"Flout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well-built lad, a pupil at the old Grammar-School, where he used the desk at which his father had sat before him. Whatever fault of boyhood showed itself in Harry Morton, he knew not the common temptation to be ashamed of his mother, or to flout her love. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... spare— Of me and fragrancy and fair!" A Maiden-blush, which heard him, said, With face unwontedly flushed red. "Tell me, for what committed wrong Am I the metaphor of song? I would you could write rhymes without me, Nor in your ecstacies so flout me. In every ditty must we bloom? Can't you find elsewhere some perfume? Oh! does it add to Chloe's sweetness To visit and compare my meetness? And, to enhance her face, must mine Be made to ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... There is no disgrace attached to laying down a dollar here and there—we all do it. That is part of our amusement, in Benton." She halted. "You are game, sir? What is life but a series of chances? Are you disposed to win a little and flout ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... he said, after a pause. "Human nature is weak, engagingly weak, Guildea. And you're inclined to flout it. I could understand a certain class of lady—the lion-hunting, the intellectual lady, seeking you. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... half his battle is won. If he can get the people to despise the priest in any capacity as a social man, a politician, &c., he knows that time rubs out fine-drawn distinctions; they will cease to respect at the altar the man they are accustomed to flout on the street; and if they once come to despise the priest, they will soon despise the sacraments he administers, and challenge the Gospel which he preaches. Let us forestall him, and bind the people to our hearts with hoops of steel. For their sakes more than for ours we cannot make our hold ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... and its brooding solitude with religious veneration. Then he recalled the miraculous stories with which his mother used to lull him to sleep—the great miracle wrought upon these waters by a servant of God to flout the hardened sinners. Saint Raymond of Penafort, a virtuous and austere monk, became indignant with King Jaime of Majorca who was basely enamored of a certain lady, Dona Berenguela, and who remained deaf to ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Catherine Crewe Is now seventy-two, And avers she hath half forgotten The truth of the tale, when you ask her about it, And says, as if fain to deny it or flout it, "POOH! THE ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... proud boast of Augustus that he found Rome a place of brick and left it a city of marble. Commercial prosperity buys the leisure upon which letters flourish. We flout the businessman, but without him there would be no poets. Poets write for the people who have time to read. And out of the surplus that is left after securing food, we buy books. Augustus built his marble city, and he also made Vergil, Horace, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... tremble and the tears to come into his eyes, until he had to lay the book aside. Likewise he was fond of music, and could accompany himself on the piano as he sang the love songs of his friend A— or gipsy songs or themes from operas; but he had no love for serious music, and would frankly flout received opinion by declaring that, whereas Beethoven's sonatas wearied him and sent him to sleep, his ideal of beauty was "Do not wake me, youth" as Semenoff sang it, or "Not one" as the gipsy Taninsha rendered that ditty. His nature was essentially one of those which follow public opinion ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... to Lucina that Jerome might mean to slight her, and might stay away because he wished to do so. She had been so petted and held precious and desirable during her whole sweet life, that she could scarcely imagine any one would flout her, though so timid and fearful of hurting and being hurt was she by nature, that without so much love and admiration she would have ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... searching, never stays; To brave the rattling, hissing streams of lead, The bursting shrapnel and the million ways That war entices death; when dying, dead And living, mingle in the ghastly glare That taints the beauty of a night once fair, And seems to flout the Majesty divine." ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... cried, without an oath—no Yordas ever used an oath except in playful moments—"fool! what fear you? There hangs my respected father's chain. Ah, he was something like a man! Had I ever dared to flout him so, he would have hanged me ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... on your heads doth show, Yet homeless[FN237] am I in your land, I trow. Make drink your usance in my company And flout the time that languishing doth go. Camphor itself to me doth testify And in my presence owns me white as snow. So make me in your morning a delight And set me in your houses, high and low; So shall we quaff the cups in ease and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... your homage. Red Jabez lies dead: yet his spirit lives in me, your queen. By so many breaths that ye flout me, by just so many torments shall I have ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... promise of the King... It is the King's authority they flout... They arrogate to themselves the whole sovereignty in Brittany. The King has dissolved them... These insolent nobles defying their sovereign ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... earth and heaven stand simply great, 35 That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock him ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... more than once, but with no different result, and upon the same lines. Mrs. Willoughby received his attacks with a patient humility, and rushed out to catch him a flout as he was retiring. Finally, however, she shifted her position, and became the aggressor. She suggested that Fielding was really in love with Clarice, and trying to gain favour with her by bringing an admirer back to her feet. