"Scoffing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Now, angered at the scoffing of this stranger (though all the time I felt that he was none), I answered that the scribe Ana was striving to mend his luck by the pursuit of the goddess of learning ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... Ballads," published in 1800. The poems in the first edition of "Lyrical Ballads," published in 1798, had been the joint production of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The volume was published in Bristol by Cottle. It met with a cold, if not scoffing, reception, altho among its contents were the "Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey." When Cottle's publishing business was transferred to Longmans in 1799, the value of the copyright of "Lyrical Ballads," for which Cottle had paid the authors 30 guineas, was estimated at nothing. Cottle then presented ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... clever assault upon the priests as much as any one, recommended the new member of his household to resume the subject. It is supposed that the Grey Friars from their great lodgment so near the Court had found fault with the appointment of Buchanan and assailed himself as a profane and scoffing heretic. It was certainly strange that a man who had adopted the heresies of Luther should be appointed to the care of the son of a Catholic King, but Buchanan it is probable kept his religious opinions to himself, and it was not necessary to be a Protestant to give ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... buoyant life and action entrusted to them many thousands of years ago. Sometimes, it is a natural rock, cut and smoothed down at a height sufficient to protect it from the wantonly destructive hand of scoffing invaders, on which a king of a deeper turn of thought, more mindful than others of the law which dooms all the works of men to decay, has caused a relation of the principal events of his reign to be engraved ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... we went, and after reading what Jesus had said about little children, and giving them some glimpses of His great love for them, we told them "the old, old story," as simply and lovingly as we could. There was no more scoffing or indifference. Every word was heard and pondered over, and from that hour a blessed work began, which resulted in the great majority of them deciding to give their hearts to God; and they have ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... then as ignorance can be; Soon wilt thou hear it shouted from our ranks. Those who once hurled defiance o'er our heads, Scorning our arms, and scoffing at our faith, The nightly wolf hath visited, unscared, And loathed them as her prey; for famine first, Achieving in few days the boast of year; Sank their young eyes and opened us the gates: Ceuta, her port, ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... Perhaps some day the government will crown a Colyumist Laureate, some majestic sage with ancient patient blue eyes and a snowy beard nobly stained with nicotine, whose utterances will be heeded with shuddering respect. All minor colyumists will wear robes and sandals; they will be an order of scoffing friars; people will run to them on crowded streets to lay before them the sorrows and absurdities of men. And in ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... actors and its crimes, with the eve of enlightened philanthropy, experienced reason, and Christian charity. He is neither a fierce, imperious Romish bigot like Bossuet, nor a relentless Calvinistic theologian like D'Aubigne, nor a scoffing infidel like Voltaire. Deeply impressed with the vital importance of religion to the temporal and eternal welfare of mankind, he is yet enlightened enough to see that all systems of religious belief have much to recommend them, and rejects the monstrous doctrine that salvation can be obtained ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... best place to disclaim all intention of scoffing at this great writer and historian. It is a common impertinence of the day in which I have no wish to join. It is not, I hope, an impertinence to say that only those who have, for their own purposes, been forced to follow ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... prophet. Her first instinct, mixed with wonder, was to decline, and she held to this opinion the better part of an hour. Yet before the impulse could stiffen into resolution, it met the neutralizing influence of the old town, which, partly through the military secretary, partly through the scoffing Ludlow, she had unwittingly assimilated. By these teachings she had learned the flattering, almost royal, significance of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam's dinner invitations. She was seized afresh by a curiosity to observe how they did things ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... the stories that we heard could not be explained on these grounds, and the fakir and his doings were often talked over at mess, some of the officers scoffing at the whole business, others maintaining that some of these fakirs had, in some way or another, the power of foretelling the future, citing many well authenticated anecdotes ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... street-preacher: foreign voice. Seems really in earnest. He quoted the striking passage, 'The Spirit and the bride say, Come, and let him that heareth say, Come!' From this he seems to derive his authority. Let me learn from this man to be in earnest for the truth, and to despise the scoffing ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... a pyre, on which they burn the straw figure, reviling and scoffing at it the while. Then they ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... grown discreet and dutiful. I am fain to command thy release, taking thy promise on oath, and some reasonable security, that thou wilt abstain and withhold in future from that idle and silly slut, that sly and scoffing giggler, Hannah Hathaway, with whom, to the heartache of thy poor, worthy ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... felt and thought, but only what I did. And while I did it my reason was all the time scoffing at my heart (for whose imperious behoof the wild, mad things I am about to record were done)—scoffing, as an Asiatic malefactor will sometimes scoff at the executioner whose pitiless and conquering saw is severing his bleeding ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... pale-faced brother has told us the wondrous tale, that, in his own land beyond the Great Waters, the mighty animal which is called the King of Beasts is, save only when he lacks food, as mild as the dove or the song-sparrow. And thus it was with the Great Spirit, as regarded the scoffing and wickedness of the Andirondacks. Long he resisted the importunities of the subordinate Manitous, that the haughty tribe might be punished for their insolence; long he waited with the hope that ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... their inuectiues were called Satyres, and them selues Satyricques. Such were Lucilius, Iuuenall and Persius among the Latines, & with vs he that wrote the booke called Piers plowman. Others of a more fine and pleasant head were giuen wholly to taunting and scoffing at vndecent things, and in short poemes vttered pretie merry conceits, and these men were called Epigrammatistes. There were others that for the peoples good instruction, and triall of their owne witts ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... things, such as careless living students of divinity, who are to be the future teachers of this great nation; ministers and congregations apparently dead as stones; churches becoming idols, claiming the reverence and love of their members, and jealous of any other idol usurping their throne; scoffing infidelity among the ignorant; philosophic scepticism among the intelligent; indifference among thousands; while abroad heathen nations, with countless millions, are opened up to the Protestant Church, which can only send driblets of ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... chastening week than that week of selection. Their remarks were, naturally, of the frankest nature, as I had told them I had had practically only gardeners' assistants since I lived here, and they had no idea, when they were politely scoffing at some arrangement, that it happened to be one of my own. The hot-beds in the kitchen garden with which I had taken such pains were objects of special derision. It appeared that they were all wrong—measurements, preparation, soil, manure, ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... no quarrel with the general attitude of scoffing at new ideas. It is better to be skeptical of all new ideas and to insist upon being shown rather than to rush around in a continuous brainstorm after every new idea. Skepticism, if by that we mean cautiousness, is the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... you were a Catholic," she replied, with a kindly, lurking smile, which might easily have hardened into scoffing. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... society,—a time for not liking tamed people,—a time for not dancing quadrilles,—a time for pretending that Milton, and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people are greater in death than the first living lord of the treasury,—a time, in short, for scoffing and railing, for speaking lightly of the opera, and all our most cherished institutions. A little while you are free and unlabelled, like the ground you compass; but civilization is coming, and coming; you and your much-loved waste-lands will be surely inclosed, and sooner or later you will be brought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... was another side to Villiers' temperament. It was piercing and acute in an altogether different sense—a side of forbidding pleasantry and fierce raillery. No longer was it the paradoxical mystifications of Poe, but a scoffing that had in it the lugubrious and savage comedy which Swift possessed. A series of sketches, les Demoiselles de Bienfilatre, l'Affichage celeste, la Machine a gloire, and le Plus beau diner ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Benham to say that in exactly the right manner, not in the cheap and scoffing fashion which some young men affect in speaking of ancestral fortunes or misfortunes, nor with too much solemnity. And when she allowed a little silence to occur at the end, he did not go on with his family history, but turned at once to another ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... it is to see some estimable man who subscribes to the Bible Society, and takes what he calls 'a warm interest' in the heathen, chuckling over some scoffing article in a newspaper—say about a Church Congress—and never perceiving, so unaccustomed is he to examine directions, that he is all the time laughing at his own folly! Aunt Nesbit, in 'Dred,' considered Gibbon ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Copley launch; but when she saw Jean and Sara Copley beside their brother, she went aboard with Ruth and Tom. There actually was no friction between the two young men, although Tom usually addressed Chess by that opprobrious nickname, 'Lasses, while Chess retorted by scoffing at all the ex-captain's opinions and advice on any and ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... a coffin: Pray, gentlefolks, forbear your scoffing. A Boat a judge! yes; where's the blunder? A wooden judge is no such wonder. And in his robes you must agree, No boat was better deckt than he. 'Tis needless to describe him fuller; In short, he was ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Laura Van Dorn it was a time of anxious doubt, of sad retrogression, of inner anguish. In some of the books were passages she had marked and read to her husband; and such pages calling up his dull comprehension of their beauty, or bringing back his scoffing words, or touching to the quick a hurt place in her heart, taxed her nerves heavily. But during the time while she sat by the injured man's bedside, she was glad in her heart of one thing—that she had an excuse for avoiding ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... with your pin the wrong man. But the poor child from Domremy, shrinking under the gaze of a dazzling court—not because dazzling (for in visions she had seen those that were more so), but because some of them wore a scoffing smile on their features—how should she throw her line into so deep a river to angle for a king, where many a gay creature was sporting that masqueraded as kings in dress! Nay, even more than any true king would have done: for, in Southey's version of the story, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... was no doubt, luckily, either, that he could plant his feet the firmer for his now intensified sense of these things. He was to live, it appeared, abominably worried, he was to live consciously rueful, he was to live perhaps even what a scoffing world would call abjectly exposed; but at least he was to live saved. In spite of his clutch of which steadying truth, however, and in spite of his declaring to her, with many other angry protests and pleas, that the line of conduct she announced was worthy of a vindictive barmaid, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... inmost thoughts to assume control. He himself, already initiated by the awful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He had reached the stage where he was immune. But these two, the scoffing, analytical doctor, and the honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sat trembling in the ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... exerted over me, and the dancing dervishes crowned me queen of their revels. By day and by night I was surrounded with influence intended to beguile me from the past, to narcotize memory, to make me in reality the heartless, soulless, scoffing creature that I certainly seem. But Erle Palma has found me stiff tough clay, and despite his efforts, I have been true to the one love of my life. What I have suffered, none but the listening watching God above us knows; and sometimes I despise and loathe myself for the miserable subterfuges ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... excitement chased themselves all over the girls in a highly disconcerting manner, and even scoffing Phil leaned forward in his chair to miss not one ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... baffled the Earl of Argyle's attempts to enter the Merse, as lieutenant of his sovereign. On this occasion, the borderers regarded with wonder and contempt the barbarous array, and rude equipage, of their northern countrymen Godscroft has preserved the beginning of a scoffing rhyme, made ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... woman be a little light-hearted and merry humoured, it is a great delight and pleasure for her to be taking notice, and every way to be scoffing, with all the foolish tricks and devices of such a jealous Coxcomb. But otherwise there is no greater Hell upon Earth, then for an honest Woman to dwell with a jealous husband; because in his absence she dare not in the least speak to any one, and in his presence hardly look ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... scoffing at them by pecking out their eyes; for nature has so ordered it, that they ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... in front. Before her parting lips uttered a line she had thoroughly mastered them, the innate purity of her perfected womanhood, the evident innocence of her purpose, shielding her against all indecency and insult. The ribald scoffing, the insolent shuffling of feet, the half-drunken uneasiness, ceased as if by magic; and as her simple act proceeded, the stillness out in front became positively solemn, the startled faces picturing an awakening to higher things. It was a triumph far exceeding the noisy outburst that ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... This is sane philosophy. Not ignoring the danger, pooh-pooing it, scoffing at it and refusing to recognize it, but calmly, sanely, with a kindly heart looking at possible contingencies, preparing for them, and then serenely trusting to the spiritual forces of life to control events to a wise and ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... presented Comedies, has he praised himself upon the stage; but, having been slandered by his enemies amongst the volatile Athenians, accused of scoffing at his country and of insulting the people, to-day he wishes to reply and regain for himself the inconstant Athenians. He maintains that he has done much that is good for you; if you no longer allow yourselves to be too much hoodwinked by strangers or seduced by flattery, if in ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... the Will that is tried, and whose gold flows Purified forth from the flames; in a word, mankind by Atonement Breaketh Atonement's bread, and drinketh Atonement's wine-cup. But he who cometh up hither, unworthy, with hate in his bosom, Scoffing at men and at God, is guilty of Christ's blessed body, And the Redeemer's blood! To himself he eateth and drinketh Death and doom! And from this, preserve us, thou heavenly Father! Are ye ready, ye children, to eat of the bread of Atonement?" Thus with emotion he asked, and together ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... transplanted from their hothouse civilization to other countries cease to be Germans; and nowhere in the world outside Germany is German civilization imitated, liked, or adopted. The German is nonplussed to find the Pole in the East, the Frenchman in the West, the Dane in the North, scoffing at his alte Kultur, as he calls it, and he is irritated beyond measure by the German from America, who returns to the Vaterland to criticise, to sneer, and to thank God that he is an American, not a German citizen. Germans become English citizens, no Englishmen become Germans; millions of Germans ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... of great value for their superior marksmanship, and the British, who began by scoffing at them, ended by fearing and hating them as they feared and hated no other troops. The many accounts of the skill of these riflemen are interesting, and some of them shall ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Cross. It relieves woman from the power of Satan, as exercised in those cruel disabilities which false systems have imposed upon her, and assigns her a place of honor in the kingdom of God. The world has not done scoffing at the idea of a vicarious sacrifice for the sins of men, and yet it has advanced so far that its best thinkers, even without any religious bias, are agreed that the principle of self-sacrifice is the very highest element of character that man can aspire ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... charge made that, for the first time, the prisoner dropped his scoffing manner and ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... coquette, who can't say "No." And won't say "Yes," and keeps you on and off-ing On a lee-shore, till it begins to blow, Then sees your heart wrecked, with an inward scoffing. Don ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... and etherealizing ideas of the unknown and of unreality must be brought forward with authority, as they are the legitimate heirs of the known, and of reality, and at least as great as their parents. Fearless of scoffing, and of the ostent, let us take our stand, our ground, and never desert it, to confront the growing excess and arrogance of realism. To the cry, now victorious—the cry of sense, science, flesh, incomes, farms, merchandise, logic, intellect, demonstrations, solid perpetuities, buildings of brick ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... scoffing, turned away to his work. "Well, then, I guess it's as good as over. Give old Willie a swipe ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the letters left for him by his deceased wife. The chaplain had told him that the prisoner was quite indifferent to all that he said to him on religious subjects, and listened to them, if, indeed, he listened at all, with a scoffing, incredulous, hardness of manner, that was ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... the High Street of Harrow with my big brass instrument under my arm, and as seven rang out from the school clock, I commenced my extremely lugubrious rendering of "Home, Sweet Home," on the euphonium, to a scoffing and entirely unsympathetic audience of errand-boys and early loafers, until Tosher's soap-lathered face ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... scoffing, this hath writ, Friend, that's your folly, which you think your wit: This you vent oft, void both of wit and fear, Meaning another, when ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... all mishaps be my poor life, If one short day I never spent in mirth, If my sp'rit with itself holds lasting strife, If sorrow's death is but new sorrow's birth; If this vain world be but a mournful stage, Where slave-born man plays to the scoffing stars, If youth be toss'd with love, with weakness age; If knowledge serves to hold our thoughts in wars, If Time can close the hundred mouths of Fame, And make what's long since past, like that's to be; If virtue only be an idle name, If being born ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... laughter," and, she added, from that moment Pope became her implacable enemy. Certainly by the time Pope began to write the 'Dunciad' he was so far estranged from his old friend that he permitted himself in that poem a scoffing allusion to a scandal in which she had recently become involved. The lady answered, or the poet thought that she did, with an anonymous pamphlet, 'A Pop upon Pope', describing a castigation, wholly ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... reverence unto his person, even from those that at other times and in other companies, took a liberty to cast off that strictness of behaviour and discourse that is required in a Collegiate life. And when he took any liberty to be pleasant, his wit was never blemished with scoffing, or the utterance of any conceit that bordered upon, or might beget a thought of looseness in his hearers. Thus mild, thus innocent and exemplary was his behaviour in his College; and thus this good man continued till his death, still ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... vengeance. Then the brazen gate is opened, And the poor deluded victim Thrust into the pit of horrors, All amid the foulsome vapors. Flies the postern close behind him, Back the bolts and bars are driven, Creaking with their heavy burden; And a motley throng surround him, Railing, scoffing, and abusing; Each devising of some evil To annoy, or taunt, or torture. Vengeance burneth black within him, And infernal wars are raging In him and in all the dwellers, One and one against another, Who are doomed through time eternal To this awful pit of terrors; ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... seldomer; and that commits with all which he acts with few; for he is his own worst reporter, and men believe as bad of him, and yet do not believe him. Nothing harder to his persuasion than a chaste man, no eunuch; and makes a scoffing miracle at it, if you tell him of a maid. And from this mistrust it is that such men fear marriage, or at least marry such as are of bodies to be trusted, to whom only they sell that lust which they buy of others, and make their wife a revenue to their mistress. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... the choice dishes were fewer, pain was more rare; if there was less turmoil, there was less grief and more undoubtedly of true joy. I wondered at the silence and sweet tranquility there, when thinking of what was going on below. Instead of the cursing and swearing, the scoffing, debauchery and drunkenness, instead of the pride and vanity, the torpitude of one quarter and the violence of another, yea, for all the bustle and the pomp, the hurly-burly and the brawl which there unceasingly bewildered men, and for the innumerable ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... Thus ran Effi's scoffing remarks and there was no mistaking the fact that she was not troubling herself any too much about the pre-nuptial exercises and the wedding day. Mrs. von Briest had her own ideas on the subject, but did not permit herself to worry about ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... ... what can he do, poor man? He will not succeed. I tell you—all's over. Once I sailed in a ship near Thessalonica, and saw Mount Olympus. I mused and was full of emotion at beholding the dwellings of the gods; and a scoffing old man told me that travellers had climbed Olympus, and seen that it was an ordinary mountain, with only snow and ice and stones on it. I have remembered those words all my life. My son, all is over; Olympus is deserted. The gods have grown weary and have departed. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... derided me. A scoffing smile crept into that mocking face of hers. No longer I shilly-shallied. She had brought me to dance, and she must ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Peter. That his spirit speaks to me through her. This has been proved to me in many ways, but a far greater proof is the conviction in my soul of the reality of it all. My wife believes as implicitly as I do, and no amount of scoffing from outsiders can in ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... and entire confidingness did Jesus commit Himself to his Heavenly Father's guidance! He loved to call Him, "My Father!" There was music in that name, which enabled Him to face the most trying hour, and to drink the most bitter cup. The scoffing taunt arose at the scene of crucifixion: "He trusted in God that He would deliver Him, let Him deliver Him!" It failed to shake, for one moment, His unswerving confidence, even when the sensible tokens of the Divine presence were withdrawn; the ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... moment, with that coup d'oeil of strong instinct which sees clearer than genius itself. To an age young, fickle, and unreflecting, he did not present reason under the form of an austere philosophy, but beneath the guise of a facile freedom of ideas and a scoffing irony. He would not have succeeded in making his age think, he did succeed in making it smile. He never attacked it in front, nor with his face uncovered, in order that he might not set the laws in array against him; and to avoid the fate of Servetius, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... do? Such scoffing distresses us, but we cannot stop it. Christ Himself was accused of being a blasphemer and rebel. Paul and all the other apostles were told the same things. Let the scoffers slander us, let them spare ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... Christians in any other way than by their contempt and reprehension of ceremonies, of traditions, of human laws; as if they were Christians merely because they refuse to fast on stated days, or eat flesh when others fast, or omit the customary prayers; scoffing at the precepts of men, but utterly passing over all the rest that belongs to the Christian religion. On the other hand, they are most pertinaciously resisted by those who strive after salvation solely by their observance of and reverence for ceremonies, as if they would be saved ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... Duke of Lauderdale, for his dreadful blasphemy, especially for that word to the Prelate of St. Andrews, "Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool;" his atheistical drolling on the Scriptures of God, and scoffing at religion and religious persons; his apostasy from the covenants and reformation, and his persecuting thereof, after he had been a professor, pleader, and presser thereof; for his perjury in the business of Mr. James Mitchell, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... uttered months afterwards, that Beatrix showed she understood their silent commiseration, and on her part was secretly thankful for their forbearance. The people about the Court said there was that in her manner which frightened away scoffing and condolence: she was above their triumph and their pity, and acted her part in that dreadful tragedy greatly and courageously; so that those who liked her least were yet forced to admire her. We, who watched her after her disaster, could not but respect the indomitable courage ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... let him through the far Steppes gallop, His horse can scarcely stand at all— His stamping hoofs in vain seek foothold, The rider dreading lest he fall! So then remain within thy paling, Read thou in Pradt or Walter Scott, Compare thy varying editions, Drink, and thy scoffing mood spare not! As the long evenings drag away So doth ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... giving up the papers may cause the starvation of my passion for politics, and that scab may drop off. God has shown me what the scabs are:—Evil-speaking, lying, slandering, back-biting, scoffing, self-conceit, boasting, silly talking, and some ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... most free, When they within this gross and visible sphere Chain down the winged thought, scoffing ascent, Proud in their meanness; and themselves they cheat With noisy emptiness of learned phrase, Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences, Self-working tools, uncaus'd effects, and all Those blind omniscients, those almighty slaves, Untenanting ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that they failed to find it, or grew tired upon the way, I could not see that any went through, except one sorrowful faced man, who ran forward resolutely, while thousands on each side of him were calling him fool, some scoffing him, others threatening, him and his friends laying hold upon him, and entreating him not to take a step by which he would lose the whole world at once. "I only lose," said he, "a very small portion of it, and if I should lose the whole, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... little subject to slight fits—very rarely and at long intervals, you know. He may never have another." A few of the remaining onlookers backed away a little shamefacedly. Others offered condolences while inwardly scoffing at the "sun" explanation. Did not de Warrenne bowl, bat, or field, bare-headed, throughout the summer's day without thinking of the sun? Who had heard of the "fits" before? Why had they not transpired during the ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... testimony which is the very seed of His Church. The one casts us into fiery dispensations of suffering and loss; the other takes these moments of human anguish and desolation, and makes of them open windows through which a doubting or scoffing world may see what love can do. Thus He makes us to triumph In the midst of our foes, while working in us a likeness to Himself, ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... about herself. Witty and clever, she had a keen eye for discovering at a glance the weakness, and ridiculous side, of any person; she took great pleasure in it, without ever being the least malicious, for she was as indulgent as she was scoffing, and while she laughed at people she loved to be of use ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... aware of a blare of music, and looking along the street saw a number of people advancing out of Russell Square, red shirts, and the banner of the Salvation Army to the fore. Such a crowd, chanting in the roadway and scoffing on the pavement, I could not hope to penetrate, and dreading to go back and farther from home again, and deciding on the spur of the moment, I ran up the white steps of a house facing the museum railings, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... translated,[EE] in the beginning of his narrative, are, "These accounts put me in mind of a mass of iron, weighing seventy-one pounds, which was sent to the imperial collection of natural curiosities: about the origin of which many mouths have been distorted with scoffing laughter. If, in the Eichstedt specimen, the effects of fire appear tolerably evident; they are, in this, not to be mistaken.—Its surface is full of spherical impressions, like the mass of iron, which the celebrated Pallas found on the ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... his many successes Men loved him the same; My one pale ray of good fortune Met scoffing and blame. When we erred, they gave him pity, But ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... be helped now," said Radcliff, with a scoffing laugh. "A feller is obliged sometimes to do things that may not be exactly on ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... king's orator is jealous. He baits the young adventurer, and in a scoffing speech dares him to a night-watch for Grendel. Beowulf is angered, and thus he is drawn out to boast of ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... or it all mayn't," he replied, openly scoffing; "at least so far's the boat goes. Anybody kin buy anything that has the price. But as to the girl, you'd have to prove it, if I was him. And if he didn't look like he owned her, or was goin' to, I'll eat your own gas tank there, an' them two kids ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... a full stop, in some confusion. Nevertheless she was right; and the girls arrived downstairs to learn from Mrs. Grantham that their father had ridden off, declining her offer of supper and scoffing at her fears ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... superficial deposits of the globe were the result of the Noachian deluge! He was indeed the great leader of the Catastrophists, and it is not surprising to find Lyell, while still under his influence, scoffing at ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... crowd he past, One pitying look old Hiram cast; "Go it, ye cripple, while ye can!" Cried out unsentimental Dan; "A Fast-Day dinner for the crows!" Budd Doble's scoffing shout arose. ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... it I will try; Be your least wish my will, although I die! Yet one thing, if I may, I fain would ask, Before I make the venture;—if this task Prove fateful as it threatens,—do you care?" "Perhaps," said Elfinhart, "you do not dare!" Lightly she laughed, and scoffing tossed her head, Yet spoke as one who knew not what she said, With random words, and with quick-taken breath; Then turned again, ere that same look of death Should steal upon her and betray her heart Despite all stratagems of woman's art. And Gawayne heard but ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... and scoffing rude, In my place condemned He stood; Sealed my pardon with His blood; Alleluia! what ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... heard the bishop preach (the sermon was at Whitehall); and if so, the passage in Andrews will explain the word "jesting" to mean, not scoffing, but asking without serious ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... mind that I would kiss you, my dear, the first chance I had. God bless you, my child! You have given your testimony as a woman should, in these days of scoffing at the truth." ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... and every day was wont to cause false alarms, scoffing at her custodians and their lack of care. Thus one day, on leaving her lodging, she fell in with a Grey Friar on horseback, with whom, being herself on her palfrey, she talked on the road the whole time from ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... by suffering her again to fall into her first love for Zoroaster, bring her to a public disgrace by suddenly unmasking her to the king—to accomplish these things surely and quickly, reserving for herself the final delight of scoffing at her worsted rival—all this seemed to Atossa to constitute a plan at once worthy of her profound and scheming intelligence, and most sweetly satisfactory to her injured ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... rare days, When he, the hero of his tale, was young; Dull repetitions faltering on his tongue; 230 Praising gray hairs, sure mark of Wisdom's sway, E'en whilst he curses Time, which made him gray; Scoffing at youth, e'en whilst he would afford All but his gold to have his youth restored, Shall for a moment, from himself set free, Lean on his crutch, and pipe forth praise to me. Rejoice, ye happy Gothamites! rejoice; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... agreement being confirmed by oath on both sides, and the gold brought forth, the Gauls used false dealing in the weights, secretly at first, but afterwards openly pulled back and disturbed the balance; at which the Romans indignantly complaining, Brennus in a scoffing and insulting manner pulled off his sword and belt, and threw them both into the scales; and when Sulpicius asked what that meant, "What should it mean," says he, "but woe to the conquered?" which afterwards ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... natural for Twirling-stick Mike to repent him suddenly of his wanton cruelty. The scoffing words of the dwarf rang in his ears, and he felt by no means easy. To make what amends he might to the deceased, he had him sumptuously buried at his own expense, with funeral oration, psalms, prayer, and benediction; and what is more, put up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... scoffing Scurrilitie, And scornfull Follie with Contempt is crept, Rolling in rymes of shameles ribaudrie Without regard, or due decorum kept; Each idle wit at will presumes to make*, 215 And doth the learneds taske upon him take. [* Make, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... mingled freely in it, and was a favourite wherever he went. I felt no eye in the household was so keen as his on my words and actions; he was always wanting me to do things for him and go to places with him; yet when I was with him he would be unsparing in his scoffing remarks on any subject that would touch me most deeply. I found it best to take all he said as quietly as possible, only now and then protesting, as I had ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... thrilling, too great for the subject; seem to embellish it unduly. I feel as if I were acting, for my own benefit, some wretchedly trivial and third-rate comedy; and whenever I try to consider my home in a serious spirit, the scoffing figure of M. Kangourou rises before me—the matrimonial agent, to whom I am indebted for ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Jocose scoffing, and dialogue writing is the easiest of tasks; and if Mr. Rogers's co-religionists do not take the alarm, and come in strength upon Messrs. Longman, imploring them to suppress these books of Mr. Rogers, persons who ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... at that—a fiendish, scoffing laugh that made her shrink in every nerve. Then, with unmoved composure, he walked to the mantelpiece and took up one of ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... in her deep scoffing fashion, "it is for me you make all this bhobbery, eh? It is me you are ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the chamber of his wife, and he took no delight in anything besides, insomuch that he gave up the friendship of his nobles, together with his hunting and his amusements, and lost the hearts of all the host in his Court; and there was murmuring and scoffing concerning him among the inhabitants of the palace, on account of his relinquishing so completely their companionship for the love of his wife. And these tidings came to Erbin. And when Erbin had heard these things, he spoke unto Enid, and inquired of her ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... Man didn't know what to do, but at last he took his Boy up before him on the Donkey. By this time they had come to the town, and the passers-by began to jeer and point at them. The Man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at. The men said: "Aren't you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey of ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... time when Beaton needed money more, when he had spent what he had and what he expected to have so recklessly. He was in debt to Fulkerson personally and officially for advance payments of salary. The thought of sending money home made him break into a scoffing laugh, which he turned into a cough in order to deceive the passers. What sort of face should he go with to Fulkerson and tell him that he renounced his employment on 'Every Other Week;' and what should he do when he had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... apostle sets himself to enumerate so many special kinds of officers, apostles, prophets, teachers, &c., how far from reason is it to think that in the midst of all these specials, governments only should be a general. 3. As for Dr. Field's scoffing term of lay governors or lay elders, which he seems in scorn to give to ruling elders; it seems to be grounded upon that groundless distinction of the ministry and people into clergy and laity; which is justly rejected by sound orthodox writers[58], as not only without but against the warrant of ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... the All? I am alone with myself. Oh, Father! oh, Father, where is thy infinite bosom, that I might rest on it?" A belief in something she must have; it was an absolute necessity of the soul. There was no scoffing tendency in her skepticism; she could not jest over the solemn issues involved, and stood wondering which way she should next journey after this "pearl of great price." It was well for her that garlands of rhetoric and glittering logic lay over the pitfalls before ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... turrets an ensign is flying, Which stout hearts are banded till death to uphold; And bold is their crying, and fierce their defying, When trench'd in their ramparts, unconquer'd of old. But lo! in the offing, To punish their scoffing, Brave Napier appears, and their triumph is done; No danger can stay him, No foeman dismay him, He conquers or dies ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... as if they heard through the midnight, the swift-rushing wings of the Stymphalides, striving to outstrip the speed of Alcides' arrows! Angry griffins are near them; and not far are Sirens, singing their wondrous songs from the rocking branches of the willow trees! Even thus does a scoffing and unbelieving Present sit down, between an unknown Future and a too believing Past, and question and challenge the gigantic forms of faith, half buried in the sands of Time, and gazing forward steadfastly into the night, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sorry to observe that the gentleman, Phrenologist, as he professes to be, has so little reverence in his crown. He could not read the foregoing suggestion without scoffing at it. Biblical truth is not powerless, though the scornful may refuse ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves, who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than, in silence, shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves, who dare not be In the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... work it would make among the lively youths of the village, to be sure! What scoffing, what ridicule, what embellishments, what fables, would follow in the trail of the story! If the Interviewer got hold of it, how "The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor" would blaze with capitals in its next issue! The young fellows' of the place ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Emily, as she listened, felt the cold shivers running up and down her spine. It is one thing to scoff at superstition in the bright sunlight; it is quite another to listen to a tale like this on a night like this in a house a hundred years old. Miss Howes scoffed, it is true, but the scoffing was not convincing. ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... court, and there the antick sate, Scoffing her state and grinning at her pomp. Allowing her a little breath, a little scene To monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks, Infusing her with self and vain conceit, As if the flesh which walled about her life Were brass impregnable; and humoured thus, Bored through her castle ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... pause.) In vain the truth I'd hide from mine own eyes; My heart is his—irrevocably his. To be his wife—oh rapture, heavenly bliss! Yet I must spurn his love. I will not bear All China's cold contempt; man's scoffing sneer. What glory would be mine could I but tame This bragging conqueror. Pronounce his name In high divan, and chase him from our city, Abashed and in despair. But yet, with pity My heart would surely break. ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... censures, frowns, cavillings and remarks of every man in his county, who happened to be long to the political party that just at that moment was in power. As to the minority, he was as brave as a lion, could snap his fingers at them, and was foremost in deriding and scoffing at all they said and did. This, however, was in connexion with politics only; for, the instant party-drill ceased to be of value, Steadfast's valour oozed out of his composition, and in all other things he dutifully consulted every public ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... impulses of grace shot across the soul of Cassier; he struggled in the grasp of an unseen power, but suddenly lapsed into the awful callousness which characterizes the relapses of confirmed guilt; he pretended to smile at his weakness, and found a sorry relief in cursing and scoffing at everything ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... able to furnish to an unbelieving and inquisitive world a satisfactory account of the disappearance of the body of Christ which had been placed in the tomb, and which they claimed to have seen after the resurrection. "Where is your Christ?" the scoffing world might ask. "We saw Him ascend up into the heaven, and He is now at the Father's right hand," the apostles ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... trade, an ashamed, but unrepentant rascal. He had two immense erect ears, and in his boisterous position had suffered a loss of hair, wearing nothing save an impudent scalp-lock. A very grotesque personage. Was he the guardian imp, the legendary Eft of Katahdin, scoffing already at us as verdant, and warning that he would make us unhappy, if we essayed to appear in demon realms and on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... worth while to revive these terrors by a definite contradiction. The truly religious have been content to lapse quietly into the comparative sanity of an unformulated Arianism, they have left it to the scoffing Atheist to mock at the patent absurdities of the official creed. But one magnificent protest against this theological fantasy must have been the work of a sincerely religious man, the cold superb humour of that burlesque creed, ascribed, at ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... even ridiculing the peculiarities of Luther and Calvin as he did ridicule them, Swift could not be thought other than constitutionally incapable of religion. Even a Pagan philosopher, if made to understand the case, would be incapable of scoffing at any form, natural or casual, simple or distorted, which might be assumed by the most solemn of problems—problems that rest with the weight of worlds ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... this has proved the one fatal mistake. Many an honest and earnest soul, feeling the deep needs of a spiritual life, but unable to separate those things which the heart would accept from those against which the reason revolts, has rejected all together, and turned away sorrowful, if not scoffing. On the other hand, the state of that man, who, because his mind has settled down upon certain externals of religion, deems that he has secured its essentials also, is worse than that of the skeptic. The freezing traveller, who is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... master, and the little boys and their friends went on as scholars. All the boys talked and shouted at once, acting their idea of a school by flinging pea-nuts about, and scoffing at the master. ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... a church and hear the worshippers within is to get one of the most pleasant impressions possible; somehow it always strikes me that one imagines the people within to be so much holier, indeed more spiritual, than they really are. But all this looks either like preaching or scoffing, and it is neither. It is really the result of a desire to push myself into the home life you good people are still leading, somehow or other. An excusable offence after all, my Masters! Having re-cursed the tail ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... were guilty of many extravagances, such as one would think human nature should have trembled at the thoughts of, at such a time of general terror as was then upon us, and particularly scoffing and mocking at everything which they happened to see that was religious among the people, especially at their thronging zealously to the place of public worship, to implore mercy from Heaven in such a time of distress; and this tavern where they held their club, being within view of the church ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... men! indeed!" cried the marquis, with a scoffing laugh. "And how will Bonaparte carry on the Italian campaign? As for General Brune, he is not coming. The First Consul has sent him against the English in Holland, and General Hedouville, the friend of our friend Barras, takes his place here. Do ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... sending this epistle, but denied that he did it himself, and indeed the indictment set forth that it was in company with one John Mason, then deceased, that the said conspiracy was formed. Under sentence of death, he behaved himself very sillily, laughing and scoffing at his approaching end, and saying to one of his companions, as the keeper went downstairs before them, Let us knock him down and take his keys from him. If one leads to heaven, and the other to hell, we shall at least have a chance to get ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward |
