"Ridicule" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... applied, he refused to pay his town tax, and was put in jail. A friend paid the tax for him, and he was released. The like annoyance was threatened the next year. But, as his friends paid the tax, notwithstanding his protest, I believe he ceased to resist. No opposition or ridicule had any weight with him. He coldly and fully stated his opinion without affecting to believe that it was the opinion of the company. It was of no consequence, if every one present held the opposite opinion. On one occasion he went to the University Library to procure some books. The librarian refused ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... unless you had seen her, you could not comprehend how I could have made such a confounded mistake. This lovely being is—is—is—don't prepare to laugh. I shall be tempted to knock you down if you do, for really my feelings are so much interested that I could not bear even a friend's ridicule." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... opening the window, now that she could; and advised Norman to go and spend an hour in the school, that he might learn how pleasant peat- smoke was—a speech Norman did not like at all. The real touchstone of temper is ridicule on a point where we do not choose to own ourselves fastidious, and if it and been from any one but his father, Norman would not have so entirely kept ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the door of their neighbor on the left. They constantly find these two doors, but not a vestige of their own: their door has disappeared—vanished! Who could have taken away their door? Terror seizes them; they ask each other if they have become demented; and dreading the ridicule which would be cast upon honest citizens who could not find their own street-door, they grope about for more than an hour, feeling, poking, inspecting, measuring; but alas! there is no door; there ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... not mimic or ridicule the cripple, the lame, or deformed, for thou shall be crippled thyself like unto them if them shouldst ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... avoided the subject from that hour. It was perhaps a pity. Had he but talked - talked freely - let himself gush out in words (the way youth loves to do and should), there might have been no tale to write upon the Weirs of Hermiston. But the shadow of a threat of ridicule sufficed; in the slight tartness of these words he read a prohibition; and it is likely that Glenalmond ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... light? Our scoffers forget that scientific investigation always requires a medium and method. The need of the telescope and the microscope is not questioned, but the thought of the planchette evokes ridicule. The practical success of wireless telegraphy depends on the use of an adequate medium for the transmission of electricity. The most meagre training suffices to prevent the declaration that if wireless ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... was no lover of dissimulation, began to laugh, and the countess, fearing he would cover her with ridicule, hastened to change the conversation. But when the marchioness was gone the countess gave reins to her passion, and scolded the marquis bitterly for having laughed. However, he only replied by remarks which, though exquisitely polite, had a sting in them; and at last the lady said she was tired, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... had denied his supremacy in the New World, as well as the Old; they had inflicted ignominious defeats on his squadrons; they had captured his cities, and burned his arsenals on the very coasts of Spain. The English had made Philip himself the object of personal insult. He was held up to ridicule in their stage plays and masks, and these scoffs at the man had (as is not unusual in such cases) excited the anger of the absolute king, even more vehemently than the injuries inflicted on his power. [See Ranke's ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... nature in this sense is justly regarded as a comparatively permanent element in society. Always and everywhere men seek honor and dread ridicule, defer to public opinion, cherish their goods and their children, and admire courage, generosity, and success. It is always safe to assume that people are and have ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... 'Beer!' said her father, and then stopped himself, as though he were lost in doubt whether it would best suit him to scorn his cousin for having so low a taste as that suggested on his behalf, or to ridicule his daughter's idea that the household difficulty admitted of so convenient ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... was Thursday, Logan had a difficult piece of diplomacy to execute. He called at the rooms of the clergyman, a bachelor and a curate, whose dog and person had suffered from the assaults of Miss Blowser's Siamese favourite. He expected difficulties, for a good deal of ridicule, including Merton's article, Christianos ad Leones, had been heaped on this martyr. Logan looked forward to finding him crusty, but, after seeming a little puzzled, the holy man exclaimed, 'Why, you must ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... every requisite apparatus, and a profound knowledge of chemistry—spent years of toil to accomplish. How much more latent talent may now be slumbering from the very same cause which kept Mr. Wattles from publicly revealing his discoveries, viz; want of encouragement—ridicule! ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... [14:28]For what man of you wishing to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the expense, whether he has the means to finish? [14:29]lest having laid its foundation, and not being able to finish, all who see ridicule him, [14:30]saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish. [14:31]Or what king going to engage in war with another king, does not first sit down and consult whether he is able with ten thousand ...
— The New Testament • Various
... favours of the young lady were offered upon credit; and on his declining the proposal, the old woman began to argue with him, and then to abuse him. As far as he could collect from her countenance and her actions, the design of her speech was both to ridicule and reproach him, for refusing to entertain so fine a young woman. Indeed the girl was by no means destitute of beauty; but Captain Cook found it more easy to withstand her allurements than the abuses of the ancient matron, and therefore ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... State, and even of the nation. Jokes and stories, often most uncouth and gross, whiled away the time. It was in these groceries, and in the rough crucible of such talk, wherein grotesque imagery and extravagant phrases were used to ridicule pretension and to bring every man to his place, sometimes also to escape taking a hard fact too hardly, that what we now call "American humor," with its peculiar native flavor, was born. To this it is matter of tradition that Lincoln contributed liberally. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... man in Cowfold, a half-drunken buffoon, whose wit, such as it was, was retailed all over the place; a man who was specially pleased if he could be present in any assembly collected for any serious purpose and turn it into ridicule. He got upon a chair, not far from where George sat, but refused to go upon the platform. "No, thank yer my friends, I'm best down here; up there's the place for the gentlefolk, the clever uns, them as buy grey mares!"—(roars ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... selfishly hard than a timorous man in a fright about his "little estate," as old Nelson used to call it in apologetic accents. A heart permeated by a particular sort of funk is proof against sense, feeling, and ridicule. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... During his confinement, he roared and blubbered frequently, particularly whenever he was sensible of any canoe approaching the ship. His countrymen, however, appeared to care little about him; on the contrary, they frequently mimicked his noises, as if in ridicule. His father, indeed, and one or two other relatives, took some interest in his fate, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... practice of gymnastic exercises, the wits of the time had it in their power to make sport of those novelties.... As for the man who laughs at the idea of undressed women going through gymnastic exercises, as a means of revealing what is most perfect, his ridicule is but 'unripe fruit plucked from the tree of wisdom.'" (Plato, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sixty years old at this time, and his hopes for the "new method" were still high. He had met opposition, ridicule and indifference, and had spent most of his little fortune in the fight, but he was still at it and resolved to die in ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... degrade her to the demi-monde. It was done promptly and ruthlessly; for the Baroness's gossip carried weight throughout the diplomatic, professional and missionary circles, even where her person was held in ridicule. The facts of Hoskin's suicide became known. Nice women dropped Yae entirely; and bad men ran after her with redoubled zest. Yae ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... quotation of his verses by Arabian scholars. Genial, cynical, immoral, he drew on all the varied life of his time for the material of his poems. In his wine-songs especially the manners of the upper classes of Bagdad are revealed. He was one of the first to ridicule the set form of the qasida (elegy) as unnatural, and has satirized this form in several poems. See I. Goldziher, Abhandlungen zur Arabischen Philologie (Leyden, 1896), i. pp. 145 ff. His poems were collected by several Arabian editors. One such collection (the MS. of which is now in Vienna) ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... operations generally mean carelessness in doing the work, especially in municipal service. Carelessness is engendered by the thought that such work can be handled in a rough and rapid way, and, further, by the ridicule of all these things, which we have learned to be careful about, as old-fogyish, out-of-fashion, and archaic. Carelessness in operation breeds contempt for the art. Some of the less efficient filter plants, from the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy
... over this blind confidence on my part, or you may cry over it. I don't pretend to know whether I am an object for ridicule or an object for pity. Of one thing only I am certain: I mean to win you back, a man vindicated before the world, without a stain on his character or ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... if you leave me alive, you shall repent the outrage you have offered to one of his Majesty's household!" Then, as if becoming sensible of the ridicule of affecting too much in his present situation, he added in an altered tone: "And now, for Heaven's sake, shut the door; and if you must kill somebody, there's my servant on the box,—he's paid ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... avail him nothing, for the Baptist was gone away with his disciple. Joseph, thinking that he had left the Baptist's disciple in the desert, began to argue that this could not be, and raved incontinently at the man, bringing others round him, till he was hemmed into a circle of ridicule. Among the multitude many were of the same faith as Joseph himself, and these drew him out of the circle and explained to him that the Baptist baptized in the river for several hours, till—unable to bear the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... girl," cried the scandalised Sir William, "have you no reverence at all? The pictures! You'd turn all my disinterested efforts to ridicule. You'd—oh, but there! You're not going to make ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... professions, but Domsie was catholic in his recognition of "pairts," and when the son of Hillocks' foreman made a collection of the insects of Drumtochty, there was a council at the manse. "Bumbee Willie," as he had been pleasantly called by his companions, was rescued from ridicule and encouraged to fulfil his bent. Once a year a long letter came to Mr. Patrick Jamieson, M.A., Schoolmaster, Drumtochty, N.B., and the address within was the British Museum. When Domsie read this letter to the school, he was always careful to explain ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... not so when embodied in an emperor. One thing which places William at a disadvantage is his excessive frankness, which is, in him, almost a fault, for if he couched his utterances in courtly or diplomatic phrases, they would pass unchallenged, instead of being cited to ridicule him. His mistakes have largely resulted from his impulsive nature coupled with chauvinism, which is, perhaps, justifiable, or, at least, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... It delivered him from all fear of his fellows. He had plenty of peculiarities. He was ugly, awkward; he lacked the wanton appetites of the average sensual man. And these peculiarities without his great strength as his warrant might have brought him into ridicule. As it was, whatever his peculiarities, in a society like that of Pigeon Creek, the man who could beat all competitors, wrestling or boxing, was free from molestation. But Lincoln instinctively had another aim in life than mere freedom to be himself. Two characteristics that were so significant in ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... parts of the country where the traditions of the "best parlor" are still kept? Does the early life in New York appear to you attractive or uninteresting? Does the description seem like ridicule? The descendants of the old Dutch families resented Irving's way of making fun of their ancestors. Point out passages which might justify this complaint. Compare this sketch with "A Pine Tree Shilling" in the style of writing, method ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... has been attributed to the scholars of Linus, who, according to Diogenes, was the son of Mercury and Urania; he was born at Thebes, and instructed Hercules in the art of music; who, in a fit of anger at the ridicule of Linus, on his awkwardness in holding the lyre, struck him on the head with his instrument, and killed him. The scholars of Linus lamented the death of their master, in a mournful kind of poem, called from him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... The natives behaved in a most friendly manner, and but for their habits of stealing, quiet would have been uninterrupted. Nothing, however, could check this propensity, till Captain Cook shaved the heads of all whom he caught practicing it. This rendered them an object of ridicule to their countrymen, and enabled the English to recognize and keep them at a distance. Most of the Friendly Isles were visited by the ships, and everywhere they met with a kind reception. On June 10 they reached Tongataboo, ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... another mood assume the outworn toggery of mediaeval absolutism. A democratic business monarch, and as such the advance agent of German prosperity, he yet shocks the common sense and awakens the ridicule of the world by posing as a combination of Caesar ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... satirise most of the eminent legal characters of the day, mimicking the voices and manner of the three justices—Crooke, Hoghton, and Doddridge—so admirably, that his hearers were wellnigh convulsed; and the three learned gentlemen, who sat near the King, though fully conscious of the ridicule applied to them, were obliged to laugh with the rest. But the unsparing satirist was not content with this, but went on, with most of the other attendants upon the King, and being intimately versed in court scandal, he directed his ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... phenomenon which we have to consider;—let us listen for a moment to the 'distinguished critics' who have denounced or defended the comedy of the time. Macaulay gives as a test of the morality of the Restoration stage that on it, for the first time, marriage becomes the topic of ridicule. We are supposed to sympathise with the adulterer, not with the deceived husband—a fault, he says, which stains no play written before the Civil War. Addison had already suggested this test in the Spectator, and proceeds to ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... winter days. Unluckily, in the exertions necessary to remove these inconveniences, the main attention has been diverted to this object; the old aims have been lost sight of, and to remove friction has come to be the end. That is the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the governments generally of the world, are cities and governments of the rich, and the masses are not men, but poor men, that is, men who would be rich; this is the ridicule of the class, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in vice are oftener prompted, no doubt, by the desire for the complacent regard of one's companions than by an antecedent disposition to evil. Indeed, the confession is often made, that these steps were taken with compunction and horror, solely from the fear of ridicule and from the desire to win the approval and favor of ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... is the fact that wine is flowing freely and that all are partaking of it. She feels that she can never consent to drink. It is something she has never done in her life. Yet she dares not refuse, for all the others are drinking, and she knows that to refuse would bring upon herself the ridicule of all ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... was rubbed on the blue lips of the infant, and Maggie even managed to get her to swallow a few drops. Then, the bath being prepared by Flower, under a shower of scathing ridicule from Maggie, who had very small respect, in any sense of the word, for her assistant, the baby was put into it, thoroughly warmed, rubbed up, and comforted, and then, with the white fleecy shawl wrapped well around her, she fell asleep ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... is a development rather than a contradiction of revelation, viz. of such texts as speak of Satan being cast out by prayer and fasting. To be shocked, then, at the miracles of Ecclesiastical history, or to ridicule them for their strangeness, is no part of a ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... acquire a knowledge of their traditionary lore, and it is from this period that he seems to have laboured to a more useful purpose than that of making "velvet purses of sows' ears, and twisting ropes of sand." The shafts of ridicule may with propriety be levelled at all attempts to ascertain the origin of the American Indians, but their Traditions are their history and learning, and therefore entitled to respectful consideration. He dispatched messengers to all the tribes ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... reflect that neither of these recommendations received an encouraging response from Congress. The latter suggestion, indeed, excited the ridicule of many of the opposers of Mr. Adams, and "a light-house in the skies," became a term of reproach in their midst. In this, however, it must be confessed, their ridicule was greatly at the expense of their intelligence, their public spirit, and their devotion to the highest interests ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... his great mortification, he saw nothing, heard nothing, experienced nothing but in the company of others. He must brave the ridicule of the profane to taste the raptures which his soul loved. His simple, trusting faith made him inevitably the butt of the mischievous circle. They were not slow in discovering his extreme sensibility to external influences. One ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... unworthy means we have employed. During her progress up-stairs to the dressing-room, and brief stay there, Cornelia had ample leisure to review her thoughts and deeds during the latter months of her life. What a waste of time, opportunity, and emotion! It was a tragedy of ridicule and a farce of ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... priests that the growth of the higher faith of Greece was to proceed, but from the philosophers. While much of the teaching of the philosophers was apparently negative and destructive of faith,—for Greece had her religious sceptics who turned the shafts of ridicule on existing beliefs, her Agnostics who considered that nothing certain could be affirmed about the gods, and even her secularists who held religion to be a mere invention of priests and rulers for their own purposes,—the course of Greek ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... now are imbued with this desire only in the abstract, you are certainly well fit to be a trustworthy friend in (Fairyland) inner apartments, but, on the path of the mortal world, you will inevitably be misconstrued and defamed; every mouth will ridicule you; every eye will look down upon you with contempt. After meeting recently your worthy ancestors, the two Dukes of Ning and Jung, who opened their hearts and made their wishes known to me with such fervour, (but I will not have you solely on account of the splendour of our inner apartments ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... denial of Christ in his person. They also deny him in his offices; for to deny and ridicule what he came to do, is one of the most effectual ways of denying him. The great work of Christ was the shedding of his blood to atone for the sins of the world; and the spirits are particularly bitter in denouncing that idea. If ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... told. Dodge and Bayliss were not mentioned by name, but described only as a pair of amateur jokers whose plans had miscarried. Yet the plain, unvarnished story cast complete ridicule over Bert and ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... living in our country are peaceful and quiet. They work very hard in their laundries and other places of business; yet there are many white people so cruel and thoughtless as to ridicule a Chinaman whenever they see one. These white people should remember that God made the Chinaman and that he is a stranger here in our country. Is it not even worse to ill-treat a stranger than one who is at home? The color of our skin and ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... impulse passed. Then other considerations counselled silence; and afterwards a humour possessed him to wait and see how Christian would find opportunity to proclaim his performance and establish the fact, without exciting ridicule on account of the absurdity of ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... young man with a countenance so solemn that I felt sure he had made up his mind to "be good," and get the full benefit of the services. His black cheeks seemed to glisten with earnestness; his thick lips pouted with devotional good-will. I do not write in ridicule, but merely endeavour to convey my full meaning. He wore a superfine black dress coat, a gaudy vest, and buff corduroy trousers so short that they displayed to advantage his enormous bare feet. Beside him was an elderly man with tweed trousers, a white ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... longer?" she said to herself. "Oh, I think—I think I love her still. But she has slighted me. She will be sorry some day. Oh, dear! The only girl in the whole of England that I love has slighted me. She has thrown ridicule upon me. She said that she would be my Prime Minister, and she has resigned everything for that horrible Cassandra. She will be sorry yet; I ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... pitch of splendid Vice; To make pale Vice, abash'd, her head hang down, And, trembling, crouch at Virtue's awful frown. Now arm'd with wrath, she bids eternal shame, 320 With strictest justice, brand the villain's name; Now in the milder garb of ridicule She sports, and pleases while she wounds the fool. Her shape is often varied; but her aim, To prop the cause of Virtue, still the same. In praise of Mercy let the guilty bawl; When Vice and Folly ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... forward and presently find themselves at Mr. Browne's elbow; he is, however, so far lost in his kindly ridicule of the poor silly revolving atoms before him, that it is not until Miss Kavanagh gives his arm a highly suggestive pinch that he learns that she ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... was going around at his expense, or of the scornful looks directed to him from the eyes of many who until that day had called themselves his friends. He had neither eyes, ears, nor understanding, for any creature but the one who had braved the ridicule of the court, and the displeasure of its sovereign, to show her sympathy with a man in adversity. He must—he WOULD see her again! He must thank her for her magnanimity, let the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... translated into English.[1] Our author greatly lamented the consequences of the altercation between Fenelon and Bossuet. He thought the condemnation which had been passed {035} on it on the abuses of devotion, had brought devotion itself into discredit, and thrown a ridicule on the holiness of an interior life. Of Fenelon he always spoke with the highest respect. One of the editors of the last edition of his works is now in England: he has declared that it appeared from Fenelon's papers, that his exertions, to the very last, to ward off the sentence of the condemnation ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... next evening to find himself famous. The evening papers, one of which he had purchased en route, were one and all discussing his new charitable schemes. He found himself held up at once to ridicule and contempt—praised and blamed almost in the same breath. The Daily Gazette, in an article entitled "The New Utopia," dubbed him the "Don Quixote of philanthropy" the St. James's made other remarks scarcely so flattering. ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was distraction. She plucked out handfuls of her pale gold hair, the pretty blonde hair which had been almost as famous in Paris as Beaufort's or Madame de Longueville's yellow locks. The thought of De Malfort's ridicule cut her like a whalebone whip. She had fancied herself his Beatrice, his Laura, his Stella—a being to be worshipped as reverently as the stars, to make her lover happy with smiles and kindly words, to stand for ever a little way off, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... something particularly alarming in the present conjuncture. There is hardly a man, in or out of power, who holds any other language. That Government is at once dreaded and contemned; that the laws are despoiled of all their respected and salutary terrors; that their inaction is a subject of ridicule, and their exertion of abhorrence; that rank, and office, and title, and all the solemn plausibilities of the world, have lost their reverence and effect; that our foreign politics are as much deranged as our domestic economy; ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... organisms is no explanation, but is a reproduction of the absurdity, l'opium endormit parcequ'il a une vertu soporifique. It is contended, however, that this objection does not apply, even if it be conceded that there is that force in Moliere's ridicule which is generally attributed to it.[231] Much, however, might be said in opposition to more than one of that brilliant dramatist's smart philosophical epigrams, just as to the theological ones of Voltaire, or to the biological one of that other Frenchman who for a time discredited a ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... because I did not easily catch the spirit of the place. For when you merely observe and admire some view, and if industrious make a note of your impression, and then go home to luncheon, you are but a vulgar tripper, scum of the earth, deserving the ridicule with which the natives treat you. The romantic spirit is your only justification; when by the comeliness of your life or the beauty of your emotion you have attained that, (Shelley when he visited Paestum had it, but Theophile Gautier, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... down of the form," we cannot know. Mr. Arbry was probably William Erbury, vicar of St. Mary's, Cardiff, a noted schismatic. He is said to have been a "holy, harmless man," but incurred both the hate and ridicule of his opponents. Many of his tracts are still extant, and they contain extravagant prophecies couched in the peculiar phraseology ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... way for us as we passed and hooted in our rear. I felt the ridicule of my situation, but had too much gallantry to desert this fair one, who had sacrificed everything for me. Having wandered through the fair, we emerged, like another Adam and Eve, into unknown regions, and "had the world before us where to choose." Never was a more disconsolate ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... crossly, to dine at his college's local club. Here he found an old friend, who most fortunately said something derogatory of the firm of Benson & Honaton. The opinion coincided with certain phases of Wayne's own views, but he contradicted it, held it up to ridicule, and ended by quoting incidents in the history of his friend's own firm which, as he said, were probably among the crookedest things that had ever been put over in Wall Street. Lily would not have distracted his mind more completely. He felt almost cheerful ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... truths. And the way in which phenomena are spoken of in the Old Testament is never really incompatible with the facts as we know them nowadays. Take the miracle of the sun standing still, which is supposed to be a safe subject of ridicule. Why, it merely means that light was miraculously prolonged; the words used are those which common people would at ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... came. It was only the new boys who went as far as victory. He asked permission of the general to withdraw nineteen of them from the line to instruct them for Communion. They were among the best soldiers, and not afraid of the ridicule of their fellows because of their religious zeal. The chaplain's main purpose was to save their lives, for a while, and give them a good time and spiritual comfort. They had their good time. Three weeks later came the German attack on Arras and they were all killed. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... reply again; that is to say, he did not publish his reply. It was a capable bomb which he prepared, well furnished with amusing instance, sarcasm, and ridicule, but he did not use it. Perhaps he was afraid it would destroy his opponent, which would not do. In his heart he loved Matthews. He laid the deadly thing away and maintained ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... displayed a cruel irony. It was a cowardly thing to ridicule this man who had responded to the call of duty. He recognized his vileness, but a malign and irresistible instinct made him keep on with his sneers in order to discredit the man before Marguerite. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Writer, "I should say he was invulnerable upon those two points. However, two things he dreads more than anything else. He has a horror of ridicule when it is turned upon himself, and an unutterable and most ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... sense, of course. Perhaps I am absurdly inconsistent when—though knowing my work can't be first rate—I strive to make it as good as possible. I don't say this in irony, Amy; I really mean it. It may very well be that I am just as foolish as the people I ridicule for moral and religious superstition. This habit of mine is superstitious. How well I can imagine the answer of some popular novelist if he heard me speak scornfully of his books. "My dear fellow," he might say, "do you suppose I am not aware that my books are rubbish? ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... but abroad, where public opinion, imperfectly instructed, may imagine it represents a serious national feeling. The continuance of it is an intolerable negation of civilisation; it is supported by no public men of credit; it has been disproved again and again. Ridicule may be left to give the menace the coup de grace! And this," he laughed, "in face of what you and I know, eh? Ah! how long will the British public be lulled to sleep by ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... 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' ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... moon-track. Afternoon slipped into night and night to morning, and each hour of daylight presented some new panorama of forests and hills and torrents. Here the river widened into a lake. There the lake narrowed to rapids; and so we came to Lachine—La Chine, named in ridicule of the gallant explorer, La Salle, who thought these vast waterways would surely lead him ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... these trials, search your memories and recall that ridiculous yet delightful moment, that moment of mingled anguish and joy, when it becomes necessary, without any preliminary rehearsal, to play the most difficult of parts, and to avoid the ridicule which is grinning at you from the folds of the curtains; to be at one and the same time a diplomatist, a barrister, and a man of action, and by skill, tact, and eloquence render the sternest of realities acceptable without banishing the most ideal ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... compensation with women of easy virtue for the worship to which he surrendered himself in the salons, or, if you like, the boudoirs, of the faubourg Saint-Germain. Such habits and his puny figure, his suffering face with its blue eyes turning upward in ecstasy, increased the ridicule already bestowed upon him,—very unjustly bestowed, as it happened, for he was full of wit and delicacy; but his wit, which never sparkled, only showed itself when he felt at ease. Fanny Beaupre, an actress who was supposed to be ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... grand-children of Aaron Rockharrt, left him by his deceased only daughter. Sylvanus, a fine, manly young fellow, resembled his Uncle Clarence in person and in character, having the same truthfulness, generosity and sincerity, but with a mocking spirit, which turned evil into ridicule rather than into a subject of serious rebuke. He was three years younger than his sister. Corona was a beautiful brunette, tall, like all the Rockharrts, with a superbly developed form, a fine head, adorned with a full suit of fine curly black ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... and their success in this wide-spread conflict helped forward their cause. Ulrich von Hutten, one of the young knights who belonged to the literary school, and others of the same class, made effective use, against their illiterate antagonists, of the weapons of satire and ridicule. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... in making others look upon me as a freak. Dennison told me that I had a bee in my bonnet. If he had said that I was mad I should not have minded, but those horrid little expressions of his always tried me very much, and I am bound to confess that my first efforts to rouse the college met with more ridicule than success. Very few men seemed to care what happened to us, and nearly everybody pretended that our eight would rise again, and our footer teams cease to be laughed at, though no one tried to make them any better. Dennison wrote a skit called "The Decline ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... There can be no doubt but that I was somewhat vulgar in my manners, and my carriage was certainly quite unlike that of my companions. Some of them even jeered me, but I regarded them not. A real grief is armour-proof against ridicule. In a short time, it being six o'clock, the supper was served out, consisting of a round of bread, all the moisture of which had been allowed to evaporate, and an oblong, diaphanous, yellow substance, one inch and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... hidden wealth? Clifford have it in his power to make you rich?" cried the old gentlewoman, affected with a sense of something like ridicule at the idea. "Impossible! You deceive yourself! It is really a thing to ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... these combats of scholars, if not true cock-fights, which cover us with ridicule in the eyes of laymen? A cock draws himself up against another and bristles his feathers. . . . It is the same to-day with our professors. Cocks fight with blows from their beaks and claws; "Self-love," as some one has said, "is armed with a ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... works were published in the same external shape. Unluckily, Johnson gave too much excuse for the comparison by really imitating Addison. He has to make allegories, and to give lively sketches of feminine peculiarities, and to ridicule social foibles of which he was, at most, a distant observer. The inevitable consequence is, that though here and there we catch a glimpse of the genuine man, we are, generally, too much provoked by ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... of delicacy, the bloom of virtue, is not peculiar to the females, it is characteristic of all the varieties of the metropolitan mind. The artifices of the medical quacks are things of universal ridicule; but the sin, though in a less gross form, pervades the whole of that sinister system by which much of the superiority of this vast metropolis is supported. The state of the periodical press, that great organ of political instruction—the ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... she herself will have to bear a great strain on her self-command, both in her feelings as a queen and her feelings as a lover. Her grand rebukes to both, her ill-concealed preference for Leicester, her whispered ridicule of Sussex, the impulses of tenderness which she stifles, the flashes of resentment to which she gives way, the triumph of policy over private feeling, her imperious impatience when she is baffled, her jealousy as she grows suspicious of a ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... his lips with bitter rage, while, amid the sneers and laughter of the Convention, the officers brought to the bar the foolish creatures who had called him the Son of God. His thin pride and prudish self-respect were unutterably affronted, and he quite understood that the ridicule of the mysticism of Theot was an indirect pleasantry upon his own Supreme Being. He flew to the Committee of Public Safety, angrily reproached them for permitting the prosecution, summoned Fouquier-Tinville, and peremptorily ordered him to let the matter drop. In vain did the public prosecutor point ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... efficiency of his force depends far more upon the moral agencies brought to bear than upon any system of rewards and punishments human ingenuity can devise; for Chinamen, like other mortals, love to have their prejudices respected, and fear of shame and dread of ridicule are as deeply ingrained in their natures as in those of any nation under the sun. They have a horror of blows, not so much from the pain inflicted, as from the sense of injury done to something more elevated than their ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... of a large clock sets me off into musings on the flight of Time; a steamer on the Thames or lines of telegraph inevitably suggest the benefits of Civilization, man's triumph over Nature, the heroism of Inventors, the courage, amid ridicule and poverty, of Stephenson and Watt. Like faint, rather unpleasant smells, these thoughts lurk about railway stations. I can hardly post a letter without marvelling at the excellence and ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... tendency of the drama was an active one in Shakespeare's time. There was a good deal of democratic feeling in the burghers of London-town, and they resented the courtly prejudices of their playwrights and their habit of holding up plain citizens to ridicule upon the stage, whenever they deigned to present them at all. The Prolog in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle" gives sufficient evidence of this. The authors adopted the device of having a Citizen ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... ribs beating for Shagpat. And there appeared among the beasts a monkey all ajoint with tricks, jerking with malice, he looking as 'twere hungry for the doing of things detestable; and the lion scorned him, and I marked him ridicule the lion: 'twas so. And the lion began to scowl, and the other beasts marked the displeasure of the lion. Then chased they that monkey from the presence, and for awhile he was absent, and the lion sat in his place gravely, with calm, receiving homage of the other beasts; and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... many—you can count their names on your fingers! And the wide popularity they have won may be due as much to their scarcity as to the interest we all take in having the mirror held up to ourselves—to the malicious pleasure we all feel at seeing our neighbours held up to gentle ridicule or well-merited reproof; most of all, perhaps, to the realistic charm that lies in all true representation of the social aspects with which we are most familiar, ugly as these are often apt to be, with our chimney-pot hats, and trousers that unfit us, it seems, for serious and elaborate pictorial ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... "You will merely bring ridicule upon yourself," he said, "if you assert that the man you wish to protect is Amos Kilbright. We can prove by records, still to be seen in Bixbury, that said person died in seventeen eighty-five. On the other hand, if you choose to assert ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... left her mouth, she already regretted them, for his refusal now would have been doubly humiliating for herself, and her good sense had told her already that no patrician—least of all Taurus Antinor—would submit quietly to public insult and ridicule even from her. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... that does the mischief. A stranger on the planet might expect that its grotesque absurdity would provoke enough ridicule to cure it; but unfortunately quite the contrary happens. Just as our ill health delivers us into the hands of medical quacks and creates a passionate demand for impudent pretences that doctors can cure the diseases they themselves die ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... of Lady Isabel fell timidly and a blush rose to her cheeks. She did not like to appear to differ from Mrs. Vane, her senior, and her father's guest, but her mind revolted at the bare idea of ingratitude or ridicule cast ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... boldness. He looked mildly into them while she called him a wretch, a traitor, and a murderer many times in succession. This did not annoy him so much as the conviction that she had managed to scratch his face abundantly. Ridicule would be added to the scandal of the story. He imagined the adorned tale making its way through the garrison of the town, through the whole army on the frontier, with every possible distortion of motive and sentiment and circumstance, spreading a doubt upon the sanity of his conduct and the distinction ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... other man, with moral enthusiasm and with intellectual grasp, has held in the modern world the same rank which was accorded to him in the old; but he cannot enjoy the same appreciation. Macaulay's ridicule has rescued from oblivion the criticism which pronounced the eloquence of Chatham to be more ornate than that of Demosthenes, and less diffuse than that of Cicero. Did the critic, asks Macaulay, ever hear any speaking that was less ornamented than that of Demosthenes, or more diffuse than that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... plaintiff had a perfectly good case and that his only object in fighting the claim was to see how near Silas could come to telling the truth under oath. Mr. Kenwright was demanding twenty-five dollars damages for slander. In the complaint Mr. Billings was charged with having held Mr. Kenwright up to ridicule and contumely by asseverating that said plaintiff was "a knock-kneed, cross-eyed, ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... such a manner but that the blame of the kiss should rest with him. When he should desire to be "off," he could not plead that the kissing had been all her doing. A man in Mr. Prosper's position has difficulties among which he must be very wary. And then the ridicule of the world is so strong a weapon, and is always used on the side of the women! He gave a little start, but he did not at once shake her off. "What's the objection to ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... himself the master of savage tribes; he had conquered the supernatural, and overcome for ever those powers of darkness that had been thought to brood over the vast Atlantic. He had sailed away in obscurity, he had returned in fame; he had departed under a cloud of scepticism and ridicule, he had come again in power and glory. He had sailed from Palos as a seeker after hidden wealth, hidden knowledge; he returned as teacher, discoverer, benefactor. The whole of Spain rang with his fame, and the echoes of it spread to Portugal, France, England, Germany, and Italy; and it reached the ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... said I; "O yes; but he was a great poet. Ah, he has written some wonderful englynion on ale; but you will please to bear in mind that all his englynion are upon bad ale, and it is easier to turn to ridicule what is bad, than to do anything like justice to ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... likewise chiefs of the fraternities; all these making up a council which rules the pueblo, the crier publishing its decisions. Laws are traditional and unwritten. Hough[5] says infractions are so few that it would be hard to say what the penalties are, probably ridicule and ostracism. Theft is almost unheard of, and the taking of life by ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... the idea of going around the world in ten days was as preposterous as that projected by Jules Verne in 1873 when he wrote Around the World in Eighty Days. But time has a way of hurling ridicule back as effectively as a boomerang. For we have seen and marvelled at the shattering not only of the mythical eighty-day record but even the ten-day record, as progress wends its ceaseless, ambitious, difficult and almost fantastic ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... enthusiasts assume a more imposing aspect. St Simon sacrificing his fortune, abjuring the patronage of the court, dying in extreme poverty—Charles Fourier refusing all entrance into commerce that would implicate him with a vicious system, and pursuing to the end, amidst want and ridicule, the labours of social regeneration—our own Robert Owen quitting ease and fortune, and crossing the Atlantic for the New World, there to try, upon a virgin soil, his bold experiment of a new society;—these men rise before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... as left little more even to be surmised. His brief and prosaic history of the affair concluded with the following implied tribute to his companion, which still further relieved her from fear of ridicule: ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... frequently afterwards. They also took hogs and cows belonging to the fort, and several times sold some of them for the purpose, as they said, of repairing the damage. Against all these acts, and each one in particular, protests were repeatedly made, but they were met with ridicule. Several sharp letters about this were written in Latin to their governors; of which letters and protests, minutes or copies remain with the Company's officers, from which a much fuller account of these transactions ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... said, with his humorous air of resignation. "I tell my wife that I'm beginning to understand how old Christian felt going through Vanity Fair. We ought to be pretty near the Heavenly Gates by this time. I reckoned she thought they opened into Newport. She said I ought to be ashamed to ridicule the Bible. I had to have my joke. It's queer how different the world looks ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... off. Unluckily for the gravity of the officers, however, and that of the crew, Jacko did not run below, or jump into one of the boats out of sight, but made straight for his dear friends the marines, drawn up in line across our little hurricane-house of a poop. Unconscious of the ridicule he was bringing on his military patrons, he took up a position in front of the corps, not unlike a fugleman; and I need hardly say, that even the royals themselves, provoked though they were, now joined in the laugh which soon passed ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... execute this design is a real loss to mankind; for he was too well acquainted with all the scenes of debauchery to have failed in his representations of them, and too zealous for virtue not to have represented them in such a manner as should expose them either to ridicule or detestation. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... in a trap, escaped with the loss of his "brush." Henceforth, feeling his life a burden from the shame and ridicule to which he was exposed, he schemed to bring all the other Foxes into a like condition with himself. He publicly advised them to cut off their tails, saying "that they would not only look much better without them, but that they would get rid of the weight of the brush." One of them said: "If ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... and what a chariot! The Alexandrian populace were accustomed to see much that was strange in the busy streets of their crowded city; but this vehicle attracted every eye, and excited astonishment, admiration and mirth, wherever it appeared, and not unfrequently the bitterest ridicule. The handsome Roman stood in the middle of his gilt chariot, and himself drove the four white horses, harnessed abreast; on his head he wore a wreath, and across his breast, from one shoulder, a garland of roses. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... invented, not by governors, but by the lowest of the people, which are found sufficient to hold mankind together in little fraternities and copartnerships: weak ties indeed, and what may afford fund enough for ridicule, if they are absurdly considered as the real principles of that union: but they are in truth merely the occasions, as anything may be of anything, upon which our nature carries us on according to its own previous bent and bias; which occasions therefore would be nothing at all were there ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... end to the other of its history, from the first biblical narration to the latest papal bulls, with unflagging animosity and energy, as critic, as historian, as geographer, as logician, as moralist, questioning its sources, opposing evidences, driving ridicule like a pick-ax into every weak spot where an outraged instinct beats against its mystic walls, and into all doubtful places where ulterior patchwork disfigures the primitive structure.—He respects, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... announced to come, in which the wicked are to be punished according to their deserts, and the righteous to be duly rewarded? And yet the Mystery of the resurrection, not being understood, is made a subject of ridicule among unbelievers. In these circumstances, to speak of the Christian doctrine as a secret system, is altogether absurd. But that there should be certain doctrines, not made known to the multitude, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... Perhaps the most important is the connection it will have in the future with what is called the Negro Problem in our own country. There have been and are thoughtful men who see in colonization the only solution of its difficulties. Others ridicule the very suggestion. It is a question into which we do not propose to go. But there is scarcely any doubt that when the development of Liberia is a little more advanced, and when communication with her ports becomes less difficult, and when the population of the United States grows more ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... thought of Dietz before he came to Texas; it would have made things much easier. But the offer had come too late, it seemed to him; at this moment he could see no means of profiting by it without wrecking the flimsy house of cards he had that very day erected and exposing himself to ridicule, to obloquy as a rank four-flusher. The scarcely dry headlines of that afternoon paper ran before his eyes—"Famous Financier Admits Large Oil Interests Behind Him." Probably there were other things in the body of the article that would not harmonize with an ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... every one leave to purchase what curiosities and other things they pleased. After this, it was astonishing to see with what eagerness every one caught at every thing he saw. It even went so far as to become the ridicule of the natives, who offered pieces of sticks and stones to exchange. One waggish boy took a piece of human excrement on the end of a stick, and held it out to every one ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... than the rending of the Church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with the Defence of Unlicensed Printing before him? Who scoff at Quakerism over the Journal of George Fox? Who shall join with debauched lordlings and fat-witted prelates in ridicule of Anabaptist levellers and dippers, after rising from the perusal of Pilgrim's Progress? "There were giants in those days." And foremost amidst that band of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... my manhood, beaten like a thief and yet maintained myself honest, scorned by men and women and yet been ready to serve my fellows, held atheist by the godly and yet clung to my Saviour's cross. In situations calculated to excite the contemptuous ridicule of the meanest upon earth I have been satisfied that I was neither contemptible nor reasonably ridiculous, and that while I might herd with ruffians, and find in their society my most comfortable conversation, I was the richer, partly ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... catamite, if you are a man!" {This disturbed my mind but} what exercised me most was the fear that Eumolpus would find out what was going on and, being a very sarcastic individual, might revenge my supposed injury in some poetic lampoon, (in which event his ardent zeal would without doubt expose me to ridicule, and I greatly dreaded that. But while I was debating with myself as to the best means of preventing him from getting at the facts, who should suddenly come in but the man himself; and he was not uninformed as to what had taken place, for Tryphaena had related ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... something more than coldness by certain sections of the community. Men of wit, taste, and discrimination among the aristocracy gave it a hearty welcome, but the aristocracy in general were not likely to relish a book that turned their favourite reading into ridicule and laughed at so many of their favourite ideas. The dramatists who gathered round Lope as their leader regarded Cervantes as their common enemy, and it is plain that he was equally obnoxious to the other clique, the culto poets who had Gongora for their chief. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of the performance, tho' frequently applauded during it. The actor who did the part of Orosmane, in that scene wherein he discovers he has killed Zaire unjustly, gave a groan which had an unhappy effect; it was such an awkward one, that it made all the audience laugh; no people catch ridicule so soon ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... and fond of reading the Bible critically. He was proof against laughter and ridicule, and was wont sometimes to urge the men into discussions. One of his favourite ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... wrote, which crost their Views, or even disagreed with their Opinions or Desires. I saw few either willing to appear Medlers or Busy-Bodies this Way; or visibly to hurt their worldly Interests, or to seem fond of either Ridicule or Reputation by bustling about it; and, as I was quite indifferent to those Fears, I hop'd what I did, and the Motives I went on, might be pardonable if not approveable; and whatever was the Event, I as ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... rightfully entitled. When you see your customers passing your front door to try a new shop farther up the street, you want to sit down and consider what's the matter, and devise means of regaining your lost ground. It doesn't pay merely to ridicule the new man or cry that his goods are inferior. Yours have got to be superior—or"—and the gray eyes twinkled for the first time—"they must be dressed up to look better in your ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... a year in prison. He drove away from the jail in a cab with Doctor Waram, and when the crowd saw that he was wearing the old symbol—a yellow chrysanthemum—a hiss went up that was like a geyser of contempt and ridicule. Grimshaw's pallid face flushed. But he lifted his hat and smiled into the host of faces as ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... enjoy my new thoughts in silence as Clara did, and gave vent to my theme in the strongest terms. Hal did not ridicule me at all: he was too sensible for this, but he smiled at my ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life. I have endured a great deal of ridicule, without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... that Columbus were to sail down the under side of it, he would never be able to climb back again. But the Genoese was a man who became more firmly wedded to his opinion in proportion as it met with ridicule and opposition; proofs he had none of the truth of his pet idea; but he clung to it with a doggedness which must greatly have exasperated his interlocutors. By dint of sheer persistence, he almost persuaded some men that there might be something in his project; but he never brought ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... love of truth could have hindered me from concealing this part of my story. It was in vain to discover my resentments, which were always turned into ridicule; and I was forced to rest with patience, while my noble and beloved country was so injuriously treated. I am as heartily sorry as any of my readers can possibly be, that such an occasion was given: but ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... all hearts, or poetry, pulsating in lofty words, brightened faces with enthusiasm, Maryan and the baron laughed inattentively and with contempt; when stupidity, selfishness, or wit called out laughter, or ridicule, they were immovable in cold importance, puffed up and insolent; when the curtain came down at the end, and a deafening, prolonged thunder of applause was heard, their hands rested ostentatiously on the edge of the box. This opposition to the impressions and opinions of ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... for the social welfare of community that all its actions should not be sublime. Mankind would become too serious and morose and cynical, and life would be a burden. The ridiculous makes it enjoyable, but at the expense of those who cause the ridicule. Man must laugh, no matter what the cost to the object ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... Posthumius. The Saturnalia were originally celebrated only for one day, but afterwards the solemnity continued for three, four, five, and at last for seven days. The celebration was remarkable for the license which universally prevailed. The slaves were permitted to ridicule their masters, and to speak with freedom upon any subject. It was usual for friends to make presents one to another; all animosity ceased; no criminals were executed; schools were shut; war was never declared, but all was mirth, riot, and debauchery. In the sacrifices the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... the scene closed with their affectionately hugging one another. But I fear the poor monkey will die. In a future state of being, I think it will be one of my inquiries, in reference to the mysteries of the present state, why monkeys were made. The Creator could not surely have meant to ridicule his own work. It might rather be fancied that Satan had perpetrated monkeys, with a malicious purpose of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a young girl. Great heavens! how is it possible that a few innocent pleasantries should be so frightfully misunderstood? Ive tried all my life to be sincere and simple, to be unassuming and kindly. Ive lived a blameless life. Ive supported the Censorship in the face of ridicule and insult. And now I'm told that I'm a centre of Immoralism! of Modern Minxism! a trifler with the most sacred subjects! a ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... which develop the child's sympathies by teaching consideration for the feelings of others, kindness to animals and to all weak and dependent creatures. Lack of reverence is common in the youth of today and books and papers which ridicule old age, filial duty and other things which ought to be respected are all too common. Few have added more to the happiness of mankind than he who has written a classic for children. It takes very unusual qualities to write for them. Sympathy with the child: ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... to going to school with about equal measures of delight and dread; my pride and ambition longed for this first step in life, but Rupert had filled me with a wholesome awe of its stringent etiquette, its withering ridicule, and unsparing severities. However, in his anxiety to make me modest and circumspect, I think he rather over-painted the picture, and when I got through the first day without being bullied, and made such creditable friends on the second, I began to think that Rupert's experience of school ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... their own. They are extremely exclusive, and rarely associate with any but those who can "show as pure a pedigree." Their disdain of those whose families are not as "old" as their own is oftentimes amusing, and subjects them to ridicule, which they bear with true Dutch stolidity. They improve in their peculiar qualities with each generation, and the present pompous Knickerbocker who drives in the Park in solemn state in his heavy chariot, and looks down with disdain upon all whose blood is not as Dutch as his own, is a ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... stupidly (latter is lit. equivalent to Yiddish 'schmuck')] The sound a {newbie} makes as he falls to the bottom of a {kill file}. While it originated in the {newsgroup} talk.bizarre, this term (usually written "*plonk*") is now (1994) widespread on Usenet as a form of public ridicule. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... assembly house. The other people thought he was foolish, and he was despised and ill-treated by everyone. After the shamans had tried very hard to bring back the sun and moon and had failed, the boy began to ridicule them. ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... ill-chosen time for jesting, Kate," said my aunt with a frown. "I cannot congratulate you on your good taste in turning so important a subject into ridicule. Mr. Haycock has proposed to you; you have accepted him. Whilst poor Deborah is so ill I am your natural guardian, and he has with great propriety requested my consent; although, in the agitation very natural to a man so circumstanced," added my aunt, smothering ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... a state of nudity, her physical attributes and her passion all being displayed as though she were some animal for sale at a fair. By their filthy thoughts she was touched and polluted and held up to ridicule. Their love of woman knew no gratitude for the enjoyment given to them; they merely strove to humiliate and insult the sex, to inflict ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... was famous in the theatres—protuberant before, hunched up between his shoulders behind, and set upon little writhen fleshless legs like wooden spigots. In manner he was excessively punctilious, grave, collected, oracularly sententious. I know that he was exquisitely sensitive to ridicule and remorseless in punishing it. It was not hard to understand— the moment I set eyes upon this poor monster—that, with the young and beautiful Belviso masquerading as a woman by his side, trouble must succeed trouble without end. On the other hand, I could ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... expelled the salle a manger in disgrace, and for days kept out of the master's and mistress' way: in the meantime the butler made a good story of the thing in the servants' hall; and, when he held up Andy's ignorance to ridicule, by telling how he asked for "soap and water," Andy was given the name of "Suds," and was called by no other for ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... State, beyond that which he received as a member of the Convention, and which was hardly sufficient for the wants of his simple existence, he worked nearly night and day in the service of the State. Constancy of purpose—from the commencement of his career, in opposition at first to ridicule and obscurity, then to public opinion, and lastly to the combined efforts of the greatest of his countrymen, he pursued one only idea; convinced of its truth, sure of its progress, and longing for its success. ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... suffering brethren and sisters. I had relations among the field hands, and used to call them my cousins. He forbid my doing so; and told me if I acknowledged relationship with any of the hands I should be flogged for it. He used to speak of them as devils and hell-hounds, and ridicule them in every possible way; and endeavoured to make me speak of them and regard them in the same manner. He would tell long stories about hunting and shooting "runaway niggers," and detail with great apparent satisfaction the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... taking the gaskets from the yard, with the intention of bringing them carefully down on deck, where it struck me they would be quite safe. Luckily for us, the men were too busy heaving, and too stupid, to be very critical, and we escaped much ridicule. In a week we both ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of his life was that which he had passed in cantonments and camps. Another cause of offence may have been derived from his proclamations, which were offensive to good taste, and which justly exposed him to ridicule. His behaviour towards the directors also was by no means judicious; for, although he had bound himself to attend exclusively to their orders, he was by no means an obedient servant. But whatever may have been the directors' motives, Lord Ellenborough was recalled from his government, and Sir Henry ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... peaceful present such as is sometimes given away with a pound of tea, Ireland would have accepted the gift with shamefacedness, and have felt that her centuries of revolt had ended in something very like ridicule. The blood of brave men had to sanctify such a consummation if the national imagination was to be stirred to the dreadful business which is the organizing of freedom, and both imagination and brains have been stagnant in Ireland this many a year. Following on such tameness, ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... an especial favorite of my father. Its minor strains and its expressions of womanly doubts and fears were antipathetic to his sanguine, buoyant, self-confident nature. He was inclined to ridicule the conclusions of its last verse and to say that the man was a molly-coddle—or whatever the word of contempt was in those days. As an antidote he usually called for "O'er the hills in legions, boys," which exactly expressed his love of ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... to a palace in the outskirts, which had been converted into a military hospital and was being maintained by the Emperor out of his private purse. There are some writers of war experiences on the Western Front who have revelled in pouring ridicule upon the inspections that are ever proceeding at our hospitals in the field, although these functions furnish the humorist with just that opportunity which his soul craves for. My experience, however, is that in the military world doctors and nurses simply love to have their tilt-yard ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Englishman, once recovered, loaded her with presents, which she refused,—talked of purchasing her and educating her in Europe, which she also declined, as burdening him too greatly,—and finally, amid the ridicule of all good society in Paramaribo, surmounted all legal obstacles and was united to the beautiful girl in honorable marriage. He provided a cottage for her, where he spent his furloughs, in perfect happiness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... cheerfulness. "Think of your errors in your cells," he commanded. "Weep, kneeling before God. But before others be gay, and maintain an air of ease." At first they called themselves simply "penitents from Assisi," and for a time they were treated with ridicule, scorn, and even violence. But their mission was to suffer everything, to rejoice at insults and injuries and, by patience, compel recognition of the dignity of every human creature under whatsoever guise he might present himself. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... to warn the managers and staff against the common tendency to ridicule bank customs and establishments. Some of our employes have gone so far as to criticize head office indiscriminately in the matter of salaries, etc. We think it only fair that instances of disaffection should be reported to us, so that we may ascertain who is and who is not loyal to the ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... to the French, joined to the excessive amour propre, which is one of the most striking of their characteristics, render them exceedingly susceptible to the arrows of wit; which, when barbed by ridicule, inflict wounds on their vanity difficult to be healed, and which they are ever ready ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... its inmates are to you, nothing can well be less interesting to those, who are unacquainted with them. It will be a stretch of courtesy and good-nature, if they tolerate the mention of them without some expression either of ridicule or of distaste. If you speak of your home-concerns at all, let it be only to one or two intimate friends, who, from the regard which they feel for you, may be supposed to take an interest in ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... subject, conceal their real sentiments, and the "lord" of the family referring this question to his wife, who has heard him sneer or worse than sneer at suffragists for half a lifetime, ought not to expect an answer which she knows will subject her to his censure and ridicule or even his ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar. |
