"Mirthless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tatsu's mirthless laugh rang out against the sound of dripping rain. The childish outburst had been of some relief. He looked defiantly toward the white rectangle he had just defaced. Defaced? The boy caught in his breath. ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... overalls, and his long gray hair and beard were tangled and unkempt. I passed the time of day and he answered me civilly enough, although vacantly; and I saw that his eye had the red film of the drunkard. When I asked him for Quirk, the schoolmaster, who used to live thereabout he gave a mirthless chuckle. ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... confused reply. "I should like to see the ranch. I may—I will—That is, if I—" He stopped as if not knowing how to finish, and with a gesture of hopelessness turned away to stand silently looking back toward the town, while his face was dark with painful memories, and his lips curved in that mirthless, self-mocking smile. ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the fire until a sudden lash of the wind whipped the note from between his fingers and sent it scurrying away in a white volley of fine snow. The loss of the note awoke him to action. He started to pursue the bit of paper, then stopped and laughed. It was a short, mirthless laugh, the kind of a laugh with which a strong man covers pain. He returned to the tent again and looked in. He flung back the tent flaps so that the light could enter and he could see into the box. A few hours before that box had hidden Scottie Deane, the murderer. ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... out in a dry, mirthless cackle of laughter, and slapped his knees, much as if he had heard a ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... Forcing his usual dry, mirthless laugh, he greeted Dan with forced effusiveness, urging him to take a chair, declaring that he hardly knew him, that he thought he was at Gordon's Mills fishing. Then he entered at once into a glowing description ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... him," she interrupted, hoarsely. He gave her a mirthless smile, and spying the crap-dealer leaving his bankrupt table, called him ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... and scowled darkly at King Richard sitting gracefully upon his charger. "Ho! ho!" called the sombre man in a loud voice. "Ho! ho!" he repeated with a mirthless laugh. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him. "You yourself never loved. You never love!" On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear. It seemed like the pleasure ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... flickering logs. "I should think you would know," she answered wearily. Then, with a mirthless laugh, she spread both hands toward the blaze. "I'm looking ahead—I can see it all there in the fire." Her fingers convulsively clenched themselves until blue marks showed against the ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... laugh at us for being worried," suggested Bart, with an attempt at a laugh that was rather mirthless. "Maybe he's night-fishing, ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... work off the hollow, mirthless laugh dodge on me," I said, "because it won't do. You're a ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... Her answer came out quietly. She looked full into Franks's cold grey eyes, and burst into a mirthless laugh. ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... it was a love story, but that it had not been properly developed and that she needed to study. She thanked me for my counsel and said she would rewrite it. I wish it might be printed just as it was, however, for it is indeed a sodden and mirthless world in which we live ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... her fresh pickle-lily, and mebbe I could find out about your clothes. The pickle-lily's on the kitchen table. I left it when I came through. It's good, but there ain't any love in it." And Miranda laughed a hard mirthless laugh, and then settled ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the high cracked voice rang from the bare walls and bare floors as he tossed the scalps from him, and sat down, laughing silently in painful, mirthless fashion, his toothless jaw quivering, and his shaking hands groping for the ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... well," said the doctor, facing Rainey, his face away from the girl. As he spoke he left his mouth open for a moment, his tongue showing between his white teeth, in a grin that was as mocking as that of a wolf, mirthless, ruthless, triumphant. And for a fleeting second his ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... told his piteous tale with tears and passion, protesting that he had succumbed only before the combined attack of twenty armed men, and exhibiting his wounds. But the girl gave a brief and mirthless laugh. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... neither man made any move toward shaking hands, although it was obvious that they were acquainted, at least. The great detective's tone when he greeted his visitor was as distinctly ironical as the latter's was uneasy, although he replied with a mirthless chuckle, which was intended ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... vague woman's way she meant it, I suppose, yet as I looked at her, where she sat beyond the bowl of jonquils, in one of her old Paris gowns, which she had told me she was wearing out, I broke into a short, mirthless laugh. She held her head high, with its wreath of plaits that made a charming frame for her arched black eyebrows and her full red mouth. On her bare throat, round and white as a marble column, there was an old-fashioned necklace of wrought gold, which had belonged ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... the widow next me bit her lip and clenched her fist, but she gave no other sign of emotion. Another film was thrown on the screen, humorous, I believe. Suddenly the woman began to laugh. She did not stop laughing. It was a long, mirthless, dry, uncanny sort of cackle. People stared. She laughed still louder. An usher came down the aisle, and stood there, uncertain what to do. Hysterics had given way to weeping: the tears were now ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... laughed—that same peculiar mirthless little laugh—when he drove past her and splashed her with mud on the road. "It never seems to occur to you that I may have some little wants of my own, Dan," she said; "you are a perfect ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... he says and then we kill him," Gebk said with a mirthless grin. The remark wasn't meant to be humorous, but was made in all seriousness. Brion recognized this and knew that there was no danger for the present moment. He slid the gun away, and for the first ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... A ringing, mirthless laugh was the only reply that reached the girl, as she put her fingers in her ears and hid her face ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Norman looked helplessly round, as if for relief; and Miranda, after a moment's silence, broke into another mirthless laugh. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... slowly clenched, he raised himself slightly, his body rigid, his chin thrusting, his face pale, his eyes burning with a sudden fierce fire. Once he opened his lips to speak, but instantly closed them again, and a smile wreathed them—a mirthless smile that had in it a certain cold caution and cunning. After a silence that lasted long his voice came again, drawling, well-controlled, revealing nothing of the emotion which had previously ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... come!" its mirthless accents rallied him. "Have you no welcome for me?—you, who have been permitted to live the quarter of a century without making my acquaintance? Surely, now, it's high time we were learning something of one another, you and I!" ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... her flit down the aisle, saw her jump up the little ladder onto the stage, watched her vanish into the swirl of the dance. He reached for a cigarette, opened his case, and found it empty. He uttered a mirthless, Byronic laugh. The ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... to be said, Baltimore," says she, after a slight pause. "This must never occur again. I like you, you know that. I——" she breaks off abruptly, and suddenly gives way to a sort of mirthless laughter. "It is a farce!" she says. "Consider my feeling anything. And so virtuous a thing, too, as remorse! Well, as one lives, one learns. If I had seen the light for the first time in the middle of the dark ages, I should probably have ended my days as the prioress of a convent. As it is, I ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... shooting you up, they knew my arsenal would get into action. They figured on killing me the first shot. But they didn't," added the captain with a mirthless grin. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... moves different than a golem. You see golems doing things like knitting their brows, starting back in alarm, looking askance, and standing arms akimbo. And they have things like pursed lips and knowing glances and mirthless laughter. You know: all the things you read about, that real people never do. But now that you're here, I've got somebody to talk to. I did get lonesome, I admit. I'll show you where I stay and we'll fix you up ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... the slain with Love the slayer lies; Deep drown'd are both in the same sunless pool. Up from its depths that mirror thundering skies Bubbles the wan mirth of the mirthless Fool. ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... laughed!—and the novelty of being laughed at was refreshing. He and Thatcher had laughed in secret at the confusion of their common enemies in old times; but most men feared him, and he had the reputation of being a mirthless person. He had rarely discussed politics with women; he had an idea that a woman's politics, when she had any, partook of the nature of her religion, and that it was something quite emotional, tending toward hysteria. He experienced a sense of guilt ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Only when the black mass had packed itself in solid phalanges about that ring, inside which, just a year ago, he had stood in very different circumstances, and was at length still, a wintry smile played for a moment about his lips. He laughed a mirthless laugh. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... to the other. And suddenly he smiled once more. It was queer, that smile. It was not quite mirthless. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... standing for some time as motionless as though she were a marble statue and not a living woman. Suddenly she seemed to take some desperate resolve: she threw back her head with a bitter, mirthless laugh, and going to the bell she rang it. Her ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... story where a man laughed a low, mirthless laugh. The laugh came to me quite naturally on this occasion. "Say no more," I said. "This is contemptible. Now I forbid you to get the ink—I ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... met hours of the clock he never guessed before— Dumb, dragging, mirthless hours confused with dreams and fear, Bone-chilling, hungry hours when the gods sleep and snore, Bequeathing earth and heaven to ghosts, and will not hear, And will not hear man groan chained to the sodden ground, Rotting alive; in feather beds they ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... scar laughed again, the same unpleasant, mirthless laugh, and thrusting his hand into his trouser pocket drew it out again full of silver coins, amongst which one ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a harsh, mirthless laugh. "And for goodness' sake, what do they think of your set? You force me to say this, Dick. There is not a person in this city who has not heard of you and that ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... laughter somehow rang jarringly in Joan's ears. But she was used to violent men who expressed mirth over mirthless jokes. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... on in advance of her friend, and never turned her head nor spoke, until the door of her boudoir had shut them in; then she turned and faced her companion, uttering as she did so a low mirthless laugh. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... before their eyes, not even a completed episode in one. It so happened that they saw no one in tears or in liquor; on the contrary, they saw many who laughed, many children playing games with and tricks upon one another. Yet in its mirth the region was mirthless; its energy was not physical, but nervous. It had an air of living intensely in the present, for fear of remembering, for fear of looking ahead. And it needed but a misunderstanding or a catchword to turn in a moment from recreation to violence. Indeed, the mere fact of their own passing ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... patted his tie reassuringly, while Aunt Kate nearly doubled herself, so heartily did she enjoy the joke. The smile soon faded from Aunt Julia's face and her mirthless eyes were directed towards her nephew's face. After a pause ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... deferentially, with a sardonic and mirthless grin, to let the other pass first. There were many tracks close to the cabin where they themselves, as well as the girl, had moved to and fro. Their roving ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... "I fired five shots, but I saved one for myself. Ha, ha, ha!" And his mirthless cackle broke ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... not Harleston; there never was but one equal to Harleston, and that one was lost to her. She shut her lips tightly and a far-away look came into her eyes. And now Harleston, too, was lost to her; and—she lifted her hands resignedly, and laughed a mirthless laugh. As she came back to reality, she met Marston's curiously courteous glance with a ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... these three rooms you choose?" she asked, revealing her teeth in one of those rapid smiles which were mirthless as the eternal smile ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... congregated, the air was thick with the vermilion dust. From the water's edge up the steps to the palaces and temples and houses at the top, the terraces swarmed with thousands of people, and the talk and mirthless laughter rose and fell like the continuous clamour from a ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... on Calumet's sneering face. Betty's eyes in the flickering glare of the candle light, were steady and unwavering as she vainly searched for any sign of emotion in the mask-like features of the man seated before her. She saw the mask break presently, and a cold, mirthless smile ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... himself the masculine but mirthless courage of the atheist, he drew a little nearer to the wall and, catching the man at a slightly different angle of the evening light, could see his face and figure quite plain. Two facts about him stood out in the picked colours of some ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... at Bellegarde, telling of Perion's captivity.... Melicent," the Jew said, "I make no songs, no protestations, no phrases. My deeds must speak for me. Concede that I have laboured tirelessly." He paused, his gaze lifted, and his lips smiled. His eyes stayed mirthless. "This mad Callistion's hate of you, and of the Demetrios who had abandoned her, was my first stepping-stone. By my advice a tiny wire was fastened very tightly around the fetlock of a certain horse, between the foot and the heel, and the hair was ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... God knows I tried, by every means in my power short of deliberately blowing my brains out—a suicide's widow—I couldn't brand her like that. When men were dying around me like flies death passed me by—I wasn't fit even for that, I suppose." He gave a ghastly little mirthless laugh that made Peters wince and came back slowly into the room, heedless of the window he had left open, and walked to the fireplace dropping his head on his arm on the mantel. "You asked me just now what I meant to do to her—it is not a question of me at all but what Gillian elects ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... at the mirthless face of the reverend gentleman beside her, she added, "And on the dome of the college shall be a colossal statue of Father Burke, in solid gold. He has not uttered a word in half ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... me—or rather made me pause. But sanity asserting its sway at once I left the verandah after giving him a mirthless smile. In a few strides I found myself in the dining room, now cleared and empty. But during that short time various thoughts occurred to me, such as: that Giles had been making fun of me, expecting some amusement at my expense; that I probably looked silly and gullible; ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... like mirthless ridicule, touched her lips as she saw him, with head lowered, cut more savagely into the piece of wood. She noticed, ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... school in the old country, he fought the schoolmaster and leathered him well. A pure lie, but an old favourite of Dad's, and one that never failed to make Joe laugh. He laughed now. And such a laugh!—a loud, mirthless, merciless noise. No one else joined in, though Miss Ribbone smiled a little. When Joe recovered he ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... gripped his hand, as one drowning grips anything offered—gripped till he winced. She laughed a loud mirthless laugh, that came pouring like a sob from her ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... compunction swept over him. After all, he loved her, and, loving her, could not bear to think of any calamity befalling her. He hated her for tricking him; feared for her, for the pass to which he had brought her; cared for her beyond the point his liking had reached for any other woman. A mirthless laugh escaped him as he stood at the stairway looking ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... as of unseen eyes regarding her malevolently. Again she shuddered. She tried to force her unwilling feet onward toward the cave, when from its depths issued an uncanny sound that was neither brute nor human, a weird sound that was akin to mirthless laughter. ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with wild laughter, and, laughing, eyed with mirthless merriment the look of horror with which Janet was regarding her. "Ha, ha, ha!" she screamed, "it's to be a clean sweep o' the Gourlays! Ha, ha, ha! it's to be a clean sweep o' ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... be utterly useless," he replied with quiet conviction. "He wouldn't pay. He said he wouldn't, last time. And he meant it.... You'd better have let me blow out my brains while I was about it, Ann"—with, a mirthless laugh. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... I shall be dead then," says she, with a rather mirthless laugh this time. "Do you know that you and Aunt Jane are the only two people in ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... itself she got nothing but wind and chaff and heavy laughter, the laughter of yokels at old jokes, a mirthless and primitive sound like the cries ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... And with a mirthless laugh the doctor turned on his heel, removing, when unobserved, his spectacles and wiping the moisture from them and ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... kind has happened to me," he said with a hard, mirthless laugh, "for out of the most perfect beauty I have only ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... silent, mirthless laugh. By this time Mr. Pike was beside himself with a rage that could find no ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... know that. It was only after an unusual interval in the powerful wind-blast that Dan looked upward and suddenly held up his hand. He looked at the vague form of the girl and bared his teeth in a quick, mirthless smile. ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... straggled after her. She rather liked thus to emphasize her lack of convention as a hostess, making a pose of never remembering the proper thing to do. Now she moved here and there, laughing her shrill rather mirthless laugh, calling everybody "dearie," uttering abrupt little platitudes. Keith found himself left behind, and rather out in the cold. The company had quite frankly segregated itself into couples. The room was well adapted to this, filled as it was with comfortable ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... deliberate stride of an athlete without passion or bravado. Conscious power, inexorable will, and thorough self-command were stamped upon him from crown to foot, and his salutation to the small family party accompanied a smile as mirthless and cold as were ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... turned towards him, laughed a low, noiseless, mirthless laugh for a moment, and then said, in a hollow, far-away voice that had no lungs behind it: "I am done with feeling ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... looking round with a mirthless smile. "Sorry can do no better. And you can't hang him, either. As you observe, gentlemen," he added gravely, "there is no head, and ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... meaningless grunts and waving arms and facial expressions of puzzlement, surprise, and understanding. At times a passion wrote itself on the face of the Indian, and a sympathy on the face of La Flitche. Again, by look and gesture, St. Vincent was referred to, and once a sober, mirthless laugh ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... he said, and laughed a mirthless laugh. "My Gawd! it 'ud take something. No fear; that little game's off. And I could a' done it if he'd been a decent or'nery child, 'stead of a blarsted freak. There won't never be another, neither. This one pretty near killed the missus. Doctor said ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... A smile, mirthless and ugly, crossed Blunt's bronzed face. Leaning forward along his horse's neck, he fixed his ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... her recoil had drawn him to his side. His cruel, mirthless grin seemed to her to carry inexpressible menace. Very slowly, while his eyes taunted her, he pulled her ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... the whole affair appalled her more than she could have suspected. When several of the guests of the evening soberly announced that Mohammed was a dangerous man and even an object of worry to the government she felt a strange catch in her throat and her now mirthless eyes turned instinctively to Brewster, who, it seemed, was the sheik's ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... mistaken, there will be no heir to the Dukedom. Her Highness suffers from dropsy. Great heavens! what ails you?' he cried, for the Graevenitz had flung herself back into her chair, convulsed in a horrible paroxysm of mirthless laughter. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... fingers, and pinned on her hat. The voices still went on below, monotonous, endless; the rasping of Rudolph's throat, irritated by cheap cigarets, the sound of glasses on the table, once a laugh, guttural and mirthless. It was ten o'clock when she knew, by the pushing back of their chairs, that they were preparing to ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... made some inadequate reply, for I, too, seemed caught in the sort of mirthless evasion ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "frozen with amazement." Before him stood the most dangerous man in Europe; a man who had done murder and worse; a man only in name, a demon in nature. His long black eyes half-closed, his perfectly chiselled ivory face expressionless, and his blood-red lips parted in a mirthless smile, Antony Ferrara watched Cairn—Cairn whom he had sought to murder by means of ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... me the news," he replied with a quick, mirthless laugh, wholly unlike his usual light-hearted gaiety. "He had to ask me where to find Jeanne, for I alone knew where she was. As for Armand, they'll not worry about him whilst I am here. Another reason why I must bide a while longer. But in the meanwhile, dear, I ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... little surprise, yes? You carry your meddling outside of your newspaper work, eh? I leave behind me an old wife in the morning and in the evening, presto! I find a young bride. Wonderful!—but wonderful!" He laughed an unmusical and mirthless laugh. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... He laughed—a short, mirthless laugh—and pushed his hair from his brow. It was a strange thing that he should dream of confiding his story to this bit of a girl, yet never before had he known ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... A little mirthless laugh sounded from the bed. "I wonder how many people ever let a person who is selling something at the door get into the house. And if they let her in, do they ever, ever ask her to sit down? The places where I've stood, telling ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... Rhes and his face cracked into a mirthless smile. "They would think that, those junkmen. Can't move a meter outside their own walls without an armor-plated machine as big as a barn. What did they tell ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... I, As Philomela (on a thorn, Turned out of nature's livery), Mirthless, alone, and all forlorn: Only she sings not, while my sorrows can Breathe forth such notes as ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... and sought him. Three of them overtook him within a rod of the station. The Kid turned and showed his teeth in that brilliant but mirthless smile that usually preceded his deeds of insolence and violence, and his pursuers fell back without making it necessary for him even to reach for ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... tensed. Brent had meant it as a rather mirthless joke. But Joe was astonished at what his own brain made of it. He thought it over. Then he said, "Why not? It ought to ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... a strained and mirthless laugh as she mentally recalled the words, "The woman gave me, and I ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi |