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... not sin against secrecie, I would say it were a peece of gentlemanlike knauery. I must goe to Pedringano and tell him his pardon is in this boxe! Nay, I would haue sworne it, had I not seene the contrary. I cannot choose but smile to thinke how the villain wil flout the gallowes, scorne the audience, and descant on the hangman, and all presuming of his pardon from hence. Wilt not be an odde iest, for me to stand and grace euery iest he makes, pointing my figner at this boxe, as who [should] say: "Mock on, heers thy warrant!" Ist ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... therefore surrender all titles of honour, all honorary offices. It will constitute an emphatic demonstration of the disapproval by the leaders of the people of the acts of the Government. Lawyers must suspend their practice and must resist the power of the Government which has chosen to flout public opinion. Nor may we receive instruction from schools controlled by Government and aided by it. Emptying of the schools will constitute a demonstration of the will of the middle class of India. It is far better for the nation even to neglect the literary instruction of the children than ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... "stoney")— Of the much derided Mob. Yes, the Proletariat "Bob" (With the Guinea of the Nob) must aid the Sons of Light. Gath and Askelon, you see, can give Me, L.S.D. All true Egoists love those pregnant letters Mystic Three! Flout Philistia with great glee, fair and free, But agree To take its "tin," Though with a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... dame watched her with reluctant admiration. The child had all the thoroughbred points of a Ludlow. All the same she should be shown that, even in the twentieth century, young girls could not break away from discipline and flout authority without punishment. The smile became almost gleeful at the thought of the little surprise that ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... mild kind of lunacy, an everlasting opium dream without the opium; but I am grateful to him for living such a life, since it has bequeathed us some exquisite poetry,' said Lesbia, who had been too carefully cultured to fleer or flout at Wordsworth. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... which was better, To send it back, or burn the letter. But guessing that it might import, 355 Though nothing else, at least her sport, She open'd it, and read it out, With many a smile and leering flout: Resolv'd to answer it in kind, And thus perform'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... for sensible reflection on any subject. Then, after defiant Dorothy had gone to her room, the older woman stole to the girl's bedside, not to advise,—oh no!—merely to suggest that there was more than one girl waiting to step into Dorothy's place should she flout the handsome young patriot. Also, she suggested, how terrible it would be if Hancock should be killed, or even captured while the girl he worshiped was away from his side! There was no reply, and the older woman stole from ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... He took up the argument again, more pugnaciously than ever. It was the strangest attempt ever made to gibe and flout a wandering sheep back into the fold. Robert's resentment was roused at last. The squire's temper seemed to him totally inexplicable, his arguments contradictory, the conversation useless and irritating. He got up to take ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thou shalt find More fragrant roses there; I see thy withering head reclined With envy and despair! One common fate we both must prove; You die with envy, I with love.' 30 'Spare your comparisons,' replied An angry rose, who grew beside. 'Of all mankind, you should not flout us; What can a poet do without us! In every love-song roses bloom; We lend you colour and perfume. Does it to Chloe's charms conduce, To found her praise on our abuse? Must we, to flatter her, be made To wither, envy, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... would be a barer America. In spite of our brood of special magazines for the literati and the advanced, which Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer praises so warmly, we are not so well provided with the distributive machinery for a national culture as to flout a recognized agency with a gesture and a sneer. But the family magazine has undeniably lost its vigorous appeal, and must be reinvigorated. The malady is due to no slackening of literary virility in the country; indeed ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... a circle that shut me out Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win, We drew a circle that ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... orders the English language might devise. They represented every section of the United States. Not once did they break. The acid test came, when, already pricked by the numerous situations which arose to flout them, East St. Louis broke forth in the most savage pogrom ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... of the force of public opinion is a recent affair. In former years they were totally indifferent to it, if indeed they did not openly flout it. Even now their appeal to public sentiment is mainly a special plea for defensive purposes, and has little or no educational value. Brewers have opposed practically every effort to effect a change ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... to curry friends, You seem to praise, to make amends, And yet, before your stanza ends, you flout me, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... always is, of course. Against every kind of authority, but particularly against bishops. He's always got his knife into them, and I dare say he's glad of the chance of flouting them. High Church parsons are, aren't they? I expect if you were a bit higher you'd flout them too. And if you were a bit lower, the C.G.'d take you as a padre. You're just the wrong height, old thing, ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... and himself opened the topic of the Norwegian jaunt. Urquhart took up the ball. "I think you might come. Your wife and boy will love it, and you'll kindle at their joy. 'They for life only, you for life in them,' to flout the bard. Besides, you are not a fogey, if I'm not. I believe our ages tally. You shall climb mountains with me, Macartney, and improve the muscles of your calves. You don't fish, I think. Nor do I. I thought I should catch your brother-in-law with that bait—but no. As for mine, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... him many thanks, he is courteous, That in suspecting kindly warneth us. We must not, as we used, flout openly, In scoffing riddles, his deformity; Nor at his board together being set, With words ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... me a great deal," he said. "The Daily Oracle represents a million of capital, it represents the life work of myself and many dear comrades. You ask me to stake our prestige, our whole future, upon your story. You ask me to publicly flout the government which we have supported through thick and thin. You give me no time to consult my colleagues—I must decide at once, yes or no! This is ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that if by mischance thou shouldst come to lose thy way in the Fair, thou mayst chance to be very roughly handled. There is always a scum of villains there on the outlook to decoy strangers, and, if they will not consent to be cheated, to flout and mock them with gibes and scurril jests. 'Twas but the other day they put Truepenny into the STOCKS, and kept him there till he thought he should never get out again; and he only did get out by parting with all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... nation Once since hath entered Ville Marie, But we avenged that desecration At Chrystler's farm and Chateauguay— Peace! peace! 'tis cowardly to flout Our triumphs in a cousin's face: That page was long since blotted out And Friendship written ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... and met her gaze faintly. "And so, proud Seigneur, you must needs flout e'en our Lord Chamberlain, in the name of our butler with three dove-cotes and the perquage. In sooth thy office must not be set at naught lightly—not when it is flanked by the perquage. By my ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not let me rouse your phlegmatic blood, my Britons; sit down, with your thumbs in your mouths, my masters, and allow a coterie to flout you at will, whilst the Frenchmen, the Germans, the Russians alternately laugh at and pity you. Pity you, the sons of the men who chased their fathers half over Europe at the point of the blood-red bayonet! Have you grown tame, have you waxed fat and foolish ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... two noblemen, of the west part of England, whereof the one was given to scoff, but kept ever royal cheer in his house; the other would ask of those that had been at the other's table, "Tell truly, was there never a flout or dry blow given?" To which the guest would answer, "Such and such a thing passed." The lord would say, "I thought he would mar a good dinner." Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal, is more than to speak in good words, or in good order. ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... then the hour of that people's decay and doom hast struck. On this anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, let us remember and vow never to forget that when it becomes general or popular among us, as it has become common, to flout at the Declaration and its principles; whenever the nation commits itself to courses which for the sake of consistency and respectability invite and compel its disparagement; when our politics does not match our poetry and cannot be sung; when Washington and Jefferson ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... consulted the Warden when a cousin had blundered into the hands of the police, embarrassing that flustered official with torrents of half intelligible speech, the purport of which generally was to flout the proceedings with evidence of indubitable alibi? All this he translated to his countrymen as proof of personal influence with court authorities, and, what was more to the point, made them ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... "Ye flout me! Ye who will have for a husband, one whom thou canst not name!" She laughed derisively. That hurt Elsa very much because it was true. Ortrud had remained with her through the night, and had continued ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... words my son, come easily, when he That speaks is wise, and speaks but for the right. Else come they never! Swift are thine, and bright As though with thought, yet have no thought at all Lo this new God, whom thou dost flout withal, I cannot speak the greatness wherewith He In Hellas shall be great! Two spirits there be, Young Prince, that in man's world are first of worth. Demeter one is named; she is the Earth— Call her which name thou will!—who feeds man's frame ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... like themselves in the same obstinate belief of the same 'cunningly devised' frauds; and though they had many accomplices in their singular conspiracy, had the equally singular fortune to free themselves and their coadjutors flout all transient weakness towards their cause and treachery towards one another; and, lastly, that these men, having, amidst all their ignorance, originality enough to invent the most pure and sublime system of morality which the world has ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... solstice. We holiday makers are not going to be tyrannized over by literary and scientific persons, and we insist on taking our own way. Our blood beats fully only at this season, and not even the extortioners' bills can daunt us. Let us break into poetry and flout the maudlin enthusiasts ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... close to her, said at last: "Girl, for I see ye scorn my courtesies, Take warning: yonder man is surely dead; And I compel all creatures to my will. Not eat nor drink? And wherefore wail for one, Who put your beauty to this flout and scorn By dressing it in rags? Amazed am I, Beholding how ye butt against my wish, That I forbear you thus: cross me no more. At least put off to please me this poor gown, This silken rag, this beggar-woman's weed: I love ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... thunderclouds outlightening, thrilling the air. With shattering trumpet-challenge, when the blasts Are locked in frenzied wrestle, with mad breath Rending the clouds, when Zeus is wroth with men Who travail with iniquity, and flout His law. So grappled they, as spear with spear Clashed, shield with shield, and man on ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... bright with steel and gold, And plumes that flout the sky, I 'll wear a soul of hardier mould, And thoughts that sweep as high. For scarf athwart my corslet cast, With her fair name y-wove; I 'll have her pictured in my breast, The ladye that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... th' hill-fowk wander yeer by yeer, An' they toss their heeads an' flout me, when ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... does a man who loves as I do, care for the conventions of the sham world you and I have left so far behind. I adore you. And you flout me." ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... one here her birth doe disdaine, Her father is ready, with might and with maine, To proove shee is come of noble degree: Therfore never flout att prettye Bessee." ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... record that will never be beaten. You find a marriage license in the pockets of a murdered man, rush off in a taxi to the address of the lady named therein, marry her, punch a frantic rival on the nose, take the fair one to a hotel, flout her father, a British peer, and hold a banquet at which the Chief of the New York Detective Bureau is an honored guest; and then you have the hardihood to tell me that your actions constitute an immaterial side issue in the biggest sensation New York has produced this year. Young man, wait till ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... circle - they will square it Some fine day; Then the little pigs they're teaching For to fly; And the niggers they'll be bleaching By-and-by! Each newly joined aspirant To the clan Must repudiate the tyrant Known as Man; They mock at him and flout him, For they do not care about him, And they're "going to do without him" ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... is my renown, However the wits may flout— As wide almost as this blessed town" (But he winced as if with gout). "I paid 'em like sin For to put me in, But it's O, and O, to ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... time a grimy sweep Was creeping down the street, When Quartern Loaf, the biker's boy, Below he chanced to meet: "Sweep!" sneered the baker: and the sweep Gave Puff a sooty flout; But Puff-crumb did not deal in soot, So turned his face about; Nor did he care to soundly drub The imp of dirty flues: "Go change your clothes!" said he, "and then "I'll thrash you when you choose! "It will ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... could, if it would, escape its distinctive name, and, since Greece and Judea, no name has the same worth and honor among men. We Americans may flout England a hundred times. We may oppose her opinions with reason, we may think her views unsound, her policy unwise; but from what country would the most American of Americans prefer to have derived the characteristic impulse of American development and civilization ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... one do her disdain, Her father is ready with might and with main To prove she is come of noble degree, Therefore let none flout at ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... man would stand, a sneer on his face and his thin lips contemptuously curled, and flout ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... her anomalous position, he would not for the world have brushed the dew off her belief that she could trust him. And, now that he had fixed his own gaze elsewhere, and she was in this bitter trouble, he felt on her account the rancour that a brother feels when Justice and Pity have conspired to flout his sister. The voice of Frith the chauffeur roused him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 1560), of which the title is a sufficient clue to its purpose, permits a boy to refuse to go to school, and, as a young man, to flout his father's advice in regard to matrimony, only to bring him to the bottom rung of miserable drudgery and servitude under a scolding wife. Of some interest is the lad's report of a schoolboy's life, voicing, as it possibly does, a needed criticism ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... seek; on all sides they surround our walls. Are we going to meet them? Why linger? Will thy bravery ever be in that windy tongue and those timorous feet of thine? . . . My conqueror? Shall any justly flout me as conquered, who sees Tiber swoln fuller with Ilian blood, and all the house and people of Evander laid low, and the Arcadians stripped of their armour? Not such did Bitias and huge Pandarus prove me, and the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... "I do not flout him," says Monica, indignantly. "But what am I to do? am I to make Aunt Priscilla wretched, then, because of him, and break her poor ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... good landlords, good masters blithely followed to the wars. Sing an old battle of Normandy, Picardy, Gascony, and you celebrate deeds of theirs. At home they were vexatious neighbours to a town of burghers claiming privileges: nor was it unreasonable that the Earl should flout the pretensions of the town to read things for themselves, documents, titleships, rights, and the rest. As well might the flat plain boast of seeing as far as the pillar. Earl and town fought the fight of Barons and Commons in epitome. The Earl ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... gritted her teeth afterwards. "This, then, is what he meant—that insolent one! 'After the fiesta will I send the answer'—so he told that simpering maid who took my letter and the rose. And the answer, then, is my rose and my letter returned, and no word else. Madre de Dios! That he should flout me thus! Now will I tell Jose to kill him—and kill him quickly. For that blue-eyed gringo I hate!" Then she flung herself ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... for violence of sentiment and sudden changes of emotion, found herself condemned to a dull, level life. Desborough would talk to her about poetry, but their tastes did not agree. He would even tease her with futile metaphysical talk until she scarcely knew whether to laugh or to flout him. ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... hath fed, Embraced, disgraced, beat back, solicited, Have no fixed heart of Law within his breast, Or with some different rhythm doth e'er contest Nature in the East? Why, 'tis but three weeks fled I saw my Judas needle shake his head And flout the Pole that, east, he Lord confessed! God! if this West should own some other Pole, And with his tangled ways perplex my soul Until the maze grow mortal, and I die Where distraught Nature clean hath gone astray, On earth some ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the reeds the tremblers fled: Till one more bold advanc'd his head, And saw the monarch of the flood Lying half smothered in the mud. He calls the croaking race around: "A wooden king!" the banks resound. Fear once remov'd they swim about him, And gibe and jeer and mock and flout him; And messengers to Jove depute, Effectively to grant their suit. A hungry stork he sent them then, Who soon had swallow'd half the fen. Their woes scarce daring to reveal, To Mercury by night they steal, And beg him to entreat of Jove ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... the rider is thought to be Judas Iscariot. In other parts of France the wild huntsman is known as Harlequin or Henequin, and in some parts of Brittany he is "Herod in pursuit of the Holy Innocents." (Alas, that no such Herod visits London! How welcome would he be, were he only to flout a few of the brawling brats who, allowed to go anywhere they please, make an inferno of every road they choose ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... and winning in manner, full of such radiant charm, Womenkind fought for his favor and loved to their uttermost harm. Such was his craft and his knowledge, such was his skill at the game, Never was woman could flout him, so be he plotted her shame. And so he drank deep of pleasure, and then it fell on a day He gazed on the wife of Tellus and marked her out for ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... veer to catch a vote; Old age to flout one loathes, But, if he never turned his coat, He often changed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... that rises to my touch, So like a cushion? Can it be a cabbage? It is, it is that deeply injured flower, Which boys do flout us with;—but yet I love thee, Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout. Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... show them," he thought proudly. "Them" was the town-folk, and what he would show them was what a big man he was. For, like most scorners of the world's opinion, Gourlay was its slave, and showed his subjection to the popular estimate by his anxiety to flout it. He was not great enough for the carelessness of ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... as eerily, They wheel about and whirl, They jeer at me, they fleer at me, They flout me as they swirl! As whirling fast or swaying slow, Reeling, wheeling, to and fro, Around, around the corpse they go, They chill me with their chants! These be neither men nor ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... of late she had wondered whether she should ask him to visit her mamma, and though the Painted Lady had screamed in terror at the proposal, being afraid of doctors, Grizel would have ventured ere now, had it not been for her mistaken conviction that he was a hard man, who would only flout her. It had once come to her ears that he had said a woman like her mamma could demoralize a whole town, with other harsh remarks, doubtless exaggerated in the repetition, and so he was the last man she dared think of going to for ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... livres, as well as all criminal cases of the third order (estate). The representations of the provincial assembly of Dauphiny severely criticised the impropriety of this measure. "The ministers," they said, "have not been afraid to flout the third estate, whose life, honor, and property no longer appear to be objects worthy of the sovereign courts, for which are reserved only the causes of the rich and the crimes of the privileged." The number of members of the Parliament of Paris was reduced to sixty-nine. The registration ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... death! come with thy dart! come, death, when I bid thee! Mors, veni: veni, mors! and from this misery rid me; She whom I lov'd—whom I lov'd, even she—my sweet pretty Mary, Doth but flout and mock, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... some now would take this master Mathew to be a gentleman, at the least. His father's an honest man, a worshipful fishmonger, and so forth; and now does he creep and wriggle into acquaintance with all the brave gallants about the town, such as my guest is (O, my guest is a fine man!), and they flout him invincibly. He useth every day to a merchant's house where I serve water, one master Kitely's, in the Old Jewry; and here's the jest, he is in love with my master's sister, Mrs. Bridget, and calls her mistress; and there he will ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... dinners, and their vulgar obsequiousness at table. They swill more than they should and would like to swill more than they do, they spoil the wine with unwelcome and untimely disquisitions, and they can not carry their liquor. The ordinary people who are present naturally flout them, and are revolted by the philosophy which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... has a tough Fibre which about While clings my Being;—let the Canine Flout Till his Bass Voice be pitched to such loud key It shall unlock the door ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten • Oliver Herford
... Ainsworth elaborately explains, "a mocking by grimaces, mows, a flout, a frump, a gibe, a scoff, a banter;" and Sannio is "a fool in a play." The Italians change the S into Z, for they say Zmyrna and Zambuco, for Smyrna and Sambuco; and thus they turned Sannio into Zanno, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Asad watched his departure. On the point of commanding him to return, he checked, fearing lest in his present mood Sakr-el-Bahr should flout his authority and under the eyes of all refuse him the obedience due. He knew that it is not good to command where we are not sure of being obeyed or of being able to enforce obedience, that an authority once successfully flouted ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... when he learned his story from Eumaius, he was troubled. "What can we do with him? Shall I give him a cloak and a sword and send him away? I am afraid to take him to my father's house, for the suitors may flout and jeer him." Then the beggar put in his word: "Truly these suitors meet us at every turn. How comes it all about? Do you yield to them of your own free will, or do the people hate you, or have you a quarrel with your kinsfolk? If these withered ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... For mother and wife toiling on till she dies, Or the frivolous butterfly child of the city, All blind to the glory of earth and of skies? Is it fate, or ill fortune, hath woven about you Strong meshes which ye are too helpless to break? Shall we scornfully wonder, or angrily flout you, Or strive from their ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... dirty clo'es May kiver up a poet; What fires may burn an' flout an' skurn, An' no ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... joke indeed. She ruled them all with her temper and her shrewish will. She would have her way in all things, or there should be no sport with her, and she would sing no songs for them, but would flout them bitterly, and sit in a great chair with her black brows drawn down, and her whole small person ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wife, why dost thou flout? Now is now, and then was then: Seek now all the world throughout, Thou ken'st not clowns from gentlemen. They are clad in black, green, yellow, or gray, So far above their own degree: Once in my life I'll do as they, For I'll have a new ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... orchids, the flowers of which, drooping over windows and doorways, shut out the too garish sunlight, while filling the air with fragrance. Among these whirr tiny humming birds, buzz humble bees almost as big, while butterflies bigger than either lazily flout and flap about on soft, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... me had the best part, for I'll be revenged on him to the uttermost, in this person of Will Summer, which I have put on to play the prologue, and mean not to put it off till the play be done. I'll sit as a chorus, and flout the actors and him at the end of every scene. I know they will not interrupt me, for fear of marring of all; but look to your cues, my masters, for I intend to play the knave in cue, and put you ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Break not the dreamy rush Of the rain: Touch not the marring doubt Words bring, to the certainty Of its soft refrain, But let the flying fringes flout Their gouts against the pane, And the gurgling throat of the water-spout Groan in ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... itself before his consciousness. He saw the cunning of the intrigue which the initial outburst of his wrath had obscured. There was more involved in his decision than his own inclinations. He was not free simply to flout the legacy and toss it angrily aside. Ellen, a Richelieu to the last, had him in a trap that wrenched and wrecked every sensibility of his nature. The more he thought about the matter, the more chaotic his impulses became. Justice battled against will; pity ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... dumfoundered by this obstinacy. It was unheard of—absolutely without parallel in his domestic annals—that one of his children should actually flout him! yes! actually flout him with such ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... flout, And swear and rave for sour krout; Nay kick his frow with solemn phiz, To make her feel how goot it ish. Yet after he has gorg'd his maw With puttermilks and goot olt slaw, Let him remember times are such, The French have Holland, not ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... of the penalties of property is that it cultivates whatever egotism and sensitiveness to its prerogative its owner is capable of. That one of the common laborers employed upon her estate should thus openly flout her made Adelle angry. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... trow; Whom thou hast met in deadly fight full oft, When France and Spain join'd in the battle field. Beyond the Pyrenean boundary That guards thy land, are forty thousand men: Their unfurl'd pennons flout fair France's sun, And wanton in the breezes of her sky: Impatient halt they there; their foaming steeds, Pawing the huge and rock-built barrier, That bars their further course—they wait for thee: For thee whom France hath injur'd and cast off; For thee, whose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... shouted, thumping the table with his fist: "You are the limit!... The take-the-cake limit!... You flout me! You practise on my credulity!... Now you would steal a march on me! Try it on—will you?... Ah! You are not Corporal Vinson!... No?... You are a journalist!... You have got to prove that!... Even if you do prove it, you have got yourself into ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... woeful wail, And waste in briny tears thy days? 'Cause she that wont to flout and rail, At last gave proof of woman's ways; She did, in sooth, display the heart That might have ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... it in our cool libraries, that all the agents with which we deal are subalterns, which we can well afford to let pass, and life will be simpler when we live at the centre and flout the surfaces. I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other that they are like grass and trees, and it needs ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... go!" the Baron exclaimed. "What right have you to the child? None at all! Her Highness wishes to be generous. It pleases you to flout her generosity. Mr. Arnold Greatson, you are a fool! Don't you see that you are a pigmy, who has stolen through the back door into the world where great things are dealt with? You have no place there. You cannot keep the child away from us. You ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... friend Bagster finds himself is a very common one. It is no longer true that the good die young; they become prematurely middle-aged. In these days conscience doth make neurasthenics of us all. Now it will not do to flout conscience, and by shutting our eyes to the urgencies and complexities of life purchase for ourselves a selfish calm. Neither do we like the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... ye Liberals! though now you scorn and flout us, Full soon within St Stephen's walls you'll fare but ill without us; No more to us for succour come, for when you most would have it, It will not be forthcoming ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... shook her blankets out, And robes that were softer than wool to don She gave all her children the winds to flout— I wish I knew what they are dreaming about, So quiet and still with ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... Simplicity, for thou showest thy folly. I have a parsonage, but what? of St Nihil; and Nihil is nothing: Then, where is the church, or any bells for to ring? Thou understandest her not: she was set for to flout. I thought, coining in their names, I should go without. 'Tis easy to see that Lucre loves not Love and Conscience; But God, I trust, will one ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... "For God's sake, don't flout the Almighty in that wicked manner! If you would only be baptized and take refuge in prayer, as every Christian should, you would find peace for ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... you have courage, then, to front that law (From which your sophists draw Their only right to flout one human creed) That nothing can proceed— Not even thought, not even love—from less Than its own nothingness? The law is yours! But dare you waive your pride, And kneel where you denied? The law is ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... never heard Thalberg, have the impertinence to flout him, to make merry at his fantasias. Just compare the Don Juan of Liszt and the Don Juan of Thalberg! See which is the more musical, the more pianistic. Liszt, after running through the gamut of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... breast heaving, and her eyes overflowing with tears, in bounded his sister, Seraphine Duchatel, exclaiming: "And is this the creature that has stood between me and Claude? and brought here, too, to flout me to my face! I'll not endure it;" and she burst into ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... in Hartford, with a soul as far away from bric-a-brac as ever the soul of man was. He went home by an early train, and he lost no time in writing back to the three divine personalities which he had so involuntarily seemed to flout. They all wrote back to him, making it as light for him as they could. I have heard that Emerson was a good deal mystified, and in his sublime forgetfulness asked, Who was this gentleman who appeared to think he had offered him some sort of annoyance! But I am not sure that this ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... belong to a class which the critic does not like, although it is legitimate; he may not flout it on that account. You should not blame a bream because it is not a barbel, or a chub for not being a trout, yet the angler grumbles if he catches the humbler fish when aiming at the noble; we are all agreed that the gardener was not justified in "larning" with a spade the squalid batrachians ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... ought to be as a field, without coming home to any man. I knew two noblemen, of the west part of England, whereof the one was given to scoff, but kept ever royal cheer in his house; the other would ask, of those that had been at the other's table, Tell truly, was there never a flout or dry blow given? To which the guest would answer, Such and such a thing passed. The lord would say, I thought, he would mar a good dinner. Discretion of speech, is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... the whole vast world of living creatures is ours, throughout all zones and all lands. It is not ours to flout, to abuse, or to exterminate as we please. While for practical reasons we do not here address ourselves to the invertebrates, nor even to the sea-rovers, we can not keep them out of the background of our thoughts. The living ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... at Cairo. The wealth and fashion of Bayswater, South Kensington, and even the bosky Wood of the Evangelist had sent their latest luxury and style to flout the tombs of the past with the ghastly flippancy of to-day. The cheap tripper was there—the latest example of the Darwinian theory—apelike, flea and curio hunting! Shamelessly inquisitive and always hungry, what did he know of the Sphinx or the pyramids or ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... had a passion For eating of his iron ration— A thing, you know, which isn't done (Except, just now and then, for fun), Because there is a rule about it And decent people rarely flout it. But Tom was greedy and each day He'd put a tin or two away, Though duty told him, clear and plain, To keep them safe as brewers' grain, For eating as a last resort When eatables were running short. His Corporal said, "My lad, don't do it!" His Sergeant groaned, "I'm ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... but only weep; besides my lady is a light rather than a heavy sleeper, and I would not for all the wealth of the world that she found us here; and even if she were asleep and did not waken, my singing would be in vain, if this strange AEneas, who has come into my neighbourhood to flout me, sleeps on and wakens not to ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Bishops, and there together range Sous-lieutenants and cent-gardes (strange Way these soldier-chaps make change), Mixed with black-eyed Polish dames, With unpronounceable awful names; Laces tremble and ribbons flout, Coachmen wrangle and gendarmes shout— Bless us! what is the row about? Ah! here comes Rosy's new turnout! Smart! You bet your life 'twas that! Nifty! (short for magnificat). Mulberry panels,—heraldic spread,— Ebony wheels picked out with red, And two gray mares that were thoroughbred: ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... Amos. "Therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities." The Bible, as I have said before, is an anti-Semitic book. "Israel is the villain, not the hero, of his own story." Alone among epics, it is out for truth, not high heroics. To flout the Pharisees was not reserved for Jesus. "Behold, ye fast for strife and contention," said Isaiah, "and to smite with the fist of wickedness." While some German writers, not content with the great men Germany has so abundantly produced, vaunt that all others, from Jesus to Dante, from Montaigne ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... the judicious, he had made a happy escape, for the cruelty involved in the lady's methods and the careless flout of the opinion of the sober, decorous world were not indicia of worthy traits; but he was of sensitive fibre, and tingled and winced with the consciousness of the cheap gibe and the finger of scorn. He often said to himself then, however, as now to the friend of his inmost thought, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Cleopatra, smiling mournfully. "They say that the works of the Pharaohs here on the Nile flout Time. The inexorable destroyer is less willing to permit this from the Queen of Egypt. These are grey hairs, and they came from this head, however eagerly you may deny it. Whose save my own are ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 'the childher,' or bidding young Jack be on his best behaviour before the Sunday guest. The young folk didn't like the derision in Margret's pale eyes, and kept out of her way as much as possible, since they feared their mother too much to flout her openly, as they were often ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... Altar, nor never do falter, So much as to change a Gold-chain for a Halter; Though some Men do flout us, and others do doubt us, We commonly bear forty Pieces about us; But many good Fellows are fine and look fiercer, And owe for their Cloaths to the Taylor and Mercer: And if from the Harmans I keep out my Feet, [4] I fear not the Compter, King's ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... under the street lamp there, this usually rather quiet man. 'And that,' he said at length, 'that's only half the story. The cream of it is this: the way I myself felt, sitting there among all those soft, easily lived people. That's the cream of it. To flout them, to sting them, to laugh at them, to know you had more courage than all of them put together, you who were once so afraid of them! To feel that—even if they knew it was about yourself you were ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... would he make a sound or lift a finger against her life, never more would he contradict her or flout her; never more would he come peeping through that papered panel between his room and hers, never more could hateful and humiliating demands be made upon her as his right; no more strange distresses of the body nor raw discomfort ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... a Fibre; which about It clings my Being—let the Sufi flout; Of my Base Metal may be filed a Key, That shall unlock the ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... and perish utterly. To cope with thy Arcadian goes a man Modest in speech but nowise slack in deed, Actor, his brother of whom last I spake, Who will not let a tongue without an arm Within our gates rave to our overthrow, Nor entrance give the foe, who on his shield To flout us bears the hated effigy. His Sphynx, midst rattling darts, will hardly thank Him that advanced her to our battlements.— Heaven grant that as I say ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... unity of spirit and purpose, a new confidence and consecration, which would make our defense impregnable, our triumph assured. Then we should have little or no disorganization of our economic, industrial, and commercial systems at home, no staggering war debts, no swollen fortunes to flout the sacrifices of our soldiers, no excuse for sedition, no pitiable slackerism, no outrage of treason. Envy and jealousy would have no soil for their menacing development, and revolution would be without the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... flout not Her worshipped sanctity, Nor those Her lilies, glorious, holy, pure, The which illumine earth and ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... and silence of her room, free from all invasion except of her own thoughts. The quicker flow of blood that came with awaking, the expanding thrill of physical strength and buoyancy of life renewed, brought with it the moral courage which morning often brings to flout the compromises of the confusion of the evening's weariness. The inspiriting, cool air of night electrified by the sun cleared her vision. She saw all the pictures on the slate of yesterday and their message plainly, as something that could not be ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... his task all the easier. Bannuchi and Waziri tribesmen had carried a faithful report of his doings to their more northern compatriots, and the word quickly went round that "Nikalseyn" was a dangerous man to flout. There were some, as it happened, who ventured to cross swords with him, but the result taught them that this stern-faced, black-bearded giant of a sahib was their master every whit ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... of so rich a store May laugh at Croesus and esteem him poor; And with his smoky sceptre in his fist, Securely flout the toiling alchemist, Who daily labors with a vain expense In distillations of the quintessence, Not knowing that this golden herb alone Is ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... amounteth to a great sum of money, which money doth never come again into England." "We are daily scorned," he says, "by these Hollanders, for being so negligent of our Profit, and careless of our Fishing; and they do daily flout us that be the poor Fishermen of England, to our Faces at Sea, calling to us, and saying, 'Ya English, ya sall or oud scoue dragien;' which, in English, is this, 'You English, we will make you glad to wear ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... you must break. Remember that a new order of things is beginning for you. Hitherto I have praised your frivolity, because it was opportune and in keeping with the rest of your nature. I thought it feminine for you to play with Fortune, to flout caution, to destroy whole masses of your life and environment. Now, however, there is something that you must always bear in mind, and regard above everything else. You must gradually train yourself—in the allegorical ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... at once from schoolroom's form. Instead of all this angry storm, Another might have thanked you well For saving prey from that grim cell, That hollowed den 'neath journals great, Where editors who poets flout With their demoniac laughter shout. And I have scolded you! What fate For charming dwarfs who never meant To anger Hercules! And I Have frightened you!—My chair I sent Back to the wall, and then let fly A shower of words the envious use— ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... heeded not their words, but would frown and flout, and go back to his companions, and lead them. And his companions followed him, for he was fair, and fleet of foot, and could dance, and pipe, and make music. And wherever the Star-Child led them they followed, and whatever the Star-Child ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... here, for I have sworn To keep my heart hard and my knees unworn. Enough you have of jester, player, priest: I as the skeleton attend your feast, In the mad revelry to make a lull With shaken finger and with bobbing skull. However you my services may flout, Philosophy disdain and reason doubt, I mean to hold in customary state, My dismal revelry and celebrate My yearly rite until the crack o' doom, Ignore the cheerful season's warmth and bloom And cultivate an oasis ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight: For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild but to flout the ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... taxes, some jury duty. You shirk fatherhood, and all its happy and sacred obligations! You deny posterity! You strike a blow at it! You flout it! You menace the future of this Republic! Your inertia is a crime against the people! Instead of pro bono publico your motto is pro bono tempo—for a good time! And, dog Latin or not, it's the truth, ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... do not love me and you have never loved me! What a poor fellow I must be to let you mock and flout me as you have done! Why did you give me every reason for hope, at Perros ... for honest hope, madam, for I am an honest man and I believed you to be an honest woman, when your only intention was to deceive me! Alas, you have deceived us all! You have taken ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... and the girls are leaving us to-morrow. They go back to Rotterdam, where they expect to find Starr's aunt, and, they hope, a skipper for the motor-boat. Cousin Helen asked if I could recommend a suitable man; but even if I knew one, I should not make it easier for her to flout the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... gasped. "By heaven, this is too much! For thirty years, I have been factor in this district, and kept the hunters in line. But, now, there's a brotherhood of free-traders. They'll flout the Company, will they? They'll flout me, eh? I'll show them, by heaven! I'll ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... hosts combine to offer sacrifice; Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high; Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies. The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory! The foe, the victim, and the fond ally That fights for all, but ever fights in vain, Are met—as if at home they could not die - To feed the crow on Talavera's plain, And fertilise ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... way the knights of the Gray Gave a flout at the buckeye bandana, And the buckeye came back with a gosh-awful whack, And that's what's ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... poems still hath been this measure, To mix profit with your pleasure; And not as some, whose throats their envy failing, Cry hoarsely, All he writes is railing: And when his plays come forth, think they can flout them, With saying, he was a year about them. To this there needs no lie, but this his creature, Which was two months since no feature; And though he dares give them five lives to mend it, 'Tis known, five weeks fully penn'd it, From his own hand, without a co-adjutor, Novice, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... naked knife in hand, This buccaneer in fairyland! Dancing in a saraband The red ferns reel about him! Dancing in a morrice-ring The green ferns curtsey, kiss and cling! Their Marians flirt, their Robins fling Their feathery heels to flout him! ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the melancholy of his birth and history claims some sympathy. Sometimes when I listen to him speak, hear the almost piquant sadness of his words, watch the spirit of isolation which, by design or otherwise, shows in him, for the moment I am conscious of a pity or an interest which I flout in wiser hours. This is his art, the potent danger of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their respective countries from depths of humiliation to undreamt of heights of triumph. The first thing was to restore the prestige of their States. No people can be strong in action that has lost belief in its own powers and has allowed its neighbours openly to flout it. The history of the world has shown again and again that politicians who allow their country to be regarded as une quantite negligeable bequeath to some abler successor a heritage of struggle and war—struggle ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Vexes me with sweet pain; And still my soul is fain To know the secret of that yearning Which in thine utterance I hear returning. Hush, oh hush! Break not the dreamy rush Of the rain: Touch not the marring doubt Words bring to the certainty Of its soft refrain; But let the flying fringes flout Their drops against the pane, And the gurgling throat of the water-spout ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... now be doubted and scorned by some. I will but say that I have seen and know that which hath been wrought by these hags o' the broom and of their power which they held at their beck and wink the which is not to be set on one side at the flip and flout of our young masters and misses, fresh from some teaching drove into their brain pans by some idiotick and skeptick French teacher. I therefore say no more on ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... thou would'st view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight; For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey. When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress, alternately, Seem framed of ebon and ivory; When silver edges the imagery. And ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... one Thoreau, and we should devoutly thank the gods of New England for the precious gift. Thoreau's work lives and will continue to live because, in the first place, the world loves a writer who can flout it and turn his back upon it and yet make good; and again because the books which he gave to the world have many and very high literary and ethical values. They are fresh, original, and stimulating. He drew a gospel out of the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs |
