for some time refused to do so any longer. On ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... on his legs with his air of ferocious mockery, while his fiery red face seemed to flame and burn. For a long time past ordinary brandy had seemed to him like pure water; only spirits of 36 degrees tickled his blunted palate; and he took such draughts of it that he was full of it—his flesh saturated with it—like a ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... hazard on his own estate, rather than have undertaken this march, if he had known that he was to be one of a company of negroes, gathering like the tempest in its progress, and uttering at every turning, as if in mockery of himself, "Vive le Roi, et l'ancien regime!" He grew very cross, while quite sensible of the necessity of appearing in a good mood to every one— ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... the other," I answered stubbornly, though I longed to kiss the mockery away from her curving lips. "When the time comes ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... muddle and mockery the whole thing is!" he cried. "What a fumbling old fool old Mother Nature has been! She drives us into indignity and dishonour: and she doesn't even get the children which are her only excuse for her mischief. See what a fantastic thing I am when you take the machine ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... lives painted with such unsparing severity, nor was it pleasant to the Sophists and rhetoricians to see their idols overthrown, and they themselves exposed as false teachers and shallow pretenders. No one likes to see himself held up to scorn and mockery; nobody is willing to be shown up as ignorant and conceited. The people of Athens did not like to see their gods ridiculed, for the logical sequence of the teachings of Socrates was to undermine the popular ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Lady Helena Powyss' party came—a terrible ordeal for Ethel. She had grown miserably nervous under the life she had led the past two weeks—the ceaseless mockery of Miss Catheron's soft, scornful tones, the silent contempt and derision of her hard black eyes. What should she wear? how should she act? What if she made some absurd blunder, betraying her plebeian birth and breeding? What if she mortified her thin-skinned husband? Oh! ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... the long-cherished project for a descent upon England. Its King had just added to his long list of offences against the Church by despoiling the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury and burning the bones of the saint. The saint was even said to have been put on his trial in mockery, declared contumacious, and condemned as a traitor.[1035] If the canonised bones of martyrs could be treated thus, who would, for the future, pay respect to the Church or tribute at its shrines? At Rome a party, of which Pole was the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... men to men in fortune.' And he proceeds to quote here, approvingly, a series of speeches on this very point, which appear to be full of pertinence; the first of the philosopher who, when he was asked in mockery, 'How it came to pass that philosophers were followers of rich men, and not rich men of philosophers,' answered soberly, and yet sharply, 'Because the one sort knew what they had need of, and the other did not'. And then the speech of Aristippus, who, when some one, tender on behalf of philosophy, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... enthusiasm which might, in the future, create more evils than it cured. Acton was, in truth, the incarnation of the "spirit of Whiggism," although in a very different sense of the phrase from that in which it became the target for the arrows of Disraeli's scorn and his mockery of the Venetian constitution. He was not the Conservative Whig of the "glorious revolution," for to him the memory of William of Orange might be immortal but was certainly not pious: yet it was "revolution principles" of which he said that they were the great gift of ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... in this people's books a crowd of typical emblems which revolt us to-day and which exercise our incredulity and our mockery, but which appeared ordinary and simple ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... object of her first affection as she had anticipated she should be; she was pale, spiritless, and absent; sometimes started when addressed, as if only accustomed to the accents of authority unmingled with kindness; her cheeks were hollow, her eyes sunken and ray-less, and her smile was the very mockery of mirth; evidently she was not happy, and the apparently affectionate attentions lavished upon her by the comte, tended not to diminish suspicions that he was not altogether so amiable at home, as he took pains ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... fair picture he had seen standing in the door, with the snowflakes resting in her hair like pearls in a golden coronet. And Arthur thanked his God that he was beginning at last to feel right—that the solemn vows that he was so soon to utter would be more than a mockery. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... He tried to speak gently, aware through all her mockery of something piteous, tragic in ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... away most politely to the passengers, especially to the ladies. We could almost fancy that we heard him apologising to them for the inconvenience and disappointment he was causing them, with a spice of mockery in his tone, suggesting that it was the fortune of war, and that another day their turn might come uppermost. The crew of the Indiaman were then sent down the side, and rowed off to one of the hulks, while the passengers were conveyed ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... He was not fashionable or decorative. He was a banker, and towards bankers Adams felt the narrow prejudice which the serf feels to his overerseer; for he knew he must obey, and he knew that the helpless showed only their helplessness when they tempered obedience by mockery. The world, after 1865, became a bankers' world, and no banker would ever trust one who had deserted State Street, and had gone to Washington with purposes of doubtful credit, or of no credit at all, for he could not have put up ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... are indispensable as an adjunct; but, as to reading," there is, "says Lamb," absolutely no such thing but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, but it was labor thrown away. It is a mockery, all that is reported of the influential Phoebus. No true poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. The mild internal light, that reveals the fine shapings of poetry, like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sunshine. ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... dispute the most shameless son of Shaitan that I have ever known to take up a poor girl's time with this play, and then to say: "Is not the jest enough?" Thou wilt go very far in this world.' She gave the dancing-girls' salutation in mockery. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... reason, when the young ruler decided to be rid of this royal mummery. On the night of July 1st he fled from Haarlem, and travelled swiftly and secretly eastwards until he reached Teplitz, in Bohemia. The ignominy of this flight rested on the brother who had made kingship a mockery. The refugee left behind him the reputation of a man who, lovable by nature but soured by domestic discords, sought to shield his subjects from the ruin into which the rigid application of the Continental System was certain to plunge them. That ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... faint smile, and Isabel held the colored water to her mother's pale lips. Then Mrs. Chester slept again while the two girls sat watching her with their hopeful eyes. Once every ten minutes these little creatures would steal up to the pillow and pour the mockery of strength between those white and parted lips, hoping each time that she would open her eyes and speak to them again—but no, she slept on and each moment her breath grew fainter. While the two ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... was sent, more specific and more urgent: but the men met the importunate kindness of the king with contemptuous mockery: "they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise." A portion of them carried their opposition beyond supercilious neglect into blood-thirsty enmity; "the remnant took ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... father-in-law hath done us, for he let this lion loose for the nonce, to put us to shame. But in an evil day were we born if we do not revenge this upon his daughters. Badly were we matched with them, and now for the after-feast he hath made this mockery of us! But we must keep secret this which we bear in mind, and not let him wit that we are wroth against him, for otherwise he would not let us depart from hence, neither give us our wives to take with us, and he would take from us the swords Colada and Tizona which he gave us.... We will therefore ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... mockery. "Oh, no, you wouldn't! You know what it is, don't you? Yes, you do!" Penrod's curiosity stirred somewhat. "Well, all right," he said, "I got nothin' to do. I just as ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... in a softened tone, "I no longer feel any resentment against you. We will forget anything," he added, with one of those smiles which always reflect a noble soul; "I have not so little delicacy as to demand the mockery of love from a wife who no longer ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... admired a lassie before then, if scarce so sudden and strong; and it was rather my disposition to withdraw than to come forward, for I was much in fear of mockery from the womenkind. You would have thought I had now all the more reason to pursue my common practice, since I had met this young lady in the city street, seemingly following a prisoner, and accompanied with two very ragged indecent-like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... purposely avoided anything savouring of heathenism, such as breaking a bottle of wine on her bows, taken evidently from the Greek custom of pouring out a libation to Neptune; nor would we make a mockery of the rite of baptism, by pretending to christen her. Living among heathens, it was our duty to be especially circumspect in all our proceedings. The natives are very acute, and are accustomed ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... July Monarchy was unhappily very far from representing the traditional hereditary principle. Born of one insurrection, it was overthrown by another. Set up on the electoral principle, it fell, as though in mockery, with a full electoral majority behind it. Two-and- twenty years later the empire too fell, on the very morrow of a triumphant plebiscite. Partial and universal suffrage alike have proved their impotence to defend a government which has ceased ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... ago, the writer of these lines, In the mad pride of intellectuality, Maintained "the power of words"—denied that ever A thought arose within the human brain Beyond the utterance of the human tongue: And now, as if in mockery of that boast, Two words-two foreign soft dissyllables— Italian tones, made only to be murmured By angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,"— Have stirred ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a noble passion—to have the free, uncontrolled disposition of ourselves, our words and actions. But alas! it is one in which we know that a large portion of the human race can never be gratified. It is mockery, to say that the laborer any where has such disposition of himself—though there may be an approach to it in some peculiar, and those, perhaps, not the most desirable, states of society. But unless he be properly disciplined and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Church. Can we wonder that commercialism is mistaken by nations for progress? That king and emperor still call upon God to bless their barbaric attempts at conquest? And that human existence remains, what it has always been, a ghastly mockery of Life? ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... a vast deal from her presence, rather than forego the honour of her sanction, Mrs. Dareville, without any motives of interest, or good-nature of sufficient power to restrain her talent and habit of ridicule, free from hope or fear, gave full scope to all the malice of mockery, and all the insolence of fashion. Her slings and arrows, numerous as they were and outrageous, were directed against such petty objects, and the mischief was so quick, in its aim and its operation, that, felt but not seen, it is scarcely possible to register the hits, or ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... mockery of a title for the woman who had deliberately flung away from her as a worthless weed the white flower of love ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... the President shall exercise his constitutional power and arrest it if his judgment is against it. If he surrender this power, or fail to exercise it in a case where he can not approve, it would make his formal approval a mere mockery, and would be itself a violation of the Constitution, and the dissenting State would become bound by a law which had not been passed according to the sanctions of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... whole group fled different ways; some to their dressing-rooms, and others, through the streets, to their own homes, in order to avoid the destruction which they believed to be coming upon them, for the profane mockery they had been guilty of. The odd devil was non inventus. He took himself invisibly away, through fears of another kind. He was, however, seen by many, in imagination, to fly through the roof of the house, and ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... a chance that with the weight of the testimony of several of us the truth of our statements may be accepted, and at least a compromise effected which will result in the dispatching of an expedition of investigation to this hideous mockery of heaven." ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... unreasonable that I should expect an immediate answer. You have known me as a boy, and have seen little of society. You will like me better after seeing the hollow mockery of social compliments. My love for you will be constant. Will you not kindly leave me some hope, and wait a year before final decision? I will go abroad, hoping that at the end of twelve anxious months Alice Webster will consent ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... idea that the Divine Spirit must convert the man, and that it passes the unwilling soul without giving him ability that he may be tried, for a man must be able to attain the desired object, otherwise trial is mere mockery. So, according to this kind of teaching, justice is mocked, and the sinner is sent to perdition without anything more than a mock trial; i.e., without being tried. If this be not true, the theory ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... knowledge of deep truths. The various religions are only various forms in which the truth, which taken by itself is above their comprehension, is grasped and realized by the masses; and truth becomes inseparable from these forms. Therefore, my dear sir, don't take it amiss if I say that to make a mockery of these forms ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... they were condemned to death without a hearing, and were forced to choose a Spaniard to defend them at the mockery of a trial which ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 57, December 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... evil wrought seems to me impossible while the evil exists—the cure and the cessation of the disease are one. How could the heart of ice be melted till tender feelings warm it, and how can tender feelings find entrance into a feelingless heart? Alas! alas! I can but predict what sounds like a mockery of your trouble," she went on, turning to the King, though indeed by this time she might have included the Queen in her sympathy, for Claribel stood, horrified at the result of her mad resentment, as pale as Brave-Heart ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... sitting in dappled sunshine upon grey and crumbling walls and looking queenly down on one with clear blue eyes. Cruel and foolish dreams they were, that ended in one's being laughed at and made a mock of. There was no mockery here. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... ridicule, derision; sardonic smile, sardonic grin; irrision[obs3]; scoffing &c. (disrespect) 929; mockery, quiz|!, banter, irony, persiflage, raillery, chaff, badinage; quizzing &c. v.; asteism[obs3]. squib, satire, skit, quip, quib[obs3], grin. parody, burlesque, travesty, travestie[obs3]; farce &c. (drama) 599; caricature. buffoonery &c. (fun) 840; practical joke; horseplay. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Baron," said the hag, with a smile of grisly mockery; "summon thy vassals around thee, doom them that loiter to the scourge and the dungeon—But know, mighty chief," she continued, suddenly changing her tone, "thou shalt have neither answer, nor aid, nor obedience at their hands.—Listen to these horrid ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... toward it. In Shakespeare's first works, when this character appeared, it was frankly called "Oldcastle," but later, in Elizabeth's time, when Protestantism again triumphed, it was awkward to bring out with mockery a martyr in the strife with Catholicism, and, besides, Oldcastle's relatives had protested, and Shakespeare accordingly altered the name of Oldcastle to that of Falstaff, also a historical figure, known for having fled from the field of battle ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... three bodies to assemble and vote separately, according to ancient custom; and then when he gave still further proof of childish incompetency by telling the Tiers Etat they were "not to meddle with the privileges of the higher orders," kingship had become a mockery. It was a child telling the tornado not to come in ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... a gayety that rang hollow in the pathos of the mockery and farce.... But he smiled to be kind to her; and, to make the poor, clouded mind a little happier still, he took her hand again and said ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... "Mockery," pronounced the man of learning, "is a use of the mental powers which is both unworthy and barren and does not in this case advance the argument, which is: Who and what is this man for ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... mouths, apes' faces, and distorting of their countenance; and this art of oratory as a choice mystery, they convey down by tradition to one another. The manner of it I may adventure thus farther to enlarge upon. First, in a kind of mockery they implore the divine assistance, which they borrowed from the solemn custom of the poets: then if their text suppose be of charity, they shall take their exordium as far off as from a description of the river Nile in Egypt; or if they are to discourse of the mystery of the Cross, they ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... originating in deference to northern interests, and to be received by us as a free-will offering of disinterested benevolence, demanding our gratitude to the mover,—may well cover us with shame. We deserve the humiliation and have well earned the mockery. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... on with more daring mockery, still with lips that smiled. "Ah! I see you remember. That duel was an affair of interest to you, hein? You were—the woman in ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... "This is mere mockery, Ellen: how dare I believe even this poor evidence of repentance, with the recollection of your past conduct? What were the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Christians, and of these many apostatized to their former faith. The papal nuncio at the court of Castile raised a cry for the establishment of the Inquisition. The poorer Jews were accused of sacrificing Christian children at the Passover, in mockery of the crucifixion; the richer were denounced as Averroists. Under the influence of Torquemada, a Dominican monk, the confessor of Queen Isabella, that princess solicited a bull from the pope for the establishment of the Holy Office. A bull was accordingly issued in November, 1478, for the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... really mastered, and so shallow as not even to know their shallowness. How much better, I say, it is for the active and thoughtful intellect, where such is to be found, to eschew the college and the university altogether, than to submit to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious! How much more profitable for the independent mind, after the mere rudiments of education, to range through a library at random, taking down books as they meet him, and pursuing the trains of thought which his mother wit suggests! How much ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... something very different from authorizing private companies to issue bank notes, on the basis of the public stocks held as private property, or even on what is called a specie basis. To claim the power under the general welfare clause would be a simple mockery of good sense. It is no more for the general welfare than any other successful private business. The private welfare of each is, no doubt, for the welfare of all, but not therefore is it the "general welfare," for what is private, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... quickened him extraordinarily: he loved to show off and astonish his audience, and usually talked better after an hour or two than at the beginning. His verve was inexhaustible. But always a great part of the fascination lay in the quick changes from grave to gay, from pathos to mockery, from philosophy to fun. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... bewitchingly. "Was ever maid so nobly squired? This is an embarrassment of riches." She looked longingly at the two attending gallants. There was something in her voice that might be mockery or that might be love. Only the devil ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... khan is a painful mockery of the word hotel, as it is often translated. Picture to yourself a room about eight feet square, with windows not made to open, a stove which fills one-third of the entire space, and a wooden divan occupying the other two-thirds; the ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... and cherry-colored ribbons, who, by desire of the donor, was to be called Philippa, in honor of my uncle. I never loved or liked dolls, though I remember taking some pride in the splendor of this, my first-born. They always affected me with a grim sense of being a mockery of the humanity they were supposed to represent; there was something uncanny, not to say ghastly, in the doll existence and its mimicry of babyhood to me, and I had a nervous dislike, not unmixed with fear, of the smiling simulacra that girls are all ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... them, and made him the subject of their derision and mockery, during a whole day's entertainment, trying to exhaust his patience, but in vain, for he bore the whole with true christian fortitude. They spit in his face, pulled his nose, and pinched him in most parts of his body. He was hunted like a wild beast, till ready to expire ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Dyspeptic, who attempted to Kill Time by reading Novels, until he discovered that all Books of Fiction were a Mockery. ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... that the grievances of them and their employers were alike groundless; that they deserved the worst;—what inefficiency, what imbecility has been evinced in the method chosen to reduce them! Why were the military called out to be made a mockery of, if they were to be called out at all? As far as the difference of seasons would permit, they have merely parodied the summer campaign of Major Sturgeon; and, indeed, the whole proceedings, civil and military, seemed on the model of those of the mayor and corporation ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... it is you! I make my obeisance to your Majesty," and she curtsied to him, humbly enough, but with a suggestion of mockery ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... woman, this Betty Nasroth, and would likely enough have fared badly in the time of the King's father. Now there was bigger game than witches afoot, and nothing worse befell her than the scowls of her neighbours and the frightened mockery of children. She made free reply with curses and dark mutterings, but me she loved as being the child of her vision, and all the more because, encountering her as I rode in my mother's arms, I did not cry, but held out my hands, crowing and struggling ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... latter years only, and under the perceptibly increasing sway of religious influences, that her miserably tormented mind recovered peace and repose. Mademoiselle, who had only given up dancing in 1674, withdrew gradually from Court when she found that she had become an object of pity, if not of mockery, therein. The Grande Mademoiselle expired on the 5th of April, 1693, in her palace of the Luxembourg, aged sixty-six. That singularity, which had so remarkably characterised her life, pursued her even beyond it. At her obsequies, celebrated with much magnificence, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... memory in the effort to do so, but quite in vain. He was, however, in spite of such swift, momentary precautions, absolutely convinced that he was listening to those enchanting tones for the first time. "Who is this speaking?" he asked. But only a burst of low, rippling laughter with a faint hint of mockery ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... costume, with jewels in her hair and cars, and sparkling on her snowy bosom. The expressions were as various as the poses; now it was demure penetration, now a subtle inviting glance, now burning passion, and again a look of elfish and elusive mockery. In whatever phase, the countenance possessed a singular and poignant fascination, not of beauty merely, though that was very striking, but of ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... disappeared round the corner of the church, and was hurrying down the hill. She slipped in at her own little door, to her place near the altar, so lately left. All was silent now, the Cure was gone; she knelt there alone and prayed for them all, as Urbain had said. His words were mockery, she knew; but that only made her ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... great masses of men and women are forced to lead sordid, unbeautiful, cramped, hopeless, and helpless lives, as they are forced to live now—call no nation civilised. So long as these things exist—call no nation religious. The one is a mockery of human life; the other is ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... dared not leave her there, for her first unconscious movement might be such that she would fall over the edge. But I saw that she must have shade and water, or die. Every instant she grew whiter and her lips looked more rigid. I shouted aloud, and only the echoes answered me, as if in mockery. A little lark suddenly flew out from a tuft of yellow wall-flower close by, and burst into a swift carol of delight as he soared away. At last, with great efforts, I succeeded in dragging her, by her feet—for I dared not venture out so far as the spot on which her head lay—to a safer place, ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... stepped forward, speaking quickly in Turkish, with a hard-sounding rattle of words. The sister glanced at him with a deepening of that curious air of mockery and let fall two words in the same tongue. Then she turned ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... After all the scientific mockery of the old religious ideal of the importance of man, one begins to wonder if his Ptolemaic fancy that he was the centre of the universe, and that it was all made for him, is not nearer the If truth than the pitiless theories which hardly allow ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... can, then all free and voluntary contracts cease, and are void in the world; there needs nothing to dissolve them at any time, but power enough: and all the grants and promises of men in power are but mockery and collusion: for can there be any thing more ridiculous than to say, I give you and your's this for ever, and that in the surest and most solemn way of conveyance can be devised; and yet it is to be understood, that I have right, if I please, to take it away from you again to morrow? ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... ourselves are, in order that he might redeem us from sin and death and give us eternal life without any merit or worthiness of our own, we give Jews and Turks no less occasion for laughter and mockery than when we speak of the three persons. For this is a more absurd assertion by far, in the estimation of human reason, which speculates in its Jewish and Turkish—yea, heathenish—teachings, on this wise: God is an only, almighty Lord ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... stolen goods with not a thread or a stitch of them missing. So we took them and carried the keeper to the Prefecture of Police where we stripped him and beat him with palm-rods till he confessed to thefts manifold. Now I did this by way of mockery against my comrades, and it succeeded. The company marvelled at this story with the utmost marvelling, and the eleventh constable rose and said, "I know a story yet stranger than this: but it ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... man has to have something living to cling to. I think, Lois, it was your little white soul I tried to keep near me—even when life was at its loudest and every intellectual idea of God seemed the sheerest mockery, and desire and love and a million things came up to me and said: 'Look here at me! See, I'm Life. You're turning your back on it!' All the way through that shadow, Lois, I could always see your baby soul flitting on ahead of me, very frail and ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... less hard because it came immediately after the great triumph of the Show. There were the seven prize cards adorning the wall over Tara's great bed in the den; but their presence had been something of a mockery in the absence of their winner. When the Master and the Mistress finally bade Finn good night, after making him thoroughly comfortable in his own clean, big bed, the coach-house door ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... there is a shrine of a deity who is supposed to have the power of melting the wicked into contrition, and to this accursed mockery, on his birthday, the prisoners are compelled to give a feast, which is provided by the jailer out of his peculations from their daily allowances. No water is allowed for washing, and the tubs containing ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... I ought to say something, but it matters very little, for anything I can say must sound like an insult or a mockery. But if I ask you simply to believe that I share your deep sorrow as much as anybody standing closer to you, then you must not turn away from me. You mustn't, for I deserve your pity if not your ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... make you was a purse of my own knitting, to put your earnings in;" said she, laughing; and then she held up her finger in mockery, crying, "Boat, sir; boat, sir. Well, Jacob, there's nothing like independence, after all, and you must not mind my laughing ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... governor of the city of Cuzco. On these charges he was condemned to suffer death as a traitor, by being publicly beheaded in the great square of the city. Who were the judges, or what was the tribunal that condemned him, we are not informed. Indeed, the whole trial was a mockery; if that can be called a trial, where the accused himself is not even ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Outrages and mockery were incessantly mingled with the audacious proceedings of the revolutionists. It was customary to give serenades under the King's windows on New Year's Day. The band of the National Guard repaired thither on that festival in 1791; in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... himself that he could convince an assembly of Frenchmen that they did not understand their own language, was justly considered by the chamber as a matchless specimen of impudence and folly. Lexicographical subtleties were employed with bitter mockery for the purpose of destroying a public right, consecrated by the constitutional compact. Never had insolence and bad faith been displayed so prominently: Raynouard, the reporter of the committee, exclaimed in the language of grief and indignation, "Minister of our ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... these no doubt they could press into their service against me if need arose. I knew both Moreau and Montgomery carried revolvers; and, save for a feeble bar of deal spiked with a small nail, the merest mockery of ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... he saw a woman looking at him from a corner of the court-room, with a strange, wild expression. At the moment he saw no more than an excited, bewildered face, but afterwards this face came and went before him, flashing in and out of dark places in a kind of mockery. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a ruffian who struck a woman, and narrowly escaped with his life for doing so. Henceforth he could but assent to a truce which implied mutual toleration; and yet he understood that his presence was not without its influence even on these irredeemables. Men called him "The Hunter," or in mockery "The Dook." He had done small services for one or two of them—even written a begging letter for a rogue who could not write at all, but posed as an "old public school man," fallen upon evil days. ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... terror, which death, in its common shape, would not have inspired. This savage pageant on the part, of the Dead Boxer, besides being calculated to daunt the heart of any man who might accept his challenge, was a cruel mockery of the solemnities of death. In this instance it produced such a sensation as never had been felt in that part of the country. An uneasy feeling of wild romance, mingled with apprehension, curiosity, fear, and amazement, all conspired to work upon ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... you are not so, and I will fall down and worship you. You were the only creature that ever seemed to love me; and to have my hopes, and all my fondness for you, thus turned to a mockery—it is too much! Tell me why you have deceived me, and singled ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... opposition to slavery extension, but so controlled and sane that it would stir no impulsive radical to violence. There probably was not uttered in the United States on that critical 4th of July, 1856, when the very foundation of the government was in dispute and the day itself seemed a mockery, a cooler, more logical speech than this by the man who, a month before, had driven a convention so nearly mad that the very reporters had forgotten to make notes. And the temper of this Princeton speech Lincoln kept ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... the twenty-four had to swear to it, the most backward to do so was Simon de Montfort himself, who probably discerned that the pledge was likely to be a mere mockery. When he at length consented, it was with the words, "By the arm of St. James, though I take this oath, the last, and by compulsion, yet I will so observe it that none shall be able to ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... admission. But in this they were unsuccessful. "Mrs. Hutchinson can tell when to speak and when to hold her tongue," commented the governor, in describing the court proceedings. Yet when all is said, the "trial" was but a mockery, and those who read the proceedings as preserved in the "History of Massachusetts Under the Colony and Province," written by Governor Hutchinson, a descendant of our heroine, will be quick to condemn the judgment there pronounced by a court which expounded ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... his hand from her lips and brutally kissed them, laughing as she shrank away from him in sick horror. The gleaming mockery of his eyes was a thing ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... peoples are dismissed with comparatively brief notice. The general reason assigned for the destruction of the smaller peoples in xxv. is their vengeful attitude to Israel. Ammon in particular is singled out for her malicious joy over the destruction of the temple and her mockery of the captive Jews. The destruction of these people is no doubt to be brought about indirectly, if not directly, as in the case of Tyre, xxvi. 7, and Egypt, xxix. 19, by Nebuchadrezzar. The oracle against Tyre is one ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... regretted that New Lindsey was a barren soil, wherein the seed he sowed bore little fruit. He could not be happy without a secret society, and that he had established in Kirton; but it was, he ruefully admitted, hardly more than a toy, a mockery, the merest simulacrum. The members displayed no alacrity; they were but five all told, besides himself: a bookseller's assistant, a watchmaker (he was a German, but the larger cause harmonised all differences), two artisans, and—what is either ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... wild maiden spoke thus, there was a sort of mockery in her eyes; on her brow; gleaming through all her face, as if she scorned what she thus pressed upon him, the spoils of the dead man who lay at their feet. Middleton, with his susceptibility, could not [but] be sensible of a ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... terminated we were ushered into the Chapel where all the nobility of the Court, both male and female, were assembled. Each seemed to vie with the other in splendour of dress. The music was immeasurably fine; but this theatrically magnificent assembly in a Chapel seemed much like a mockery of Religion. Murat, however, who was in a very conspicuous place, acted his part very well. His little boy stood near him and he found out the different parts of the service in the child's prayer- book. As soon as the mass was over the Duc di Gallo placed ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... indicating that there had been such commixture, and, as it were, adultery, of various vegetable species, that the production was no longer of God's making, but the monstrous offspring of man's depraved fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty. They were probably the result of experiment, which in one or two cases had succeeded in mingling plants individually lovely into a compound possessing the questionable and ominous character that distinguished the whole growth ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Church; high birth, through which he was allied with most of the royal and princely houses of Europe; of austerity, devotion, learning, holiness, charity, not a word. He took the name of Clement VII; the Italians bitterly taunted the mockery of this name, assumed by the captain of the Breton Free Companies—by the author, it was believed, of the massacre ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... cried bitterly, "calls hisself a intelligent man, and thinks he orter be allowed to vote! What a holler mockery!" ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne |
