"Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then, two other men disappeared in the same horrible manner as my father did. Not a trace of their leaving: it is so horrible that it makes my heart creep to tell it. And yet you scoff!" ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... yer wages; she 's dreadful close," chuckled Captain Pharo, as we tucked the bag of meal away on the carriage floor. "See when ye'll scoff in my sails, and block up the ship's channel ag'in! Now then; touch and go is a good pilot," and we struck off on a divergent road at a ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... resumed at last, with strange gentleness, "insult me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn! but come, come. Let us make haste. It is to be to-morrow, I tell you. The gibbet on the Greve, you know it? it stands always ready. It is horrible! to see you ride in that tumbrel! Oh mercy! Until now I have never felt the power of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... [continuing]. But certain people always grow splenetic— Why, goodness knows—at everything pathetic, And scoff it down. We all know how, of late, An unfledged, upstart undergraduate Presumed, with brazen insolence, to declare That "William Russell"(1)was a ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... been telling you of my ambitions! Mean of them! They might have known you'd scoff. All boys do, but I fail to see why if a girl has brains she should not use them as well ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... on and ceased to scoff. Money is a great dignifier, and Jim and 'Lias were making money. There had been some sniffs when the latter had hinged the front gate and whitewashed his mother's cabin, but even that had been accepted now as a ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... advantageous. It is always uncertain whether the individual spectator who has witnessed an amateur performance of a piece will be anxious to see how it really acts or determine never to suffer from it again. Perhaps it is rather cheap to scoff at the amateur performances, some of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... in poem, chronicle, code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In welding together into noble form, whether in the book of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions of men acting under ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... intuition, but established scientific fact: and no modern sociologist, no psychologist who realizes how unknown in origin and how intimate in interpenetration are the forces that control our destiny, can afford to scoff at her. She had longed inexpressibly for outward martyrdom. This was not for her, yet none the less really did she lay down her life on the Altar of Sacrifice. The evils of the time, and above all of the Church, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... I? The victim of infidelity and you, the bearer of a cursed existence, the scoff and scorn of the world, the monument of a broken vow and a guilty life, a being scourged by the scorpion lash of conscience, blasted by periodical insanity, pelted by the winter's storm, scorched by the summer's ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Dory, as if tossing back her jest. But both knew the truth, and each knew that the other knew it. He was as glad to escape from those surroundings as she to be relieved of a presence which edged on her other-self to scoff and rail and sneer at her. It had become bitterness to him to enter the gates of the Villa d'Orsay. His nerves were so wrought up that to look about the magnificent but too palace-like, too hotel-like rooms ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... be on my way," observed the wily step-father, beating a retreat so hastily that Eddie missed the opportunity to scoff. But the contemplative smile remained just as ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... all his time was lost on, He fortified the town of Boston, Built breastworks that might lend assistance To keep the patriots at a distance; For, howsoe'er the rogues might scoff, He liked them best the farthest off; Works of important use to aid His ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... since the beginnin' of time," I scoff. "They laughed at Leonardo da Vinci, Columbus, Edison, a guy named Durante. Even the guy who first sat down at a pianer. We will take what we can git, pal, and then come back ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... early thoughtless judgments must be overcome by a counter-resistance to itself, in a better audience slowly mustering against the first. Forty and seven years it is since William Wordsworth first appeared as an author. Twenty of these years he was the scoff of the world, and his poetry a by-word of scorn. Since then, and more than once, senates have rung with acclamations to the echo of ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... we were painted"?—Faith, no word of black was said; The lightest touch was human blood, and that, ye know, runs red. It's sticking to your fist today for all your sneer and scoff, And by the Judge's well-weighed word you cannot wipe ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Smile on, my lords! I scorn to count what feelings, withered hopes, Strong provocations, bitter, burning wrongs, I have within my heart's hot cells shut up, To leave you in your lazy dignities! But here I stand and scoff you! here I fling Hatred and full defiance in your face! Your Consul's merciful—for this, all thanks: He dares not touch a hair ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... blazon of iniquity was a particular fat monk, of an arrogant nature, with the crimson complexion of surfeit and constipation, who for many causes and reasons was held in greater aversion than all the rest, especially by the boys, that never lost an opportunity of making him a scoff and a scorn; and it so fell out, as he was coming proudly along, turning his Babylonish banner to pleasure the women at the windows, to whom he kept nodding and winking as he passed, that his foot slipped and down he fell as it were with a ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... French, and has made the discovery that they do not subsist entirely upon frogs. He has encountered real Germans, at sufficiently close quarters to realize that the "German Menace" at which his party leaders encouraged him to scoff in a bygone age was no such phantom after all. Altogether he is a very different person from the complacent, parochial exponent of the tight-little-island theories of yester-year. He has encountered things at home and abroad which have purged ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... Unrighteousness, among the magistrates of the Gentiles, and among their mighty men; and it shall come to pass that Darsie Latimer shall be delivered, even if it were at the expense of half my substance." And I said, "Nay, my brother, go not, for they will but scoff at and revile thee; but hire with thy silver one of the scribes, who are eager as hunters in pursuing their prey, and he shall free Darsie Latimer from the men of violence by his cunning, and thy soul shall be guiltless ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... whereunto himself pretendeth. Speech of touch towards others, should be sparingly used; for discourse ought to be as a field, without coming home to any man. I knew two noblemen, of the west part of England, whereof the one was given to scoff, but kept ever royal cheer in his house; the other would ask, of those that had been at the other's table, Tell truly, was there never a flout or dry blow given? To which the guest would answer, Such and such a thing passed. The lord would say, I thought, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... quarters, innumerable times; and this continues so long that by the time the "group" is ready for the stage, behold! the cubs with which the patient and tireless trainer began have grown so large that to the audience they now seem like adult and savage animals. Those who scoff at the wild animal mind, and say that all this displays nothing but "machines in fur" need to be reminded that this very same line of effort in training and rehearsal is absolutely necessary in the production of every military company, every ballet, and every mass performance on the stage. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... chief book of instruction for German children. True, its contents already are so antiquated that parents reject almost every sentence of it for themselves; true, the man of today understands its language only with difficulty—what of it, the children must gulp down the moldy, musty food. How we would scoff and jeer if a similar report were made about the school system of China! To this Lutheran Catechism, which I would best like to see in state libraries only, are added many antiquated hymns of mystical ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... and decorum. If we went out, the make-believe continued even in the street; the two hermits would say the Rosary, using their fingers to count on, so as not to display their devotion before those who might scoff. One day, however, the hermit Therese forgot herself—before eating a cake, given her for lunch, she made a large Sign of the Cross, and some worldly folk did not repress ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... much to tell you about, mother. Can I order some more jam? And Jaggers could scoff some more eggs, couldn't you, Jag? Waiter, two more poached eggs and some more strawberry jam. You see, dear, we haven't done anything exciting yet. That's all been the luck of the battle-cruisers and destroyers. They've had a topping rag—three of our term have been wounded already. But ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... care about any more, but if you will let me talk to you about something— See here, Anna. Yes, I mean Anna. What nonsense for us to attempt to keep up the Miss Moore and Mr. Sanderson business. I used to scoff at love at first sight and say it was all the idle fancy of the poets. Then I met you and remained to pray. You've turned my world topsy-turvy. I can't think without you, and yet it would be folly to tell this to my Governor, and ask his consent to our marriage. He wants me to finish ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... what annoyance I still felt at the recollection. "I admit that it was a very striking scene. It was very good," I added, religiously, referring to the corn. Mr. Rollin ought to know, I thought, that I had come to Wallencamp on a mission, and that if he wished to scoff at the ways of its defenceless inhabitants, he shouldn't look to find a confidante ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... hunt, Forgetful of the tilt and tournament, Forgetful of his glory and his name, Forgetful of his princedom and its cares. And this forgetfulness was hateful to her. And by and by the people, when they met In twos and threes, or fuller companies, Began to scoff and jeer and babble of him As of a prince whose manhood was all gone, And molten down in mere uxoriousness. And this she gather'd from the people's eyes: This too the women who attired her head, To please her, dwelling on his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... it, and cooks it, and eats it—and goes by guess. What won't keep we salts down in the cask. I reckon it weighs about a ton by the weight of it if yer wanter know. Mother thought that if she sent any more it would go bad before you could scoff it. ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... their own growing power, and gloried in their strength and arrogance; and Northern timidity became a scoff ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... for their idle powers in a fondness of despair. To scoff at glory, at religion, at love, at all the world, is a great consolation for those who do not know what to do; they mock at themselves and in doing so prove the correctness of their view. And then it is ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... their flowing odes. Then, if those who were not English, and hated England, and all connected therewith, had yet much to say in thy praise, when thou wast far inferior to what thou art now, why should true-born Englishmen, or those who call themselves so, turn up their noses at thee, and scoff thee at the present day, as I believe they do? But, let others do as they will, I, at least, who am not only an Englishman, but an East Englishman, will not turn up my nose at thee, but will praise and extol thee, calling thee mart of the world—a place of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... no' say it?" demanded her visitor. "And as to speaking sense—. But I'll no' trouble you. It seems you have friends in such plenty that you can afford to scorn and scoff at them at your pleasure. Good-day to you," and she ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... Avenue, lined here with red brick dwellings and the sunny white bulk of the old Brevoort House. Far off, the sky-scrapers begin to loom, whipping out flags and steam plumes. It is a treeless vista, yet it is hazed with spring! Imagination, you scoff—and dust. Yet you look again, and it is not imagination, and it is not dust. It is the veil of spring, cast with delicate hand over the city. These laughing sight-seers atop the green 'bus now ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... money than they formerly obtained for the same goods. By so doing, it was equivalent to reducing the former wages of their labour, or of the produce of their land—the effects of which were speedily felt and comprehended by them, although some of the officials, who imposed it, might scoff at the causes they assigned, and reiterate their crude and erroneous notions of political economy, to prove that it could not affect them, but must be paid by the great merchants, or by the consumers of their produce in Europe. They quite forgot that ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... in the South that they might open the Negroes' eyes to the hitherto forbidden glories of modern civilization and take care that the spiritual was not lost sight of in the new maze of world wonders. Withered indeed must be the soul that could scoff at such moral heroism, and yet that is just what Mr. Dixon does. He suggests that the people who produced a Washington and a Jefferson hardly needed missionaries to perform work among the ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... bear it!" he repeated. "You must bear it, madam. Do you suppose your child is to be exempt from the penalties of his birth? Do you suppose that he alone is to be saved from the upbraiding scoff? Do you suppose that he is ever to rank with other boys, who are not stained and marked with sin from their birth? Every creature in Eccleston may know what he is; do you think they will spare him their scorn? 'Cannot bear it,' indeed! Before you went into your ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... heart of man, woman, or child to believe that the spirit of a loved one, who has solved the Problem mortal cannot solve, can return to earth and communicate by some sign or token with those who were its companions when it inhabited a human house, I say it is wrong to scoff and rail ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... thyself. That shop may be closed; but oh! what a sign of the times, that it has been permitted to exist for one day. It appears to me, my Father, that the days of your sway are numbered in Spain; that you will not be permitted much longer to plunder her, to scoff at her, and to scourge her with scorpions, as in bygone periods. See I not the hand on the wall? See I not in yonder letters a 'Mene, mene, Tekel, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... wench, and scoff'd at too! 'Tis intolerable; and shall I lose her thus? How it mads me, that I brought not my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... been inclined to scoff at this apparition as a heretical innovation, there was still the story of Concepcion, the Demon Vaquero, whose terrible riata was fully as potent as the whaler's harpoon. Concepcion, when in the flesh, had been ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... it as we used to do in the Fourth Reader Class, when we all with one accord turned against "Teacher's Pet." Teacher's Pet might be dowered with all the virtues, but we of the commonality would have none of them. We chose to scoff at an ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... father!" Iskender blurted out the truth at last. "I know not how my patron would regard it. On him I depend entirely for the present. I have heard him scoff at all who change the faith that they were born in. Wait a little, I beseech thee, until ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... of disappointed ladies in the churchyard, who said it was a most beautiful church inside, but that they had not seen it because it was shut. We proved the fact by trying the door, and then we came away consoling ourselves with the scoff that it was probably closed for the races. At the bookseller's, where we stopped to buy some photographs of the interior of the church we had not seen, we lamented our disappointment, and the salesman said, "Perhaps it ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... what scorn and obloquy and denunciation await that man who stands unawed before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard of individual excellence, perpetuates ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... might want. Not, O Aurelian, till this accursed race is exterminated, will the heavens smile as formerly upon our country. Why are the altars thus forsaken? Why are the temples no longer thronged as once? Why do the great, and the rich, and the learned, silently withhold their aid, or openly scoff and jeer? Why are our sanctuaries crowded only by the scum and refuse of ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... bring soft tears of satisfaction to the board of directors that presided over Bostock's. It was a record Christmas for Bostock's. The electric cars were thundering over the frozen streets of all the Five Towns to bring customers to Bostock's. Children dreamt of Bostock's. Fathers went to scoff and remained to pay. Brunt's was not exactly alarmed, for nothing could alarm Brunt's; but there was just a sort of suspicion of something in the air at Brunt's that did not make for odious self-conceit. People seemed to become intoxicated ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... rushes into an office of philosophical, higher-critical professors, and cries, "Fire!" You would see those hard-boiled skeptics, if they believed the cry, rush unceremoniously and indecorously out of that building with all speed. People may scoff at faith working with lightning speed; but every exhibition of it only proves ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... desires to read them again. In the same volume there are some severe pieces, sharply ridiculing his critics. In the old days, when he wrote fine imaginative poetry, out of his heart and brain working together, he did not mind what the critics said, and only flashed a scoff or two at them in his creation of Naddo in Sordello. But now when he wrote a great deal of his poetry out of his brain alone, he became sensitive to criticism. For that sort of poetry does not rest on the sure foundation which is given by the consciousness the imagination has of its absolute rightness. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... assumed sometimes with great vigour. Such had been the case with Mrs Winterfield. No woman ever lived, perhaps, with more conscientious ideas of her duty as a woman than Mrs Winterfield of Prospect Place, Perivale. And this, as I say it, is intended to convey no scoff against that excellent lady. She was an excellent lady unselfish, given to self-restraint, generous, pious, looking to find in her religion a safe path through life a path as safe as the facts of Adam's fall would allow her feet to find. She was a woman fearing much for others, but fearing ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... have been transferred by Plato to an ideal or imaginary one, is very singular to us. The most extreme democracy of modern times has never thought of leaving government wholly to chance. It was natural that Socrates should scoff at it, and ask, 'Who would choose a pilot or carpenter or flute-player by lot' (Xen. Mem.)? Yet there were many considerations which made this mode of choice attractive both to the oligarch and to the democrat:—(1) It seemed to recognize that one man was as good as another, ...
— Laws • Plato
... verse may have and wonder, of my book, To what thoughts shall't in alien hearts give birth. But, as he who doth love, and, loving, hopes, Yet, hoping, fears, fears to put proof to proof, And in his mind for possible proofs gropes, Delaying the true proof, lest the real thing scoff, I daily live, i'th' fame I dream to see, But by my thought of others' thought ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... Smile on, my lords; I scorn to count what feelings, withered hopes, Strong provocations, bitter, burning wrongs, I have within my heart's hot cells shut up, To leave you in your lazy dignities. But here I stand and scoff you: here I fling Hatred and full defiance in your face. Your consul's merciful. For this all thanks. He dares not touch a hair of Catiline. "Traitor!" I go but I return. This trial!— Here I devote your senate! I've had wrongs, To stir ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... during the last forty years, have tried to tame the ancient families perched aloft like wary ravens on their crag; the said families were always willing to accept invitations to dinners and dances; but as to admitting the strangers to their own houses, they were inexorable. Ready to scoff and disparage, jealous and niggardly, marrying only among themselves, the families formed a serried phalanx to keep out intruders. Of modern luxury they had no notion; and as for sending a boy to Paris, it was sending him, they thought to certain ruin. Such ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... nor Jews, were permitted to establish themselves in the island, nor to go upon voyages of discovery. Such were some of the restrictions upon trade which Spain imposed upon her colonies, and which were followed up by others equally illiberal. Her commercial policy has been the scoff of modern times; but may not the present restrictions on trade, imposed by the most intelligent nations, be equally the wonder and ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... foolish and vain thing to scoff at business and those who do it in the market places, and to shout out the old war cries of our fathers, in the face of a generation which sings the song of capital, or groans in heavy labour beneath the banners of their copyrighted ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... dreams, a fortress of holiness in the very center of wilderness barbarity and cruelty unspeakable. The multitudinous voices of traffic shriek where the crusaders' hymn rose that May night. A great city has risen on the foundations which these dreamers laid. Let us not scoff too loudly at their mystic visions and religious rhapsodies! Another generation may scoff at our too-much-worldliness, with our dreamless grind and visionless toil and harder creeds that reject everything which ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... accepted as a matter of course. But who, fifty years ago, could have imagined that to-day women would be steadily monopolizing learning, teaching, literature, the fine arts, music, the church and the theater? And yet that is the condition at which we have arrived. We may scoff at the way women are doing the work, and reject the product, but that does not alter the fact that step by step women are taking over the field of liberal culture as opposed to the field ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... continued the Phoenix, as it settled back comfortably, "I have been thinking. Yesterday you showed an intelligent interest in my problems and asked intelligent questions. You did not scoff, as others might have done. You ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... not likely to take much notice of you; and it is not for an indolent, freakish midge to scoff at a man whom she does not know, and couldn't appreciate if she did," was ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... work, not the drudgery of the fields; in it he must live his life, and fulfil his mission. The more he wrote the more he accustomed himself with the idea of being an author. He knew that the critic-folk, deep read in books, might scoff at the very suggestion of a ploughman turning poet, but he recognised also that they might be wrong. It was not by dint of Greek that Parnassus was to be climbed. 'Ae spark o' Nature's fire' was the one thing needful for poetry that ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... interests. A layman (and he too a familiar friend of David Hume), whose life was employed in scientific, political, and philosophical researches, has given to the world those sentiments as the natural suggestions of reason. Yet these are the sentiments which are the scoff ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... eternal worldliness that freezes too fiercely—that absolutely blisters with its frost—like the upper air of the Andes. You speak of Kate only as too readily you speak of all women; the instinct of a natural scepticism being to scoff at all hidden depths of truth. Else you are civil enough to Kate; and your 'homage' (such as it may happen to be) is always at the service of a woman on the shortest notice. But behind you, I see a worse ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... almost wrathful. "You scientific people build up whole philosophies on the basis of things you never saw, and you scoff at people who believe in other things that you think they never saw and that don't come under what you label scientific. You talk about paradoxes—why, your scientist, who thinks he is the most skeptical, the most materialistic aggregation ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... enjoyment within the reach of general society, England is wholly superior in civilization to the shivering splendours of the Continent. Foreigners are beginning to learn this; and those who are most disposed to scoff at our taste, are the readiest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... feeling too deeply to be conscious of the rudeness in the scoff. "So you figure it out like that—do you? And you get some satisfaction out of that way of looking at it? The scheme of things is very fine, but he must pay the penalty of his own oversight, weakness—carelessness—whatever ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... now, Like clouds across the pale moon glancing, As thought on rapid thought advancing, Thrills through the maiden's trembling breast, Not doubting, and yet not at rest. Not doubting! Man may turn away And scoff at shrines, where yesterday He knelt, in earnest faith, to pray, And wealth may lose its charm for him, And fame's alluring star grow dim, Devotion, avarice, glory, all The pageantries of earth may ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... discourse, and how far it might be used? And Aristo presently cried out: What then, for heaven's sake, are there any that banish philosophy from company and wine? And I replied: Yes, sir, there are, and such as with a grave scoff tell us that philosophy, like the matron of the house, should never be heard at a merry entertainment; and commend the custom of the Persians, who never let their wives appear, but drink, dance, and wanton with their ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... in his mouth and strolled on without a reply. His little niece's words awakened very uncomfortable feelings within his heart. Years before he had known and loved his Bible well. He had been active in Christian work, and had borne many a scoff and jeer from his companions when at Oxford for being "pious," as they termed it. But there came a time when coldness crept into his Christianity, and worldly ambition and desires filled his soul. Gradually he wandered farther and farther away from the ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... scoff at premonitions and haunting fears, but there can be no doubt that on this night an evil spirit was present in Roberta's apartment, a hideous, destructive entity that came and—wavered in its deadly purpose against Penelope, ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... Tisipherne the damsel turning right, "And what say you, my noble lord ?" quoth she. He taunting said, "I that am slow to fight Will follow far behind, the worth to see Of this your terrible and puissant knight," In scornful words this bitter scoff gave he. "Good reason," quoth the king, "thou come behind, Nor e'er compare thee ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... countrymen. The father and son, in the Clouds, are evidently representatives of the generations to which they respectively belonged. Nothing more clearly illustrates the nature of this moral revolution than the change which passed upon tragedy. The wild sublimity of Aeschylus became the scoff of every young Phidippides. Lectures on abstruse points of philosophy, the fine distinctions of casuistry, and the dazzling fence of rhetoric, were substituted for poetry. The language lost something of that infantine sweetness ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... end regret. Surely not the Waiter. He his finger had In the pie—or gravy. Did he? Well, 'tis sad. He must cry "Peccavi!" But whoever mixed, Or whoever boiled it, Our opinion's fixed, He, or they, quite spoiled it. 'Tis the general scoff, Butt of chaff and rudeness. Irish Stew ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... remembrances came crowding, like good ghostes, in that scent; There's the mother's call to dinner, there's the landlord's call—for rent! And the call of the rooks,—and another call, fur off, Like a whisper from a grave-yard, green and silent. Some may scoff At a Cockney's chat of laylocks. I could bury my old phiz In their crisp and nutty coolness, as I did when flirty Liz, My first sweetheart, sent me packing, one Spring mornin'—for a while— And them blossoms cooled my anger—most as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... outlaws, then ye proved thieves, And now all carelessly ye scoff at death. Both of your fathers were good, honest men; Your mother lives, their widow, in good fame; But you are scapethrifts, unthrifts, villains, knaves, And as ye lived by shifts, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... in the Book of Wisdom who say: "Let unrighteousness be our law," 2, 11. Also in Psalms, 12, 4: "Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?" Again in Psalm 73. "They scoff, and in wickedness utter oppression: they speak loftily," etc. Such were the giants who withstood the Holy Spirit to his face, who, through the mouth of Lamech, Noah and the sons of Noah, exhorted, implored, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... of course they will. You surely cannot suppose I should, in cold blood, sit down to write a story in which nobody was to fall in love or be in love! Sir, scoff as you may, love is the one vital principle in all romance. Not only does your cheek flush and your eye sparkle, till "heart, brain, and soul are all on fire," over the burning words of some Brontean Pythoness, but when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of England's flag Proclaim that all around are free, From 'farthest Ind' to each blue crag That beetles o'er the Western Sea? And shall we scoff at Europe's kings, When Freedom's fire is dim with us, And round our country's altar clings The damning ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... that you scoff? Verily, you do an unconsidered deed. When one remembers all the liquids, medicinal, soporific, insipid, poisonous, which flood the throat of humanity, one may deem himself a favorite of Fortune to be placed so high in the catalogue. Though ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... it has become the fashion amongst certain men to scoff at this terrible vice of secret indulgence, and to claim that its evil effects are overrated, are portrayed too vividly. Ask some poor unfortunate whose confidence you may succeed in gaining, and listen to the pitiful ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... to hear Mass, and St. Cloud was the place where this ancient usage was first re-established. He directed the ceremony to commence sooner than the hour announced in order that those who would only make a scoff at it might not arrive until the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... therefore considered herself as having fallen a victim to love; and could she only save her daughter from a similar error she might yet by her means retrieve her fallen fortune. To implant principles of religion and virtue in her mind was not within the compass of her own; but she could scoff at every pure and generous affection; she could ridicule every disinterested attachment; and she could expatiate on the never-fading joys that attend on wealth and titles, jewels and equipages; and all this she did in the belief that she was acting ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... repeat the language of it in the pages of a novel. In endeavouring to depict the characters of the persons of whom I write, I am to a certain extent forced to speak of sacred things. I trust, however, that I shall not be thought to scoff at the pulpit, though some may imagine that I do not feel all the reverence that is due to the cloth. I may question the infallibility of the teachers, but I hope that I shall not therefore be accused of doubt as to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... desires ||F.i.|| then remedy them. Wha the tyraunte Sathanas reygned in this worlde freely and wythout punishement, then thys prynce onely, dyd sodenlye helpe mankynde redy to perishe: wherfore thei erre shamefully which scoff and bable that CHRIST was one that was sadd and of a malancolye nature, & that he hath prouoked vs vnto an vnpleasaunt kynde of lyfe, for onely he did shewe a kind of liuing most godly and fullest of al true pleasure, if ...
— A Very Pleasaunt & Fruitful Diologe Called the Epicure • Desiderius Erasmus
... day to have added fuel to the flame. You were to have presented Matilda to my arms, more beautiful, more tender, more kind, than she had ever appeared. From this moment then, let the name of trust be a by-word for the profligate to scoff at! Let the epithet of friend be a mildew to the chaste and uncorrupted ear! Let mutual confidence be banished from the earth, and men, more savage than the brute, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... down in your soul, Braden, you believe it too. We all believe it, even the scientists who scoff. We can't help believing it. It is that which makes good men and women of us, which keeps us as children to the end. It isn't honour or nobility of character that makes us righteous, but the fear of God. It isn't ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Tama,[FN127] but only as properties of matter. He acknowledged gross matter (Sthulasharir), and atomic matter (Shukshma-sharir), but not Linga-sharir, or the archetype of bodies. To doubt all things was the foundation of his theory, and to scoff at all who would not doubt was the corner-stone of his practice. In debate he preferred logical and mathematical grounds, requiring a categorical "because" in answer to his "why?" He was full of morality ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... father. "I hope you may always hold to both. I think that those girls who expect to be regarded as advanced, because they scoff at the Bible and at faith, are quite horrid. I also hope that you will not eventually ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... you so deep. What time I have been wasting! Mr. Faust, At last I know you for a prince of men— A brilliant mind, a high intelligence, A spirit incorruptible. The trash, Baubles and claptrap which the foolish herd Snatch at, you scoff—and rightly. I will not With one more word of it insult your mind That admirably penetrates to deeps Where I, too, love to dwell. I put aside All trivialities, and frankly say That I can offer you one ultimate gift Fit even for you—a ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... truculent criticisms of England acted as a lively stimulus, and they went profanely to work "to resent the British scoff that when separated from England the colonies would ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... I wasn't able to tell you that. You had begun by saying that you believed in palmistry, and then you proceeded to scoff at it. While you scoffed I saw myself as a man with a terribly good reason for NOT scoffing; and in a flash I saw the terribly good reason; I had the whole story—at least I had the broad outlines ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... take up my tale, I want to anticipate the doubting Thomases of psychology, who are prone to scoff, and who would otherwise surely say that the coherence of my dreams is due to overstudy and the subconscious projection of my knowledge of evolution into my dreams. In the first place, I have never been a zealous student. I graduated last of my class. ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... water off, Or folk be cutting weed, While he doth at misfortune scoff, From every trouble freed. Or else he waiteth for a rise, And ne'er a rise may see; For why, there are not any flies ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... scholars or physicians scoff at the ancient authorities who dominated medical thinking for so many centuries. The seventeenth-century physician striving to reduce the frightful inroads that disease made into the colony at Jamestown may have been handicapped by ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... needs must come! Even now[115:1] (Black Hell laughs horrible—to hear the scoff!) 160 Thee to defend, meek Galilaean! Thee And thy mild laws of Love unutterable, Mistrust and Enmity have burst the bands Of social peace: and listening Treachery lurks With pious fraud to snare a brother's life; 165 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Somewhat the authoritative voice abashed, Even hoarse and changed, the miscreants, who feared Some strong curse lurked in this mysterious tongue, Armed with this evil eye. But brief the spell. With gibe and scoff they dragged their victims forth, The abused old man, the proud, insulted youth, O'er the late path of his triumphal march, Befouled with mud, with raiment torn, wild hair And ragged beard, to Vladislaw. He sat Expectant in his ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... oft' Creates the chief, the only charm, Of that, which, once obtain'd, is scoff'd, And oft' receiv'd ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... effrontery which has characterized Mormonism from the start has been most daring. Its founder, a lad of low birth, very limited education, and uncertain morals; its beginnings so near burlesque that they drew down upon its originators the scoff of their neighbors,—the organization increased its membership as it was driven from one state to another, building up at last in an untried wilderness a population that has steadily augmented its wealth and numbers; doggedly defending its right to practise its peculiar beliefs and obey ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... believe that the darkness of caves ever had anything to do with the loss of eyes. It is almost as though a man should discover that blindness in a certain case was due to a congenital, i.e. gametic, defect, and should then scoff at the idea that any person could become blind by disease. Some of those who specialise in the investigation of genetics seem to give inadequate consideration to other branches of biology. It is a well-established fact that in the mole, in Proteus, ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... in all our voyages round the world, we are still accompanied by those old circumnavigators, the stars, who are shipmates and fellow-sailors of ours—sailing in heaven's blue, as we on the azure main. Let genteel generations scoff at our hardened hands, and finger-nails tipped with tar—did they ever clasp truer palms than ours? Let them feel of our sturdy hearts beating like sledge-hammers in those hot smithies, our bosoms; with their amber-headed canes, let ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Hills and Field we may find such abundant errata, reducing the text to nonsense or to blasphemy, making the Scriptures contemptible to the multitude, who came to pray, and not to scoff. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... statesman expressed his doubt to them whether they were able to do so: he really thought England would one day become an apple of discord between Spain and France, as Milan then was. It was almost a scoff, to compare the Island that had the power of the sea with an Italian duchy. But from this very moment she was to take a new upward flight. England was again to take her place as a third Power between the two great Powers; the opportunity presented itself to her to begin open ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... 'I will clear the stair that leadeth to God!' Now sit I at His feet, lame and weak, and men scoff at knowledge, —'Aha, this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... mummy—the dry dark skin, the white gleaming bones of the dead, mockingly cased in gold, and decked with rubies; there, grim fingers protruded through the hideous chaos, and pointed towards the living man ensnared; there, the skull grinned scoff under the holy mitre;—and suddenly rushed back, luminous and searing upon Harold's memory, the dream long forgotten, or but dimly remembered in the healthful business of life—the gibe and the wirble of the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the Chancellor gave it to me, gave it to me with his own hands, willingly,—pressed it upon me. No, don't scoff!" he went on quickly. "Listen! This is a genuine thing. The Chancellor's mad. He was lying in a fit when I left the Palace. It will be in all the evening papers. You will hear the boys shouting it in the streets within a few minutes. Don't interrupt and I'll tell you the whole truth. ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he shrank not, he, From answering to his face. A caitiff hound, A reptile fool, is he who fawns on men Before their faces, while his heart is black With malice, and, when they be gone, his tongue Backbites them. Openly Polydamas Flung back upon the prince his taunt and scoff: "O thou of living men most mischievous! Thy valour—quotha!—brings us misery! Thine heart endures, and will endure, that strife Should have no limit, save in utter ruin Of fatherland and people for thy sake! Ne'er may such wantwit valour craze my ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... had neither the will nor the power to ride a-horseback; but he, against the advice of all his friends, listened only to the voice of courage, braved the fiery suns of June and August, which were the dread of the youngest knights, and made a scoff of those who could not bear the heat, although many a time, during the passage of narrow and difficult swampy places, he was constrained to get himself held on by those about him." After an obstinate struggle, and at the intervention of William VII., Duke of Aquitaine, the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Mainwaring's love, could she have commanded or allured it; she was willing to leave to Susan the husband reft from her own passionate youth, but leave him with the brand on his brow and the worm at his heart,—a scoff and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... added. And then he fell to wondering if it really was a principle, after all. If so, it was evil overcoming evil. But would the world believe that both he and Rosendo had been cured by—what? Faith? True prayer? By the operation of a great, almost unknown principle? Or would it scoff at such an idea? ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... that Fyodor Pavlovitch was by no means touched, but, as usual, was beginning to scoff. At that moment Smerdyakov, who was standing by the door, smiled. Smerdyakov often waited at table towards the end of dinner, and since Ivan's arrival in our town he had done so ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... so many daring, honest men should have been spitted on rapiers, cloven with sabres, riddled with bullet-holes, for the sake of a vain breath, emptier than the glass he had raised to his lips last night! And yet—he might search, and deny, and argue, and scoff—honour remained a fact. No, not a fact, a law. A law having rules, and conditions and penalties and rewards all defined in the human heart, all equally beyond the range of the human intelligence. His brain could not imagine a question in which honour was concerned, to which his heart did ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... also Mrs. Behn in her own Epilogue when she speaks of 'fat Cardinals, Pope Joans, and Fryers'; and Lord Falkland's scoff in his Prologue to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... "Scoff at me if you will, I am proof. But hearken—you mustn't turn out that schoolmistress. She's an angel, and I know it; and if I say so of any human being, you may be sure ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... Owen will tell you, with eyes full of scorn, Threadbare is my coat, and my hosen are torn: Scoff on, my rich Owen, for faint is thy glee When the maid of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... miraculousness of His providences, or the comfort of religion in affliction, or the strength given you over your passions in the Most Holy Sacrament, such persons understand you not at all. They will laugh, they will scoff, at best they will wonder: any how what you say is no evidence to them. You cannot convince them, because you differ from them in first principles; it is not that they start from the same point ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... my friends, attempt to turn aside this appeal which I now make to you with a laugh or a sneer. This is the Lord's word, and the word of the Lord is not to be put aside with a sneer. Do not scoff at this as a water of salvation. You certainly will not scoff at the ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... they are sacrilegious, they are excommunicated, who impeach the magic of the past and the poison of tradition. And the thousand million victims themselves scoff at and strike those who rebel, as soon as they are able. All cast stones at them, all, even those who suffer and while they are suffering—even the sacrificed, a little ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... to scoff at what they call my weakness for Liszt's works. But even if the feelings of affection and gratitude that he inspired in me did come like a prism and interpose themselves between my eyes and his face, I ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... rolled down her cheeks as she spoke, and Wilhelm was not sufficiently blase to scoff at the doting nonsense of a love-sick woman. Love has enormous power, and at its heat all firmness, all resistance, melts away. Pilar's affection filled Wilhelm with heartfelt emotion and gratitude. He denied himself the right of judging her, suspecting or doubting ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... you; You scoff even at your own calamity— And such calamity! how wert thou fallen 20 Son of the Morning! and yet ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... my secret as yet,"—with a faint wan smile. "Let me keep it a little longer. Not even Mrs. Massereene knows of it. Indeed, it is too soon to proclaim my design. People might scoff it; though for all that I shall work it out. And something ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... as a miracle,—this black regiment, the first mustered into the service of the United States, doing itself honor in the sight of the officers of other regiments, many of whom, doubtless, "came to scoff." The men afterwards had a great feast, ten oxen having been roasted whole for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... pride already so ill brooks my regrets for meeting him, (when he thinks, if I had not, I must have been Mr. Solmes's wife,) would perhaps treat me with indignity: and thus, deprived of all refuge and protection, I should become the scoff of men of intrigue; a disgrace to my sex—while that avowed loved, however indiscreetly shown, which is followed by marriage, will find more excuses made for it, than generally it ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... what right have we to hope that with the same natures, the same passions, the same understandings, no better proof against deception, we, like they, are not entangled in what, at the close of another era, shall seem again ridiculous? The scoff of Cicero at the divinity of Liber and Ceres (bread and wine) may be translated literally by the modern Protestant; and the sarcasms which Clement and Tertullian flung at the Pagan creed, the modern sceptic ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... at her aunt, whose head was bent over her writing, the smooth bands of her silky, brown hair shining brightly in the lamp-light. No doubt some, perhaps most, grown-ups would scoff at her tale if she told it, Mollie thought. Grown-up people as a rule love best to jog along on well-trodden, safe, commonplace paths, and avoid adventurous by-ways, but Aunt Mary, Mollie felt sure, was an anti-jogger, so to speak, and ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... and unaffected grace, His looks adorn'd the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray. 180 The service pass'd, around the pious man, With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; Even children follow'd with endearing wile, And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile. His ready smile a parent's warmth express'd, 185 Their welfare pleas'd him, and their cares ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... tried spreading plastic wax where the beasts would walk on it, in pathways or before dens. How they did scoff! The simplest ground squirrel knew too much to venture on my waxen snare; around 'it, or if hemmed in, over it, with a mighty bound they went; but never a track did ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... had the patience to accompany me through these pages devoted to Miss Dickinson will surely own, whether in scoff or praise, the essentially American nature of her muse. Her defects are easily paralleled in the annals of English literature; but only in the liberal atmosphere of the New World, comparatively unshadowed ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Lima Street; but inasmuch as she never thought about her appearance it would have been a waste of time for anybody to try to romanticize her. The civilizing effect of her presence in the slum was quickly felt; and though Lidderdale continued to scoff at the advantages of civilization, he finally learnt to give a grudging welcome to her various schemes for making the bodies of the flock as comfortable as her husband tried to make ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... story was completed, When the wondrous tale was ended, Looking round upon his listeners, Solemnly Iagoo added: "There are great men, I have known such, Whom their people understand not, Whom they even make a jest of, Scoff and jeer at in derision. From the story of Osseo Let us ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... their secret. I confess I was alarmed; but there was something in the thought of showing my good master how much I was attached to his interests, that continually prevailed over my fears; and my spirits rose with the reflection that I, a poor insignificant lad; I, that was often the scoff and laughing-stock of the miners; I, that went by the name of Lame Jervas; I, who they thought could be bullied to any thing by their threats, might do a nobler action than any man amongst them would have the courage to do in my place. Then the kindness of my master, and the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... cause to complain; but alas, slander, calumny, and disgrace, are no other way injurious than as they are interpreted; nor otherwise evil, than as they are thought to be so: what harm is it then if all persons deride and scoff you, if you bear but up in your own thoughts, and be yourself thoroughly conceited of your deserts? And prithee, why should it be thought any scandal to be a fool, since the being so is one part of our nature and essence; and as so, our not being wise can ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Cornell Menorah Society. About thirty new members were enrolled, bringing our membership list up to one hundred. This number includes five members of the faculty and about a score of graduates. Several men who had come to the meeting to scoff stayed to enroll. The subsequent meetings have also been well attended. Our organization is gaining greater and ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... could not divide. He dared not approach the Sacrament, he dared not pray, and sometimes he felt wild impulses to tread down in riotous despair every fragment of a religious belief which seemed to live in his heart only to torture him. He had heard priests scoff over the wafer they consecrated,—he had known them to mingle poison for rivals in the sacramental wine,—and yet God had kept silence and not struck them dead; and like the Psalmist of old he said, "Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. Is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... image to the world appears. His mind no art can well express, That by his writings you may guess. It was not pride, nor yet vainglory, (Though others do it commonly) Made him do this: if you must know, The Printer would needs have it so. Then do not frown or scoff at it, Deride not, or detract a whit. For surely as thou dost by him, He will do the same again. Then look upon't, behold and see, As thou lik'st it, so it likes thee. And I for it will stand in view, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior |
