"Sneering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes staring at me through the bright green trees, and afterwards when we went in to look at her dead; then worst of all that ride back to the "Stab" with my hand on his thick, throbbing arm.... Semyonov in the Forest, working, sneering, hating us, despising us, carrying his tragedy in his eyes and defying us to care; Semyonov that last time of all, vanishing into the darkness with his "Nothing!" that lingering echo of a defiant desperate soul that ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... pulling away her hands with which she had covered her face, he continued: "Well, I call upon you now to tell me which of us two is the father of this young man; he or I, your husband or your lover. Come! Come! tell us." Limousin rushed at him, but Parent pushed him back, and sneering in his fury, he said: "Ah! you are brave now! You are braver than you were that day when you ran downstairs because I was going to half murder you. Very well! If she will not reply, tell me yourself. You ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... might come to hear me—to say they'd heard me—the younger generation—and see my jewels. I hadn't many left. I'd sold most of them. Well, I was mistaken. I couldn't get a house. The fools!" Scorn ate up her face alive and opened it out, a sneering mask. They were fools indeed, she knew, who would not stir the ashes of such embers in search of one spark left. "I'm a very strong woman. But I rather broke down then. I came here to Esther. She was the only ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... on account of the wheel-house and funnel, which were of course abaft the bridge, blocking the view. The cantankerous little beggar sniffed his beak of a nose in the air as if trying to look down on me, though he was half a head shorter, and spoke in that nasty sneering way of his that always made me mad. He did enjoy growling at any one when he had the chance; and so he went on snarling now, like a cat behind an area railing at a dog which couldn't get at it to stop its venomous spitting. "I saw you, my joker, star-gazing down there, instead of ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... set a-kimbo on the hips, and the right hand now and then thrown out toward the object, as if one were going to strike another a slight back-handed blow. The pitch of the voice rather loud, the tone arch and sneering; the sentences short; the expressions satyrical, with mock-praise intermixed. There are instances of raillery in scripture itself, as 1 Kings xviii. and Isa. xliv. It is not, therefore, beneath the dignity ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... was a warm-hearted friend and an amiable man. His latter poems show that his best days were by. His "Remains" are very trifling, but these have nothing to do with his former fame. I never forgave Lord Byron's sneering mention of him in the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers;" but, never mind, he has left a genius behind him that will live as late as his lordship's; and, though he was but a "Cobler," his poems will meet posterity as green and growing ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... in Poliuto. He listened with attention through the first act, drowsily through the second, and from the shades of dreamland in the third. Between the acts he lounged in the lobbies and heard the critics speak with sneering derision of the complimentary notices of the American Nightingale which they were about to write, while they expressed, with sardonic smiles, a longing for the day when they would be "allowed"—such was their singular expression—to "speak the truth about Miss ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... blood in his veins. A man whom he hired searched out his ancestry, and with the exception of his immediate family it seemed very satisfactory. The sister, with her twisted body and her face that twitched so persistently, seemed to be everlastingly sneering at him. He grew half afraid to come into her presence. After he began to grow rich he married Ernestine, the daughter of the soap maker at Buffalo, and when her father died she also had a great deal of money. His own father died and he set up a household of his own. That was in ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... But even when the senator was not to be lured into a trap, he could not escape assault. The baron in such a case would cross the lines and attack him on his own ground, as on one occasion, when Ratcliffe was defending his doctrine of party allegiance, Jacobi silenced him by sneering ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... instincts and ways of looking at life, be as alien as if they belonged to two different races of mankind. The borderer, rude, suspicious, and impatient of discipline, looks with distrust and with a mixture of sneering envy and of hostility upon the officer; while the latter, with his rigid training and his fixed ideals, feels little sympathy for the other's good points, and is contemptuously aware of his numerous failings. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... back from Rome, where he had been spending a month or two, and they began to meet at Palazzo Pinti again. If they got on well enough together, they did not get on very far. The suave house-priest manners of the young clergyman offended Colville; he could hardly keep from sneering at his taste in art and books, which in fact was rather conventional; and no doubt Mr. Morton had his own reserves, under which he was perfectly civil, and only too deferential to Colville, as ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... It puffed their sails full out With puffs of smoky breath From a smouldering lip, And cleared the waterspout Which reeled roaring round about Threatening death. With a horny hand it steered, And a horn appeared On its sneering head upreared Haughty and high Against the blackening lowering sky. With a hoof it swayed the waves; They opened here and there, Till I spied deep ocean graves Full of skeletons That were men and women once Foul or fair; Full of things that creep And fester ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... of the subject the creditors attempt to brush aside the equities involved by sneering at the debtors. But, Mr. President, debt is the distinguishing characteristic of modern society. It is through debt that the marvellous developments of the nineteenth-century civilization have been effected. Who are the debtors ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... to be dictated to as to how I shall conduct my own business," put in Mr. Kestrel, in a sneering voice. When the spell of Keith's gaze was lifted from him ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... a languid smile; sneering was ARTHUR'S fault, And he had one squirmy snigger which was worse than an assault. He was a most sarcastic man, this languid ARTHUR B., And he aimed at being Chef, ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... kind of charge through a group of people, who looked as if they enjoyed "the show," and gave a shove to a big Mohammedan who looked insolent, at which, he said, "the man went down like a bag of feathers." I saw some suspicious-looking fellows grinning and sneering and showing their teeth myself, and I felt as if I could have killed them. No one who has not felt it can imagine how we all feel out here in regard to such matters. When Lord Mayo was stabbed, I think every man in the ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... again, and broke it into many pieces; and for three days he welded it in a white-hot fire, and tempered it with milk and oatmeal. Then, in sight of the sneering apprentices, a light ball of fine-spun wool was cast upon the flowing water of the brook; and it was caught in the swift eddies of the stream, and whirled about until it met the bared blade of the sword, which was held in Siegfried's ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... with Elizabeth Barrett was far advanced before she was at length reluctantly allowed to see it. "For The Soul's Tragedy," he wrote (Feb. 11)—"that will surprise you, I think. There is no trace of you there,—you have not put out the black face of it—it is all sneering and disillusion—and shall not be printed but burned if you say the word." This word his correspondent, needless to add, did not say; on the contrary, she found it even more impressive than its successor ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... sneering provocation could reside in tones usually so very soft and musical till I heard him answer, "I suppose you do differ with me. We probably both speak from experience. On one point you are scarcely practical, though. You think you ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... On my declining this proposal, the old lady began to argue with me; and then abuse me. Though I comprehended little of what she said, her actions were expressive enough, and shewed that her words were to this effect, sneering in my face, saying, What sort of a man are you, thus to refuse the embraces of so fine a young woman? For the girl certainly did not want beauty; which, however, I could better withstand, than the abuses of this worthy matron, and therefore hastened into the boat. They wanted me to take the young ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... armed; but sought to practise on those who were pious and observant of truth, as imbeciles. 26. As another might take a pride in religion, and truth, and justice, so Menon took a pride in being able to deceive, in devising falsehoods, in sneering at friends; and thought the man who was guileless was to be regarded as deficient in knowledge of the world. He believed that he must conciliate those, in whose friendship he wished to stand first, by calumniating such as already held the chief place in their favour. 27. ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... according to Murphy, he made very careful preparation for the work, as attested by long extracts from the Fathers and the leading controversialists, which, after his death, were preserved by his brother. Beyond a passage or two in Richardson's Correspondence, and a sneering reference by Walpole to Fielding's "account how his dropsy was treated and teased by an innkeeper's wife in the Isle of Wight," there is nothing to show how the Journal was received, still less that it brought ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... thing to do," he went on in the same sneering manner. "A man with business shouldn't come 'ere. You've tyken some poor man's breakfast 'ere this morning, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... knowledge is the necessary condition of civilisation. Poesy is no longer content to dwell at court. Chemistry has chosen the path which Bacon pointed out to her; and whilst she has found a new field of action, has been enriched by treasures of knowledge hitherto concealed from her view. The sneering exclamation of Persius— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... that owre his French ragout Or olio that wad staw a sow, Or fricassee wad make her spew Wi' perfect sconner, Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... little I could make of their talk was not to my liking, but for the captain's sake I kept my anger under as best I could, for I had the sense to know that brawling with a lot of alehouse frequenters would not advance his cause. At length, however, came in the same sneering fellow I had marked on the wharf, calling loudly for swats. "Ay, Captain Paul was noo at Mr. Curries, syne banie Alan seed him gang forbye the kirk." The speaker's name, I learned, was Davie, and he had been talking with each and every ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a Mr. Schluetter, of Chicago. I told him that I was well acquainted with the gentleman, that I had done considerable work for him in Chicago, and that he had always paid me for it. When I made this remark President Francis looked at Mr. Taylor and laughed in rather a sneering way. I presumed from his actions that the Exposition Company had had some trouble with Mr. Schluetter. President Francis said to me, "Mr. Krug, you have some excellent recommendations here from prominent people and banks of Chicago." I told ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... understand a word he said, laughed softly, as if in amusement at his wit. Von Rittenheim, who had not been able to follow the colloquialisms, frowned at "moonshining," which rang out for his ears above all else. Sydney and Bob looked with horror at the sneering face before them. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... raw-boned mountain boy among the lot who had answered his greeting with a sneering smile and a reply under his breath that Tad had not caught. The lad gave no heed to it, but went about his business. Besides the rope, he made several small purchases for himself. In reply to a question of the storekeeper, Tad informed him that he ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... Lysia, seeming to note every jewel on her dress, every curve of her body, every slight gesture of her hand, every faint, cold smile that played on her lovely lips. One young man whom the others addressed as Ormaz, a haughty, handsome fellow enough, though with rather a sneering mouth just visible under his black mustache, was talking somewhat excitedly on the subject of Khosrul's cunningly devised flight, . . for it seemed to be universally understood that the venerable Prophet was one of the Circle of Mystics,—persons whose ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer. 1369 POPE: Prologue ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... The Government is treating this anti-German ring with the same weakness as are the majority of American private citizens. They are submitting patiently to terrorization as well as continual baiting and sneering. The recluse at the White House has, indeed, great plans, but his freedom of decision is seriously compromised by his anxiety to be re-elected. He refuses to allow himself to be drawn into too serious extravagances; and so he certainly deserves the credit ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... gibes and taunts and coarse would-be witticisms. But Foster bore it all unmoved, never uttering a word in reply, but going on steadily with his work. As the men, however, were about to leave for their homes, after the mill had loosed, a sneering, sour-looking fellow, one Enos Wilkinson, who had gathered a little crowd about him, and was watching for Foster, whose work detained him a little later than the ordinary hands, stepped across his path, and raising his voice, cried, "Come now, Saint Foster, you'll ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... into a sneering laugh. "Oh, is that so?" he demanded. "Fine! I'd like t' see Perkins, all right!" His great shoulders shook, and a horrible leer distorted ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... hated him, she would have liked to get up some show of an affectionate farewell, some scene in which there might have been tears, and tenderness, and poetry,—and, perhaps, a parting caress. But with his jeering words, and sneering face, he was as hard to her as a rock. He was now silent, but still looking down upon her as he stood motionless upon the rug,—so that she was compelled to speak again. "I sent for you, Lord George, because I did not like the idea ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Protestant. His convictions, however, were once more shaken, and, at the last, he became a man of no creed, a sceptic of the school of Voltaire, a creature of the age of illumination. Many passages of his history display a sneering unbelief, which moves some persons more powerfully than the subtlest argument. This modern Platonist, beginning with sensation, evolves his philosophy from within,—from the finite mind; whereas human history can only be explained in the light of revelation, which gives to ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... services by the family, and had been in the house immediately before the murder. The circumstances were such as to leave every man in utter perplexity as to the presumption for and against him. His mode of defending himself, and his general deportment, were marked by the coolest, nay, the most sneering indifference. The first thing he did, on being acquainted with the suspicions against himself, was to laugh ferociously, and to all appearance most cordially and unaffectedly. He demanded whether a poor man like himself ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... was at the window of the inn, and called out, as soon as he saw me, "Good-morrow, captain, good-morrow; come, come in, your breakfast is waiting." I, sneering, smiled, and told him I had not time at present. So saying, I continued my walk, but my companion would absolutely force me to enter, took me by the arm, and partly struggled with me, on which, losing all patience, I gave him ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... exclaimed Norman, jumping up, "you are sneering at me; you will go and tell them I daresay that I threw my rod ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... Lavengro was the best descriptions of a fight in the language, only made the matter worse. Borrow's was an age of gentility and refinement, and he outraged it, first by glorifying vagabondage, secondly by decrying and sneering at gentility. ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... like some men here present. We know we have the right on our side and we are willing to accept the judgment of such a committee as has been proposed." The words were fair enough, but the tone of sneering contempt was so irritating that immediately the position assumed by McGinnis received support from his fellow employers on every hand. Once more uproar ensued. The mayor, in a state of angry excitement, sought in vain ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... new orders to Jesse, who was to be in charge during their absence, they struck into the woods upon the other side of the Creek for the appraisal of a part of the strip known as the "Upper Reserve." From an attitude of suspicion and sneering contempt Peter's companion had changed to one of indifference. The unfailing good humor of the new superintendent had done something to prepare the ground for an endurable relation between them. Like Beth Cameron Shad had ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... men were facing each other, a yard apart. Mortimer FitzHugh's face was white, a deadly white, and he was smiling. His right hand rested carelessly in his hunting-coat pocket. There was a sneering challenge on his lips; in his eyes was a look that Aldous knew meant death if Quade moved. And Quade was like a great red beast ready to spring. His eyes seemed bulging out on his cheeks; his great hands were ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... Uttering a sneering laugh, Del Norte removed and flung aside his coat, saying his pistol was in it. He produced a knife, the blade of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... again, a bloated, overgrown, swaggering, filthy bully, of course a coward, formerly a keeper of a low groggery and said to have been commissioned for political reasons, was repeatedly heard to say in sneering tones in the hearing of rebel sentries, "Some of our officers have got escape on the brain," with other words to the like effect. Colonel Hartshorne finally stopped such traitorous language by saying with tremendous emphasis: ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... law. If he refused to listen to them, as his heart urged him, perhaps they would not dare to carry out their threats. Had he alone been concerned in the matter, he would have resisted to the last, and fought it out to the last drop of his blood, and as a preliminary, would have beaten the sneering rogue before him to a jelly; but how dared he expose his friend Clinchain, who had already braved so much for him? As he paced up and down the library, these and many other thoughts swept across his brain, and he was undecided whether to submit to these extortions or throw the ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... in a glass case with an enclosed concealed light, was a statue, greenish gray, a few inches tall, with a sneering placidity of expression as notable as the sweep of the other white fragment. "That's Chinese," her companion decided; "it looks as old as lust." There was the stir of new arrivals—a towering heavy man with a slight woman in emerald satin. "There's Pleydon, the sculptor," ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the fox, sneering; "thou hast no business here, and as for fighting thee—bah!" Then the fox left the window and disappeared. But the dog, thoroughly enraged, scratched lustily at the door, and made such a noise, that presently the cat herself came to ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... see," he continued, in the same sneering and cruel tones—"let me see a clean end of these brave gentlemen. Truss ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meaning of that sneering laugh—you would tell me that I shall find no compassion there. But though I may meet (God preserve me!) with nothing but scorn—scorn at my sorrows—yet will I to the duke. I have been told that the great never know what misery is; that they fly from the knowledge of it. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... not know when Vida slipped away. The clock's bell, at half past five, aroused her. "I must get hold of myself before Will comes. I hope he never knows what a fool his wife is. . . . Frozen, sneering, horrible hearts." ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... instance, he had a case that required management: a patron to oblige, and an opponent to circumvent. He had therefore the art to assume a tone as much divested of sneering as habit would permit; and began by insinuations that were too flattering to fail of their effect, yet not quite gross enough to offend. My person, my appearance, my parliamentary prospects, my understanding, my friends and connections, all ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... would be more needed or better for us, than that we should especially apply the thought of Christ dying on the cross for us to soften our angry, and proud, and selfish feelings; to restrain us from angry or sneering words; from unkind, offensive, rude, or insulting actions; to excite us to gentleness, courtesy, kindness; remembering that he, be he who he may, whom we allow ourselves to despise, or to dislike, or to annoy, or to neglect, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... silence greeted the entrance of McNabb into the trading room. Jean and Murchison occupied the only two chairs the room boasted, and Wentworth leaned against the counter, a half-sneering smile on his lips. McNabb advanced to the group beneath the huge swinging lamp, and Sven Larsen lingered in the shadows near the door. The half-sneer changed to a look of open defiance, as Wentworth faced McNabb. "It seems," ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... her own son, her Ross, to be a "gentleman," she had enough of the American left to see the flaws in that new ideal of hers—when looking at another woman's son. And the superciliousness which delighted her in Ross, irritated her in Arthur; for, in him, it seemed a sneering reflection upon the humble and toilsome beginnings of Charles and herself. She believed—not without reason—that, under Ross's glossy veneer of gentleman, there was a shrewd and calculating nature; it, she thought, would not permit the gentleman to make ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... but he lives on the surface of everything! He is altogether shallow and blase. His good-nature is the fruit of want of feeling; between his gracefulness and his sneering persiflage ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... undertone, as said above, was a squawk; again it resembled a squeal; now it was petulant, as though the performer scoffed at his own singing; and then it was a perfect copy of the song itself, given in an indescribably sneering manner. I could think of nothing but the way in which one child will sometimes mock the words ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... cart's tail. Then there is Rogers! he has been re-writing your Poem of the Stride, and publishing it at the end of his "Human Life." Tie him up to the Cart, hangman, while you are about it. Who started the spurious P.B. I have not heard. I should guess, one of the sneering brothers—the vile Smiths—but I have heard no name mentioned. Peter Bell (not the mock one) is excellent. For its matter, I mean. I cannot say that the style of it quite satisfies me. It is too lyrical. The auditors ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the Psalmist, and with a great effort he had striven to blot it out of his memory, and now the words danced again before his weary eyes, growing larger and larger. Those confusing black signs seemed to become a sneering doubt hovering round him: "A thousand years are but as ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... very apt to look a gift horse in the mouth, and if any one should receive a present not so large as expected, it would be contemptuously described as a "footy" little thing. "Footy" pronounced with a sneering expression of countenance conveys a sense of despicableness, even to those who do not know its exact definition, which may be taken as mean. Suppose a bunch of ripe nuts high up and almost out of reach; by dint of pressing into the bushes, pulling at the ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... joke?" said Branch with a slow, sneering smile that had an acidity in it interesting in one ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... and a gentleman, every inch of him—ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties of Royalty. The "Quarterly," "so savage and tartarly," came down upon him in the most contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a "diner-out of the first water," in one of his own phrases; sneering at him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have been mean enough to do to a man of his position and genius, or to any decent person even.—If I were giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or three facets to his ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... sent, and I hope reached you a week ago; and as my conscience just now inquired in a very sneering and unpleasant tone whether I had any further pretence for not writing on hand, I thought I might as well stop ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... words two-thirds of those present, for she was no chary dame, looked at each other, some with a sneering smile, some with a shrewd and knowing glance, and some with ill-dissembled jealousy, but not one of them all, so admirable was her dissimulation—if that may be called admirable, which is most odious—could satisfy himself, whether she was indeed captivated by the robust ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... and while Herzog still stood there by the shop door, sneering at him, Armstrong turned and passed out. A few minutes later he had been paid off, had packed his knapsack with his few belongings, and was outside the big palisade, striding along the hard and glaring road toward ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... was indifferent; far from it. This new aspect of her exasperated him mightily. "She needs a master," he thought. The idea of taming her was delicious, seductive. "I could do it," he told himself, sneering at the obsequiousness of Big Jack ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... sneering criticism begins in the college and should be killed in its birth-place. The man who drops an icy or an acid word into the warm enthusiasm of a young heart commits a great crime. He may paralyse the purpose ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... doctrine of final causes to certain instances, is quite another thing: yet the Boston reviewers, we regret to say, have not been duly regardful of the difference. Whatever be thought of Darwins doctrine, we are surprised that he should be charged with scorning or sneering at the opinions of others, upon such a subject. Perhaps Darwins view is incompatible with final causes—we will consider that question presently— but as to the Examiners charge, that he "sneers at the idea of ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... might. You might have stooped to liking some of your own verses. I ought really to congratulate you, I suppose," retorted the visitor, with a sneering laugh. ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... always were," was Enna's sneering comment. "No, I'll take that back; I forgot that time when you nearly died ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... to remember," said the master pirate, "that when I appoint an officer on this ship, there is to be no sneering at him nor any want of respect, and it strikes me that I shall not have to say anything more on the subject—to this precious crew, ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... from their mouths. Her brother-in-law was there, who had never forgiven her the cost of her journey; he glanced at her with a bantering expression, with the cunning, ferocious joy of an Auvergnat, with a sneering laugh that dyed the girl's cheeks a deeper red than ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... consideration; but this need neither surprise nor disturb us. The man in whose heart a new truth is born may be a benefactor of his species; but, as all history teaches us, if he have courage to proclaim it to the world, he must be prepared to meet the hatred, scoffing and abuse of the ignorant, the sneering contempt, if not bitter persecution, of the learned and highly placed upholders of already accepted beliefs and superstitions. More especially is this true of a social truth, of a truth which threatens the continuance ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... girl's unresisting hands. "H'm! Barrie. I don't go much on him. He's too sissy for me. But I could have guessed the other Ned Bannister would be reading something like that," he concluded, a flicker of sneering contempt crossing his face. ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... at Highmead—in the absence abroad of the successful candidate—he had contrived to set the newspapers sneering. He had told the People that although they might temporarily accept such gifts as "Capital's conscience-money," yet it was as much the duty of the parish to supply light as to supply street-lamps; which was considered ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... though he had not expected to see them! Yes, they were the very same eyes; and no doubt about it. The same that he had seen in the crowd that morning at the station, the same that he had surprised in Rogojin's rooms some hours later, when the latter had replied to his inquiry with a sneering laugh, "Well, whose eyes were they?" Then for the third time they had appeared just as he was getting into the train on his way to see Aglaya. He had had a strong impulse to rush up to Rogojin, and repeat his words of the morning "Whose eyes are they?" Instead he had fled ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to be believe Insanity is, perhaps, simply the ideal realized It is so good to know nothing, nothing, nothing Let the dead past bury its dead! Man who expects nothing of life except its ending Not only his last love, but his only love Pessimism of to-day sneering at his confidence of yesterday Sufferer becomes, as it were, enamored of his own agony Taken the times as they are Unable to speak, for each word would have been a sob What matters it how much we suffer Why should I read the ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... Baltimore makes no attempt to prolong the argument. He has always let her go, with a sneering word, perhaps, or a muttered exclamation; but to-day he follows her, and stepping between her and the door, bars ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... a wick?" asked a member of Parliament, when William Murdock, toward the close of the eighteenth century, said that coal gas would give a good light, and could be conveyed into buildings in pipes. "Do you intend taking the dome of St. Paul's for a gasometer?" was the sneering question of even the great scientist, Humphry Davy. Walter Scott ridiculed the idea of lighting London by "smoke," but he soon used it at Abbotsford, and Davy achieved one of his greatest triumphs by experimenting with gas until he ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... were to be auctioned next day. Paumotan servants, natives of Hikihoho, and relatives of the owner, moved about dispensing whiskey and absinthe. And through the curious company moved Parlay himself, cackling and sneering, the withered wreck of what had once been a tall and powerful man. His eyes were deep sunken and feverish, his cheeks fallen in and cavernous. The hair of his head seemed to have come out in patches, and his mustache and imperial had shed in the ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... to his first impulse, things might have gone very differently between them. But he kept himself stiffened. He would not lift his eyes, when she gave him a furtive glance. The expression of his half averted face was positively sinister as he added with a sneering little laugh. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... longer nose," retorted her brother, with a sneering little laugh. "The fellow's a Jew, I'm certain; he ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... its evil properties, yet he will not chase it and take it up as he would a butterfly. Such is my dislike of Vidal—I cannot help it. I could pardon the man his malicious and gloomy sidelong looks, when he thinks no one observes him; but his sneering laugh I cannot forgive—it is like the beast we heard of in Judea, who laughs, they say, before he ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... or fleer is to smile in that grinning manner which shows all the teeth. Our forefathers considered it a mark of a sneering, envious man. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... foul-tongued, foul-mouthed; slanderous; calumnious, calumniatory[obs3]; sarcastic, sardonic; sarcastic, satirical, cynical. critical &c. 932. Phr. "damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer; and without sneering, teach the rest to sneer" [Pope]; another lie nailed to the counter; "cut men's throats with whisperings" [B. Jonson]; "foul whisperings are abroad" "soft-buzzing slander" [Macbeth][Thomson]; "virtue itself 'scapes ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in hate. Salvatore thought him such a fool, held him in such contempt! Something within him was burning to-day as a cheek burns with shame, something within him that was like the kernel of him, like the soul of his manhood, which the fisherman was sneering at. He did not say to himself strongly that he did not care what such men thought of him. He could not, for his nature was both reckless and sensitive. He did care, as if he had been a Sicilian half doubtful whether he dared to show his ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Charlemagne, whose extraordinary personal power and common-sense moulded men at will, set an example no monarch had ever set before. He ordered the sale of eggs from his hens and the vegetables from his gardens; and, scorn it as they might, his sneering nobles insensibly modified their own thought and action. Commerce brought the people and products of new countries face to face. The lines of caste, as sharply defined within the labor world as without, were gradually dimmed or obliterated. ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... away with her hard, sneering smile. "I told you it should be done," she said, "and it has been done. She hasn't the ghost of a suspicion. I waited in the room; and I saw her take up the letter and ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... continues; "I did not, until I found myself slipping about on mine to day as if it were glazed, and lo! It was pigskin, and that made the difference. I would not have it changed, because the Texan is always sneering at English pigskin, and I wanted to learn to ride on it; but, until the last quarter of the hour, I expected to slip off. I rather think I should have," she adds, "only just as I was ready to slip off on one side, something ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... jingle and the hollow conceptions of the Stoic wisdom; and the Cynic philosophy was of all the philosophical systems of the times in so far by much the best, as its system was confined to the having no system at all and sneering at all systems and all systematizers. In both fields war was waged against the Stoa with zeal and success; for serious men, the Epicurean Lucretius preached with the full accents of heartfelt conviction ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... part of a circle of which Casterbridge formed the centre. In ascending any particular hill he ascertained the bearings as nearly as he could by means of the sun, moon, or stars, and settled in his mind the exact direction in which Casterbridge and Elizabeth-Jane lay. Sneering at himself for his weakness he yet every hour—nay, every few minutes—conjectured her actions for the time being—her sitting down and rising up, her goings and comings, till thought of Newson's and Farfrae's counter-influence would pass like a cold blast over a pool, and efface her image. And ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... that Jack would make a better editor but there were some who opposed this choice, not openly but in a sneering, underhand way that was harder to combat than if they had put on an attitude of ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... rapidly that the sovereigns of the House of Brunswick are grown far too wise, and far too noble-hearted, to fall once more into that trap. If any of them (and some do) fancy that they can better their position by sneering, whether in public or in their club, at a Reformed House of Commons and a Free Press, they will only accelerate the results which they most dread, by forcing the ultra-liberal party of the House, and, what is even worse, the most intellectual and ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... superiority. This one blacked his shoes: that toasted his bread, others would fag out, and give him balls at cricket during whole summer afternoons. "Figs" was the fellow whom he despised most, and with whom, though always abusing him, and sneering at him, he scarcely ever ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... half-turned face of the man, Chloe saw that the sneering smile had faded from the thin lips as he waited ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... I'd put you out and pack you back to London pretty soon if I saw any of your nonsense. My girl's little finger is more to me than your whole body and soul. [Crofts receives this with a sneering grin. Mrs Warren, flushing a little at her failure to impose on him in the character of a theatrically devoted mother, adds in a lower key] Make your mind easy: the young pup has no more chance ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... steady against the onrushing charge as a rock in the desert wind. He was thrilled by a calm satisfaction in meeting this man who had contemned and despised him, whose cold eyes spoke insults, whose sneering lips were polluted with the ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... listened indifferently to the tirade. Dugan dusted off his uniform, and, losing his temper, shook his fist at the umpire, sneering: ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... the young ruffian, now using that half-whining, half-sneering form of discourse peculiar alike to the vicious chevalier of Paris and his confrere of the provincial centres. Accent and slang alone distinguish between them; the argot, however, is ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... and somewhat commonplace nature. Partly a disciple of Thackeray, he went beyond Thackeray's example in the refusal to take his art altogether seriously as an art; rather, he treated it as a form of business, sneering at the idea of special inspiration, and holding himself rigidly to a mechanical schedule of composition—a definite and unvarying number of pages in a specified number of hours on each of his working days. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... I could not help sneering. "I don't believe I'd wager much on such a woman. To be frank with you, Thornton, I don't care to meet her, so I'll decline your invitation. I've a little wife of my own, as true as steel, and I'd rather keep out of an affair like this. ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... mountains, driving their cattle before them; the press of vehicles, laden with household effects, streaming cityward and surrounded by bands of weeping women and children, the soldiers waxed wroth and gave way to bitter, sneering ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... on, they both became very sleepy, and they must have dropped into a doze, for when they awoke at the sound of a loud laugh, the sun was shining brightly, and they were surrounded by soldiers, and Woofer was looking down at them with a sneering laugh. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... corroding mineral scent, and must have been digged, I think, out of the bowels of the surely not harmless earth. And the man himself! He was primly and precisely dressed, but he had an indefinable resemblance to a goat; his hair curled like horns; and he had the thin, restless, sneering lips, the impudent, inexpressive eyes of the goat. I found myself curiously oppressed by him. I hated his slow, deliberate movements; the idea that the air he breathed should mingle with the air of the carriage, and be transferred to my own lungs and blood, was horrible ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... England that Napoleon was reigning in full sovereignty at Elba, and all the corrupt writers in the Ministerial and daily press were sneering at the idea of his fancied sovereignty. But by the solemn treaty of Paris, Napoleon was as much an Emperor as he ever had been as much a Sovereign as the Emperor of Russia; and, by the law of nations, quite as much entitled ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Unfriendly and sneering looks from the windows at Flensborg very soon showed the travellers that Danish students' caps were not a welcome sight there. The Angel peasants, however, were very pleasant. The festival, which lasted all day and ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... rhymster in the ring, With but the old plea to the sneering schools, That on him too, some secret night in spring Came the old frenzy of ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... tell you he did," interrupted her husband. "I told him I was very sorry, but I could not help it; if she would have her own way, I could not make her marry the man against her will, and he answers in his sneering way that it is all nonsense, he would be bound to make her give up in no time—any man could bring a girl to reason. As if I was to persecute my daughter to force her into what she tells me is against her conscience. Better too much conscience ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... you start in sneering and your phrases turn to blame, Know more of him you censure than his business and his name; For it's likely that acquaintance would your prejudice dispel And you'd really come to like him if you knew him very well. When you get to know a fellow ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... of strayed stock. He was a short, spare man, a frowning cast in his eyes, a face darkly handsome, but unsympathetic as a cougar's. He looked down at Mackenzie presently, as if he had put aside the recognition of his presence as a secondary matter, a cold insolence in his challenging, sneering eyes. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... himself who informed me of what had passed, sneering at the wildness of rumours that missed the truth so wildly, and when I evinced distress at my position, he sought to reassure me; he even wrote to me after I had left him: "As long as I live you have nothing to fear. Others may change, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... which jeers at travelers who profess admiration for the scenery or institutions of Europe,—an admiration that was a sham to Mark Twain because he was incapable of understanding it. So with the grotesque capers of A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court, with the sneering spirit of The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, with the labored attempts to be funny of Adam's Diary and with other alleged humorous works; readers of the next generation may ask not what we found to amuse us in such works but how we could tolerate such crudity or cynicism ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... unnatural? Could greatness be properly ascribed, by the fastidious, to a writer whose defects were so glaring, exaggerated, untrue, fantastic, and melodramatic? Might they not fairly insist on such defects as outweighing all positive qualities, and speak of him with condescending patronage or sneering irritation? Why, very often such men, though their talk would be seasoned with quotations from, and allusions to, his writings, and though they would lay aside their most favourite books to bury themselves in his new "number," had been observed ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... mourning the prevalence of homicide, the front columns are bristling with sensational accounts of the home-coming of the injured husband, the heartbreaking confession of the weak and erring wife, and the sneering nonchalance of the seducer, until a public sentiment is created which, if it outwardly deprecates the invocation of the unwritten law, secretly avows that it would have done the same thing ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... thought you fellows were all gentlemen, civil as well as nice. But you are always sneering at girls who don't dress well and that is a very unmanly thing to do; my mother said so'; and Josie felt that she had dealt a shrewd blow at the elegant youth who bowed at many shrines ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... know it's no good appealing to you, you sneering devil!' cried Morris. 'But there's a stranger present, I can't think why, and I appeal to him. I was robbed of that money when I was an orphan, a mere child, at a commercial academy. Since then, I've never had a wish but to get back my own. You may hear a lot of stuff ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... round-cheeked, silent young man, grave beyond his years, I thought; but as our eyes happened to meet I detected a slight quiver on his lips. I looked down at once. It was not my part to encourage sneering on board my ship. It must be said, too, that I knew very little of my officers. In consequence of certain events of no particular significance, except to myself, I had been appointed to the command ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the aid of the bath, the soda, and the coffee, and all the thousand remedies which a skilful valet has ever at hand, at three o'clock on the same day he rose and dressed, and in an hour was again at the illustrious bow-window, sneering with Charles Annesley, or laughing downright with ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... given to obviate any such sneering remarks as: "What could be, pray, the size of the mouth of a child in his mother's womb, and how could it grasp such a large and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... thin man now parted the curtains and came out, his long legs moving stiffly across the floor. He glanced at Dinshaw with a sneering, wicked eye and sniffed contemptuously. He gave the twisted straw hat to Jarrow, who pulled it open and clamped it over his clipped skull. They ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... in her hand Irene stood in the opposite door and looked at her mother uneasily, keenly, with such attention that her eyelids blinked repeatedly. Far from her now were those dry and sneering smiles in conversation with the baron. But she passed through the room calmly and sat in ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... Can Art acclaim No hero now, no man with whom men side As with their hearts' high needs personified? There are will say, One such our lips could name; Columbia gave him birth. Him Genius most Gifted to rule. Against the world's great man Lift their low calumny and sneering cries The Pharisaic multitude, the host Of piddling slanderers whose little eyes Know not what greatness ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... book on slavery; it is like everything else of his, written in the pure spirit of Christianity, with judgment, temper and moderation, yet with abundant warmth and energy. It has been answered with some cleverness, but in a sneering, satirical tone, I hear. I have not yet read this reply, but intend doing so; though it matters little what is said by the defenders of such a system: truth is God, and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... between them, looked knowing and important, as though horses and chariots would not drag their secret out of them. Ainger looked pale, and his big chest went up and down in a manner which those who knew him felt to be ominous. Stafford looked alternately solemn and sneering, according as he turned to the captain or Felgate. And Barnworth alone looked comfortable, and, apparently, had not an idea what all the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... patrol leader was far too smart to think of trying to defy that ugly lot. At the same time Thad showed no sign of fear as he turned and gave the bully of the woods one sneering look, as though plainly telling him what he thought. Indeed, it seemed to stir the ire of the man who claimed to have killed the deer, for with a snort, he started to throw up his gun, as if bent on threatening mischief, unless the boys ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... though it can never be anything but mean and ludicrous, and who fancy that a line of soldiers, or the more civic array of paltry policemen, or of doited special constables, protecting a couple of judges who flounder in awkward gowns and wigs through ill-paved streets, followed by a few sneering advocates and preceded by two or three sheriffs or their substitutes, with their swords, which trip them, and a provost and some bailie-bodies trying to look grand, the whole defended by a poor iron mace, and advancing each with a different step, to the sound of two cracked trumpets, ill-blown ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... knew now she could never reach the gully. The realization sent her heart sinking like a lead plummet, but fear drove her blindly on. Suddenly the bulk of a horse loomed beside her and a man's easy, sneering laugh bit into her soul like vitriol. An instant later Lynch leaped from his saddle and caught ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... hogs—now and then worried by gaunt hounds—and some abused-looking hens, groping about disconsolately in the mire, a broken-topped buggy with a twisted wheel settling into the mud of the middle of the road (there was always abundant mud, here, in the dryest summer), a lowering face sneering from a broken window—Six-Cross-Roads was forbidding and forlorn enough by day. The thought of what might issue from it by night was unpleasant, and the legends of the Cross-Roads, together with an unshapen threat, easily fancied in the atmosphere ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... I think of the passage of the 54th through Boston, the more wonderful it seems to me just remember our own doubts and fears, and other people's sneering and pitying remarks when we began last winter, and then look at the perfect triumph of last Thursday. We have gone quietly along, forming the first regiment, and at last left Boston amidst greater enthusiasm than ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... manner of the cronies changed toward him nevertheless. Some fell to patronizing him, some to advising him, and some to sneering at the hubbub ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine |
