"Leering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and started to run when he was pounced upon and borne to the ground. Phil found himself grasped by the collar and jerked violently to his feet, with the leering face of Sully thrust up close ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons. And he was taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour. On fine days he was driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair, and waddled through them, prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat Turk in his seraglio. When he bragged to me of the expense of growing them I was reminded of a hideous old Lothario bragging of what his pleasures cost. And the resemblance was completed by the fact that he couldn't eat as much as a mouthful of his melons—had ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... to find that it had been uttered by my mother. Not ten yards away she stood, a tall black figure against the grey background of the lichened wall, with Giojoso in attendance and Rinolfo slinking behind his father, leering. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... meaning. "You certainly look to be very much at home." He moved confidently to the easel stool and, seating himself continued with a leering smile, "What's the matter with my taking the artist's place for a little ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... his eyes and lo! they looked directly into the leering countenance of the monstrous image. Yet there seemed something curiously encouraging and even beneficent about the aspect of the demon. But so often as Gilles de Retz passed the triple array of his victims with his back to the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Building, on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street, and commanded a glimpse of the lake, Field's diagram included a representation of Lake Michigan by zigzag lines of blue ink, with a single fish as long as a street-car, according to his scale, leering at the spectator from the billowy depths of indigo blue. Everything in the diagram was carefully identified in the key which accompanied it. An idea of the infinite attention to detail Field bestowed on such frivoling as this may be gathered from the accompanying ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... turned the betrothal ring on her finger. Over at the altar Jack was leering at his new-made bride, past decency; and little Angela held the wooden horse's head, which had ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... his grasp. The hateful words in the guttural voice, pronounced in vile French, the leering, vicious face with the light of admiration growing in the bloodshot eyes, were all a ghastly nightmare. With a sudden desperate wrench she freed herself and fled across the tent—panic-stricken at last. But in her blind rush ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... the sight of you is good for sore eyes!" he cried, leering into her face. "Hanged if you ain't better looking than ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... might have seemed to many that it were impossible for the dame's cheeks to be any redder, but Mistress Satchell's visage showed that nature could still work miracles. With face a rich crimson from chin to forehead, she made to hurl herself upon the leering, fleering mannikin, but was caught in the unbreakable restraint of neighbor ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... mattaire?" came a leering voice and, turning they beheld Klusky, the renegade. He had entered silently, as usual, and now darted shrewd inquiring ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... until it seemed quite lost under the glowing lights in the distance. Before us a huge curtain hung. Emblazoned on its dull crimson background of subdued socialism was a gigantic black eagle, the leering emblem of autocracy. Above and extending back over us, appeared in the ceiling a deep ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... leering at Lord Dunseveric, but before he got any further a woman's shriek rang through the building. The sergeant stopped abruptly. The men crowded through the door, eager for some new excitement. Lord Dunseveric and Captain Twinely followed ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... the cabin was feminine. None of Narf's possessions were visible. There was a heavy door leading into Narf's half of the cabin, with a massive lock. Hunter wondered if it was left unlocked at night, thought of Narf's sour face and leering little eyes, ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... from light and air; and when the sheriff let her in through the clanging outer gate she started back at sight of the tanks. Within high walls of concrete a great, wrought-iron cell-house rose up like a square box of steel and, pressed against the bars, were obscene leering eyes staring out for ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... notice my eyes," she thought, as she hastily plumped a big ugly dark-green shade, with an almond-eyed oriental leering from it, over the lamp, before going ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... little creatures was shaped so as to bear resemblance to some one of the letters of the alphabet. One tall, long-legged fellow seemed like the letter A; a burly fellow, with a big head and a paunch, was the model of B; another leering little chap might have passed for a Q; and so on through the whole. These fairies—for fairies they were—climbed upon the hunchback's bed, and clustered thick as bees upon his pillow. 'Come!' they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... swell-front street in Boston. To them swaggers up a young sport, like one of Thackeray's figures in the "Irish Sketch-Book"—short, in a white hat, poor face, impudent manner, poses before the swell fronts, and tosses off his glass. About a little table in one corner are three excessively "ugly mugs," leering at each other and pouring down champagne. These men are all dressed as nearly like gentlemen as the tailor can make them, but even he cannot change their hard, brutal faces. It is not their fault that money and clothes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... been pushed back from the spot by the energetic fist of Mr. E. Dutton Jones. But now the brute came back, cautiously, crouching and leering. ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... vibration of its lines were subtly new. There was the girl's figure, the leaning willow, the man,—content, insensate, sprawling upon the bank,—but the Kappa! Buddha the Merciful, could it be true? Where he had left a Kappa, waiting until to-morrow to give the triumph, the leering satisfaction at the human grief it fed on, rose the white form and pitying face of Kwannon Sama,—she to whom his Ume loved to pray. The eyes, soft, humid with compassion, looked directly out to his. They were Ume's eyes! He caught up one brush after the other. All had been used, ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... everlasting Neapolitan chattering of a thick-lipped, loud, degenerate dialect. There the little one-horse cabs tear hither and thither, drivers lashing their wretched beasts, wheels whirling, arms gesticulating, bad eyes flashing and leering, thick lips chattering everlastingly: and the tram-cars roll along, crowded till the people cling to one another on the steps; and the small boys dodge in and out between the cars and the carriages and the horses ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... and fifty years ago. Hideyoshi's going to treat King Yoorkerk to a movie-show. Want to bet he won't loosen up and release Procyon and Northern Lights and unblockade the Grank Residency after he sees that shot of Firkked's head leering at him off the point of that overgrown asagai? As I said, that's only the last scene, too. I've been having scenes shot all through this fight; some ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... understanding the reason for his imprisonment, but inwardly rebelling against it. Rather than sit idle he snapped on the reader—but, although facts and figures were dunned into his ears—he really heard very little. He couldn't apply himself—not with a new specter leering ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... up in him as he struck that face, felt it yield before him, saw it fade away into dust and nothingness. That face that had for all these months been haunting him, at last he had banished it, and with it had gone those other leering faces that had for so long kept him company. His room was dark, and it was always in the dark that they came to him—Hogg's, the drunken painter's, that old ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... Llangunnor, leering o'er the vale, Pourtrays a scene t' adorn romantic tale; But more than all the beauties of its site, Its former owner gives the mind delight. Is there a heart that can't affection feel For lands so rich as once to boast a Steele? Who warm ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... alley, and, answering it, he ran as rapidly as his spindling legs would carry him. He knew it was the boys. They were grinning broadly when he came to them. It was Piggy Pennington who first spoke, "Oh, pa, I won't do it any more," repeating the phrase several times in a suppressed voice, and leering impishly at Mealy. ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... at his face as he sat leering at me through his glasses. From the congested look of it, I could quite believe that he had sampled this mixture, or others of a similar alcoholic nature, sufficiently to give an opinion on the point; his bloodshot eyes also testified to ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... of his scars were seen through it, and the ends of them ran up, on both cheeks, to his eyes. A knife had gone across one of these, missing the bright little pupil in its bony cave, but slashing the eyebrow and leaving him leering on that side. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... and monstrous,—leering in bestial degradation, too foul to be either pictured or described, or to be beheld for more than an instant: yet let it be endured for that instant; for in that head is embodied the type of the evil spirit to ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... was laughing down at him, leering. Double-crossed? Did Holliday think he was that credulous? But he had tested Holliday's strength and feared it more than ever. When finally he had to rise he dodged the other with a swift, sideways wriggle. The bell sounded ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... bold lines Zola sketches a living character. Take the picture of old Mere Fetu. One really feels her disagreeable presence, and is annoyed with her whining, leering, fawning, sycophancy. One almost resents her introduction into the pages of the book. There is something palpably odious about her personality. A pleasing contrast is formed by the pendant portraits of the awkward little soldier and his kitchen-sweetheart. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... at the least noise, when the sound of a footstep or the rustling of a leaf may mean instant death to me? The forest is full of enemies. They lurk in every by-path. Behind every bush or fair spreading tree may be seen their leering faces. What, then, has a poor captive girl ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... with his insolent stare, his skin, red, shiny, stretched to cracking across his broad, square-jawed face; at Wentz, listening in cold amusement to a frightened, tremulous voice pleading for leniency; at a sallow face with dead brown eyes leering through a cloud of smoke, suggesting in contemptuous familiarity, "Why don't you fade away—open a dance hall in some live burg and get a liquor license?"; at Mrs. Toomey, pinched with worry and malnutrition, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... said, serenely confident in his strength and length of arm. "It is all one to me." Then suddenly looking round on the leering, sullen faces about him, a wolfish girdle of ferocity, he caught back his agreement and held it for a moment. "On this condition," he added. "When there is an end of you, there is an end of the quarrel. Your friends here must agree ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... play box and drew out between thumb and finger the topmost toy. It happened to be a wooden box, with a wire hasp for fastening the cover. Half unconsciously she pressed the spring, and a hideous Jack-in-the-box sprang out to confront her with a squeak, a leering smile, and a red nose. Miss ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... 'im for sossingers, 'e's so 'ily in 'is flavour." Well, sir, to cut a long story short, I agrees to take my pootty darter to the Quaker gent's studero; an' I takes 'er nex' day, an' 'e puts her in a pictur. But afore long,' continued the old woman, leering round at Cyril, 'lo! and behold, a young swell, p'raps a young lord in disguise (I don't want to be pussonal, an' so I sha'n't tell his name), 'e comes into that studero one day when I was a-settlin' up with the Quaker gent for ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... next neighbour and indulges in a half-suppressed laugh. As I take my seat on the estrade, she fixes her eye on me; she seems resolved to attract, and, if possible, monopolize my notice: to this end she launches at me all sorts of looks, languishing, provoking, leering, laughing. As I am found quite proof against this sort of artillery—for we scorn what, unasked, is lavishly offered—she has recourse to the expedient of making noises; sometimes she sighs, sometimes groans, sometimes utters ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... lands cleft with tarn Or pleasant vale, and green plains stretching far, And quiet bays, and many a shingly bar, And troubled seas, with bitter perils past, And elfin shapes that jeering flitted fast With scornful faces, leering lips that smiled, Or bursts of laughter through that vision wild. Uncertain, then, she stood, half loth to turn. "Against yon deepening sky, how dimly burn The stars, new-lit. Dear home, thou art so fair!" She fondly sighed. Then sudden she was 'ware The angel near ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... solemn-faced, odd-looking man that stands near?' 'The same.'... 'What a pity! how does it surprise one, Two handsomer culprits I never set eyes on!' Then their friends all come round me with cringing and leering, To melt me to pity, and soften my swearing. First Sir Charles advances with phrases wellstrung, 'Consider, dear doctor, the girls are but young.' 'The younger the worse,' I return him again, 'It shows that their habits are all dyed in grain.' 'But then they're so handsome, one's ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... sly, leering gravity. Must not quit its serious aspect, though all should laugh to burst ribs of steel. This command of face is somewhat difficult, though not so hard, I should think, as to restrain the contrary sympathy, I mean of weeping with those ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... something to eat. Turner slid off the haymow, found his steps too unsteady, laughed foolishly, and suggested that Creed bring some food to him there. 'Guess I've got a right to sleep in the barn or house, whichever I want,' he said, leering into Creed's face. The old usurer stood there for a few minutes eying Turner thoughtfully. Then he actually gave him a shoulder back onto the hay, said something about finding a snack of supper, and started out of the barn. In ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... Curiosity Shop," grotesque scenes were many. There was the one in which grandfather and little Nell were the prominent figures, Nell trying to comfort him in their poverty. Quilp enters and perches himself on a high chair, leering at them. Quilp hops in at Mrs. Quilp's tea party, she supposing herself free to entertain a few friends at the time. Next in order was the meeting of Kit and Barbara; Kit's trial scene; Sally Brass and the Marchioness discovered eavesdropping ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... was rung, a head appeared between the interstices of the dining-room shutters, and the door was opened by a man in drab breeches and gaiters, with a dirty old coat, a foul old neckcloth lashed round his bristly neck, a shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair of twinkling grey eyes, and a mouth ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... One day, by a blow, He was conquered, I know; But no wonder at last he should yield to a foe: He yielded, poor fellow! The conquering bellow Resounds in my ears as my poor father's knell—Oh!" A Fox then replied, While, leering aside, He laughed at his folly and vapouring pride: "My chattering youth, Your nonsense, forsooth, Is more like a funeral sermon than truth. Let history tell How your old father fell; And see if ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... The noisy death of the city, With its thousands of leering faces, The yellow night of the alleys. I stride into the broad, Silver sky; The pious limbs glide Deep into gently being. I am in the white brightness Of cloud, meadow, wind. Am tree, am town, am child... How wet are my eyes! Soon the green evening will stand At ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... 'craning' their necks to look at one another—as if they would inquire, 'I say, how do you like being there?'" My favourite figure, St. John, upon which I bestowed extra pains, the provoking man would have it, was St. Mary Magdalene, leering at the apostle next to her, or at the one opposite—it did not seem quite clear to him which; but her head was down on one side in ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... the sun to noon; and ever, like one of the dead, The priest lay still in his house with the roar of the sea in his head; There was never a foot on the floor, there was never a whisper of speech; Only the leering tikis stared on the blinding beach. Again were the mountains fired, again the morning broke; And all the houses lay still, but the house of the priest awoke. Close in their covering roofs lay and trembled the clan, But the aged, red-eyed priest ran forth like a lunatic man; And ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... either brother since their departure for Hunker Creek, therefore Joe's black visage leering through the window of the cashier's ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... a winking, blinking, leering, little face much like the one that had grinned at Ann from the post of the big bed not so very ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... cried a stout little man in a red blouse, sticking his leering countenance through ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... went into a big department store, and, by gosh! we found the count that dad was going to fight was a floor-walker, and the countess was behind a counter selling soap. When dad saw the count leering at him, he put his hand on his pistol pocket and yelled a regular cowboy yell, and the count rushed down into the basement, the soap countess fainted, and the police took dad to the police station, and all day the guide and I have been trying ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... the door opened and a burly warrior appeared in the opening—a hulking fellow, with thick lips and an evil, leering face. The slave girl sprang ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... art an apt pupil indeed," he cried, leering upon her in approbation and lustful desire—- his very gaze was pollution to her. "D'ye know there are few women who can resist me when I try to be agreeable? Harry Morgan's way!" he laughed again. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... taken the trouble," went on Lee coolly, when Quinnion, leering back at him, made no reply, "to ride forty miles to-night for a little talk with you. You are a crook and a card-cheat. I told you that once before. You have been telling men that I am a coward and a four-flusher. For that I am going ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... grim, From cloud to cloud along her beat, Leering her battered and inveterate leer, She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, Her horrible old man, Mumbling old oaths and warming His villainous old bones with villainous talk - The secrets of their grisly housekeeping Since they ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... struggled to her feet and as her eyes sought the open, stood rooted to the spot while the blood froze in her veins. Directly before her, legs wide apart, hands on hips, an evil grin on his lips, eyes leering into her ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... sure straight into the grinning face whose wide, thin lips were twisted into a leering snarl. Garry had to summon all his power of will to hold the look that he gave his enemy and to laugh, in his turn, long and contemptuously. Another tremor shook ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... play for?" asked Feodor, as he cast a look of ill-concealed contempt on his young companions, who so little understood the art of drinking the cup of pleasure with decency, and rolled about on their seats with lolling tongues and leering eyes. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... attack it. Now there is Pepys; you praised that man with such disproportion, that I was incited to lessen him, perhaps more than he deserves. His blood is upon your head. By the same principle, your malice defeats itself; for your censure is too violent. And yet (looking to her with a leering smile) she is the first woman in the world, could she but restrain that wicked tongue of hers;—she would be the only woman, could she ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... said the captain, raising his voice above the thumping and banging that was being done on deck, "an' I s'pose you fellers wanta go ashore." He chuckled in an exasperating manner. "Jes' sing out when yeh wanta go," he added, leering at the freckled man. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... from Illinois Be this squat thing, with blinking, half-closed eyes? This brazen gutter idol, reared to power Upon a leering pyramid of lies? ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... moral maxims appear organized as moral might. There are thousands who are prodigal of moral and benevolent opinions, and honestly eloquent in loud professions of what they would do in case circumstances called upon them to act; but when the occasion is suddenly thrust upon them, when temptation, leering into every corner and crevice of their weak and selfish natures, connects the notion of virtue with the reality of sacrifice, then, in that sharp pinch, they become suddenly apprised of the difference between ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the sneering, jeering, leering attendant demon of Faust in Goethe's drama of Faust, and Gounod's opera of the same name. Marlowe calls the name "Mephostophilis" in his drama entitled Dr. Faustus. Shakespeare, in his Merry Wives of Windsor writes the name "Mephostophilus;" and in the opera he is called "Mefistofele" ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... moment, he felt that half of her success was his; the knowledge that he had paid for it confirmed him in this idea. Camusot's conduct was sanctioned by the presence of his father-in-law, a little old fogy with powdered hair and leering eyes, highly ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... intones by rote a coded praise, Unto a leering two-faced god falls prone, And smears with lust and fear his alternate days For monstrous imaginations to atone; For you, most instant, most ardent,—you are flown Like fumes to his clownish brain, and in his fear He dreams you a ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... Telemachus was for jumping overboard: but the tough old crew held the silly, bawling lad. They were deaf, and could not hear his bawling nor the sea-nymphs' singing. They were dim of sight, and did not see how lovely the witches were. The stale, old, leering witches! Away with ye! I dare say you have painted your cheeks by this time; your wretched old songs are as out of fashion as Mozart, and it is all false ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... leering looks, bull-faced, and speckled fair, With two left legs and Judas-coloured hair, And frowzy pores that taint ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... a leering grin that made his face hideous. He looked like a wounded animal, with nothing but concentrated passion in his eyes. Her act had ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... waiting upon customers. No one tried to listen or understand. Beach kept on mumbling. After awhile he staggered out again. Later that same day he went to a barber shop for a shave and haircut. Suddenly he raised up from the chair and leering toward the street muttered at a man passing, "I thought that was the old man going yonder." It was not Judge Hargis, the barber assured Beach, so the drunken fellow settled back in the chair and the barber proceeded to ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... entered when she cried for aid was watching over her. When he saw that Marie-Anne had breathed her last, he made a slight noise at the door, and thrust his leering face into ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... naturally repulsive in her, was made doubly revolting by the characteristics of the habitual drunkard, lowering and glaring at me in her purple, bloated face. To see her heavy hands shaking at the pillow, as they tried mechanically to arrange it; to see her stand, alternately leering and scowling by the bedside, an incarnate blasphemy in the sacred chamber of death, was to behold the most horrible of all mockeries, the most impious of all profanations. No loneliness in the presence ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... produced a disproportionate rotundity of face. The eyes, moreover, had lost all loveliness, if ever they had been endowed with such an expression. Their glance, in its brightest day, could have been only animal. It was still sufficiently sensual; but sensuality of a sullen and leering character. The voice of this woman had already produced an unpleasant effect upon me; so, too, the words spoken. The sight of her, as she stood "akimbo," her hands resting upon her enormous haunches, only strengthened the sinister impression, which was still further confirmed by my observing ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... to her, "An old comedy is to the comedy of to-day, precisely what an old beau, padded, painted, simpering with false teeth, and leering with rhumy eyes, is to a handsome, gallant young fellow, such as Mr. LESTER WALLACK ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... showed his teeth suddenly in a loud laugh, leering at the slim, young figure before him. The girl blanched to ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... compelled to live with him, and (as was always the case almost in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in Chinese houses with cane tables, etc. All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc., soon became instinct with life. The abominable head of the crocodile and his leering eyes looked out at me multiplied into a thousand repetitions, and I stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams that many times the very same dream was broken up ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... very much pleased at the warmth of Mr. Paul's love, and no doubt thought that every word he said was true; leering round at him with her old eyes, and wishing that she had put on a clean muslin cap, as it might have made her look even younger than she ...
— The Faithless Parrot • Charles H. Bennett
... a pretty fellow you are!" he said, leering at Julio with eyes which could no longer distinguish things except in a shadowy way. "You are the living image of my poor dead wife. . . . Have a good time, for Grandpa is always here with his money! If you could only count on what your ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... then to the room-door, which I opened, and peered into the passage, nearly faint with horror lest some leering, shapeless thing should greet me upon ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... think you will fight when the time comes?" half-sneered another, rather evil-featured fellow, leering at Dick. "I'd be willing to wager that you'll do more running ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... Gabinius!" cried Agias, and, without waiting for his cousin, the young Greek flung himself forward. One stroke of his short sword sent a leering negro prone upon the pavement; one snatch of his hand seized the white mantle, and held it—held it though half a dozen blades were flashing in his face in an eye's twinkling. But the prowess of twenty men was in the arm of Demetrius; his sword was at once attacker and shield; with a single sweeping ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... both at each "Now he's nearer still!" of the little boy, until at last the girl must hide her head lest she see that awful face leering past the corner. For, once the Gratcher's eye met yours fairly, he caught you in an instant and worked his will. This was to pick you up and look at you on all sides at once with the eyes in his finger-ends, which tickled you so that you lost ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... sort of terror. He turned his back on the eyes and shovelled feverishly, until it became necessary for him to face about and go for more gravel. Then they entered his vision again, and his already taut nerves tightened up to the breaking-point. The eyes were leering at him. Out of a hot silence he heard his name called in a tragic voice, and the earth tipped absurdly back and forth to a babel of shouting ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... searched his pockets for the cigar he had denied himself the evening before. It was not there. In fact, at that moment, Burgess, in the boarding-house backyard, was promenading up and down, leering at the Swedish scullion, and enjoying the last expensive cigar that his master was likely to ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... would have risen to receive it, but the child hurried towards him and placed it in his hand. He stuck it in his buttonhole with an air of ineffable complacency for a misanthrope, and leering exultingly at the unconscious Short, muttered, as he laid himself down again, 'Tom Codlin's the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Tiptoeing to the niche in the rock she drew away the sheltering boughs and branches she had placed there one golden September day. The leaves had been red and yellow then; they were stiff and brown now. The leering skull confronted her as it had in the past and changed her at ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... and his friends from the "Rigsdak" were conducted into a tiny wardroom behind the mess table at which sat a frowning, leering ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... control and moderation, I found the character and manners of the people gentler and sweeter than I had been led to believe they were. No loudness, brazenness, impertinence; no oaths, no swaggering, no leering at women, no irreverence, no flippancy, no bullying, no insolence of porters or clerks or conductors, no importunity of bootblacks or newsboys, no omnivorousness, of hackmen,—at least, comparatively none,—all of which an American is apt to notice, and, I hope, appreciate. In London the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... around the fire and ran to meet us. They were black shapes that I could not recognize. I leaped from my canoe and held up my hand in greeting. But an arm reached out and tore my musket from me. I looked up. A leering Iroquois stood over me. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... dotting its channel intermittently like scattered stepping stones; and on either side wide, flat pavements, as though the stream had fallen to low-water mark and left bare its shallow banks. Daylight would have shown most of the houses boarded up, with diamond-shaped vents, like leering eyes, cut in the painted planking of the windows and doors; but now it was night time—eleven o'clock of a wet, hot, humid night of the late summer—and the street was buttoned down its length in the double-breasted ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... by looking at the house which sheltered him, but the sight of his bicycle, propped in a drunk and incapable attitude against the doorway, humping its rackety mud-guard and leering at them with its darkened lantern eye, drove them away—so it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver—to the spacious swallow of the Golden Dragon. The young lady was riding very slowly, but the other man in brown had a bad puncture and was wheeling his machine. Mr. Hoopdriver noted his flaxen moustache, his ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... you are. I know what it cost you to even let me lean on you, there in the glare of the electric light—there where men stood leering and sneering and misjudging you!—and my blood ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... he anticipated the interview with a sort of grim humor. There might be another fight; certainly Akers would try to get back at him for the night before. But he set his jaw. He would learn where Lily was if he had to choke the knowledge out of that leering devil's thick white throat. His arrival in the foyer of the Benedict Apartments caused more than a ripple ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the pasture, trotted straight up to the right horse, coaxed and coquetted with him for a minute, and then trotted back. Snowfoot followed, leering and nipping, and trying to ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... talked of the big cities, of "Chi" and "Cinci" and "Frisco," and were bent upon getting to one of these places. They condemned the rich and begged and stole from the poor, talked swaggeringly of their personal courage and ran whimpering and begging before country constables. One of them, a tall, leering youth in a grey cap, who came up to Sam one evening at the edge of a village in Indiana, tried to rob him. Full of his new strength and with the thought of Ed's wife and the sullen-faced son in his mind, Sam sprang upon him and had revenge for the beating received ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... more. A jay with skyblue shaft Set in blunt wing, skimmed screaming on ahead. She followed him. A murrey squirrel eyed Her warily, cocked upon tail-plumed haunch, Then, skipping the whirligig of last-year leaves, Whisked himself out of sight and reappeared Leering about the hole of a young beech; And every time she thought to corner him He scrambled round on little scratchy hands To peek at her about the other side. She lost him, bolting branch to branch, at last— The impudent brat! But ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... foot of the same chair there lies a dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me, before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... her then and reproved her. "You hurt yourself more than me, Virginia," I said, "by talking in this strain. Your word 'fancy' is a word of the market. Grooms FANCY a horse at the fair, housewives fancy a leg of lamb, leering ploughboys in a tavern FANCY the wench who cleans the pots. Gentlemen do not so use to beautiful and wise ladies. You use horrible words, my poor child, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... thinker-Willibald is conscious of the swine-Willibald. In this coarse, brutal, deeply stained Germany of the time of Luther, affording Duerer and Holbein, alas! how many besotten and bestial types, there will arise a great conflict: the obscene leering Death—Death-in-Life as he really is—will skulk everywhere, even as in the prints of the day, hideous and powerful, trying, with hog's snout, to drive Christ Himself out of limbo; but he is known, seen, dreaded. The armed ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... his pleasure. He told of a French woman he had loved in Mexico City and how he had fought a duel with her husband. He rose to heights of sentimentality and delved into depths of obscenity, now speaking of his heart and what it had suffered, and again leering and chuckling like a satyr over some ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... began to throw shadows from the shining of the harvest moon. She stood there in the porch, and round by the corners of the eaves of it looked down towards her and the inside of the porch two serpent-dragons, carved in stone; and on their scales, and about their leering eyes, grew the yellow lichen; she shuddered as she saw them stare at her, and drew closer toward the half-open door; she, standing there, clothed in white from her throat till over her feet, altogether ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... came back from her toilet, but still wearing her outing skirt, McKay turned from the long window where he had been standing and watching the picnickers across Isla Bridge. The flashy man had a banjo now and was strumming it and leering at the girl. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... wonder they thought they could come and call and make friends with us! And no wonder," she added, more viciously, "that there he stands leering up at this window, when his horse has ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... now see the vulgar, leering crowd; watch the jury, picked from the streets, file in and take their seats; hear the few, curt, routine words, cold as bullets, drop from the lips of the callous judge, the frail, desolate woman deserted by every soul, paying the price ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... always haloed by a crown of thousand-rouble pieces. To-day, how different his estate! He saw his world now with the eyes of the outsider. And what a thing it was!—This stolid dummy, from which both tinsel robe and leering mask had now been stripped for him, exposing the brutal, heartless machine that had taken such delight ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... tight and pretend not to hear the soft, cool voice of mama that goes over your forehead like a little wind. And then you lie in the dark and stare... and stare... till the faces come... yellow faces with leering eyes drifting in a greeny mist.... I wonder if Janie sees faces out there... alone in the dark.... I wonder if she has got the handkerchief off or if the water has gone in the hole where the whistle was at the back of her head and drowned her... or if the stars can see ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... thinks none the worse of me for my coaching predilections. "Fond of driving, Miss Coventry?" says he, leering at me from over his great choking neckcloth. "Seen my team—three greys and a piebald? If you like going fast I can accommodate you. Proud to take you back on my drag. What? Go on the box. Drive, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... very indolence has raised his name; Happy in this, that, under Satan's sway, His passions tremble, but will not obey. The vicar at the table's front presides, Whose presence a monastic life derides; The reverend wig, in sideway order placed, The reverend band, by rubric stains disgraced, The leering eye, in wayward circles roll'd, Mark him the pastor of a joyial fold, Whose various texts excite a loud applause, Favouring the bottle, and the good old cause. See! the dull smile which fearfully appears, When gross indecency her front uprears, The joy conceal'd, ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... crime which the mother could never forgive, the partner had seen a crime which the friend could never forgive. Think of a loved face suddenly melting before your eyes into a grinning skull, then into a mass of putrefaction, then into the ugliest fiend of hell, leering at you, distorted with all the marks of vice and shame. That is what I saw, that is ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... on that sharp straight line that marks the steel of the sky; Never a wing flees in from death to crouch in the rattling reeds; In the shaggy heads of the black coast pines the frozen spume drives high; And even the hand of the leering sun lies ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... there lurked here that hint of the devil of strong passion uncontrolled. He was the victim of his own moods, and in the space of an hour one might, perhaps, read in that face cold cunning, cruel malignity, leering ribaldry, as well as the hard-bitten virtues of unflinching courage ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... seemed to go well enough. The Governor's lady was fairly gracious to me; old Senor de Colis was profuse in his leering smiles and wordy compliments, none of which I could understand; I saw Mr. Rivers and Melinza from time to time, and they seemed upon good terms with each other: but I did not believe this state of affairs could last,—and I ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... furious gestures; then dancing far to right or left, a vague shade in the sheen, a mere nothing in the shadow, yet ever returning, the same weird, unnatural, spectral figure, wildly gyrating upon the air, leering down upon ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... the appearance, but the manners also, of Foreign Affairs, may be copied with signal benefit. Two of their accomplishments will be found eminently serviceable—the art of looking black, and that of leering. These physiognomical attainments, exhibited by turns, have a marvellous power of attracting female eyes—those of them, at least, that have a tendency to wander abroad. The best way of becoming master of these acquisitions is, to peruse with attention the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... ravishing music, he might not escape if he would. In a later day we hear of the Lorelei singing on her rock, striking chords on her golden harp, and, as the raptured fisherman steered close, with eyes filled by her beauty and ears by her music, he had a moment's consciousness of a skull leering at him and harsh laughter clattering in echoes along the shore; then his boat struck and filled, and the dark flood curtained off the sky. Wagner has made familiar the legend of the Rhine daughters, singing impossibly under the river as they swim about the reef of gold,—the treasure ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... characters of the people and the tracasseries in society; dined at the Club, and at night to Madame de Lieven's, where I found Berryer, a remarkable-looking man, but not like what I expected: dark, stout, countenance very intelligent, with a cheerful, cunning, and rather leering look, such as a clever Irish priest might have, neither in look nor manner very refined. He soon went away, so I heard nothing of his conversation. Everybody I have met has been very civil and obliging, and I ought to be and am grateful for my reception, but I wish ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... laid his pen down to think, gazing quietly on the blue hills and sunlit sea. A feeling of hope and repose stole over him;—when suddenly he saw at the door, which was ajar, the leering eyes and villainously cunning ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... crescent of a moon revealed one horn above a rag bundle of clouds low in the distance. A rim of blackness settled around our little world, relieved only by a few leering stars in the zenith, and, where the Laconia's lights had shown, there remained only the dim outlines of a blacker hulk standing out above the water like a jagged headland, silhouetted ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... I became conscious that my eyes were leering—leering in one fixed direction: and instantly, the mere fact that I had a sense of direction proved to me that I must, in truth, have heard something! I strove—I managed—to raise myself: and as I stood upright, feebly swaying there, not the terrors of death alone were in my breast, but ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... stager, who kept it, and understood life perfectly well, breakfasted with us, and leering archly at me, gave us both joy, and said, "we were well paired, i' faith! that a great many gentlemen and ladies used his house, but he had never seen a handsomer couple... he was sure I was a fresh piece... I looked so country, so innocent! ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... be overlooked. What a delightful squint he had! What a ridiculous likeness there was between him and the roast pig he was carving! I was wondering all dinner-time how that man contrived to cut up that pig; for one eye was fixed upon the ceiling, and the other leering very affectionately at me. It was very ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... intruder, leering contentiously at them all, was exclaiming in very audible tones: "Take your hands off. Who are you? What the devil have you got to do with this? Don't you think I know what I'm about? She knows me—don't you, Hattie? ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... at the foot of the lane, smoking and bragging and leering as before. To Keith he had become ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... he called "the Grenadier," took ten pails and still persisted in leering with dripping gray mouth beyond the headboard, trying to reach more. As Wrennie was carrying a pail to the heifers beyond, the Grenadier's horn caught and tore his overalls. The boat lurched. The pail whirled out of his hand. He grasped an iron stanchion and kicked the Grenadier ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... knows him," said Laurent, to himself. "Do you know," he went on, leering at the postman, "I serve a master who is a rare man, and if he took it into his head to kiss the sole of the foot of an empress, she would have to give in to him. If he had need of you, which is what I wish for you, for he is generous, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... feet, for I buried myself entirely, with the exception of my lower extremities, which, projecting above the snow, kicked a faint signal for rescue. Encumbered with heavy furs, I extricated myself with difficulty; and as I at last emerged with three pints of snow down my neck, I saw the round, leering face of my late driver grinning at me through the bushes on the edge of the bluff. "Ooma," he hailed. "Well," replied the snowy figure standing waist-high in the drift.—"Amerikanski nyett dobra kaiur, eh?" [American ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... coal kindled in the grate, throwing out blue and yellow flames with tiny crackling. The shadows danced upon the wall. The curtains over the oblong entrance hung limp and motionless and mute. For aught they showed there might have been a dozen eyes behind them leering in; the points of a dozen weapons pricking through; the muzzles of a dozen revolvers ready to bark death. Each second he expected them to open—to unmask. The suspense grew nerve-racking. And behind him the girl kept whispering, "What is it? Tell ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... beside that of Jake, and Bessie was hardly surprised to find that it was Brack who was leering at her. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... The vaterman's leering at us, And the gals is a giggling so— They take us for green'uns, but ve Vill soon show 'em how ve ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour |
