"Scornful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... imperceptible shrug. He was disappointed but not surprised: there was in Hyde a vein of hard selfishness— not a weakness, for the egoism which openly says "I will consult my own convenience first" is too scornful of public opinion to be called weak, but an acquired defensive quality on which argument would have been thrown away. Val's arm dropped inert, he was tired, not in body alone, but by the strain of contact with another mind, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... and repeated her scornful laugh, which this time but ill concealed a certain vague terror that was rising in her mind. "Is our chancellor mad, or does he sport with us? This rebel, whom you talk of sentencing—of condemning, we presume, to the block—stands at the head of a greater army ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... seen his face, still prest Within your hold the picture dear would be, Like that bright portrait which so moved the breast Of fairest Gurd with soft unrest that she, Born in ice halls, she who but raised her eyes And scornful questioned, "What is love, indeed? None ever viewed it 'neath these northern skies," — Seeing the face soon learned love's gentle creed; But you hold nothing to be counted dear — Only a gift of weed and broken shells; Yet I will gather one, so I can hear The soft remembrance ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... so far from having exhausted its resources, was a fresh and living instrument of extraordinary power. These writers—as has so often been the case in France—were bound together by a common literary creed. Young, ardent, scornful of the past, dazzled by the possibilities of the future, they raised the standard of revolt against the traditions of Classicism, promulgated a new aesthetic doctrine, and, after a sharp struggle and great excitement, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... a wonderful exertion of fraternal love," I rejoined, with a scornful laugh, but an eye flashing with passions a thousand times more fierce than scorn, "that prevents your adding that last favour to those you ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... burn me, and I hate thee for it!" She wiped her hand upon her dress, and turned her head from Janet's bosom and cast a scornful ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... the means of knowledge. Besides, there were certain family matters, which the look of her father suddenly recalled—which had never been suffered to reach the ears of her cousin;—which indicated to her, however imperfectly, the possible cause of that severe and scornful expression of eye, in the uncle, which had so confounded the nephew. She looked, with timid pleading to her father's ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... It is obviously not the place here for a full discussion of this question. Hdouin in the appendix of his "Life of Goethe" (pp. 291 ff) urges the claims of the book and resents Fitzgerald's rather scornful characterization of the French critics who received the work as Sterne's (see Life of Sterne, 1864, II, p.429). Hdouin refers to Jules Janin ("Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages de Sterne") and Balzac ("Physiologie du mariage," Meditation ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... the room regarded the angry girl in silent astonishment. Then the tension of the moment relaxed, and Alice Rawle found her voice. "You are right," she said to Kathleen, with a scornful little gesture. "We were talking of you. Evidently you heard what we said. I am glad you did. Until this moment I liked you better than any other girl in Overton. If you had come sooner, you would have heard ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... with a despairingly scornful gesture, had turned away; and David, after a moment's following him with wistful eyes, soberly walked toward the kitchen door. Two minutes later he was industriously working at his ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... disillusioned; his head ached so that he could hardly bear the pain, and in all his limbs he felt a strange and heavy lassitude. He wondered why he had troubled himself about the woman who cared nothing—nothing whatever for him. He repeated about her the bitter, scornful things he had said so often. He fancied ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... in the mysterious passage of an unknown house, bawling "Estella" to a scornful young lady neither visible nor responsive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty to roar out her name, was almost as bad as playing to order. But she answered at last, and her light came trembling along the dark passage, ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... that He would have protected you when He did not watch over my boy, who was carried away over the salt sea?" she exclaimed, making a scornful gesture at Adam. "He protects not such as you, who madly venture out when in His rage He stirs up the salt sea, salt sea, salt sea!" and she broke out ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... outrageous injustice of this remark as well as you or I do; and so did the portrait of his ancestor, which he happened to be passing under, for the red nose in the tapestry turned a deeper ruby in scornful anger. But, luckily for the nerves of its descendant, the moths had eaten its mouth away so entirely, that the retort it attempted to make sounded only like a faint hiss, which the Baron mistook for a little gust of wind behind ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... oriental draperies and things from Japan. The furniture was, therefore, to consist of large cane sofas with pillows covered with a yellow chintz pattern which pleased him much. The selection of a carpet was a matter of great moment. He received with scornful smiles his upholsterer's suggestions of Persian rugs. Turkey, Smyrna, and Axminster were proposed and rejected, he even thought of an Aubusson—no one knew anything about Aubusson at Southwick, and the vivid blues ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... scornful word for the literary value of paintings on his lips, Kendal was forced to admit that in this his consummate picture, as he very truly thought it, the chief significance lay elsewhere than in the brushing and the color—they were only its dramatic exponents—and the knowledge of this brought ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... it was weather-beaten, so to say, with the storms of life; and yet there was an expression of unruffled repose upon it, as calm as the glint of stars in a still lake. Mrs. Lenox's look was curiously incredulous, scornful, and wistful, together; it ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... not! One of the biggest positions in England!" he exclaimed, in a tone of scornful irritation. With these words he rose ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... gayly chatting over the impromptu breakfast, when the details of these last stormy days at Delhi were described. "I cannot make it all out. She is certainly his legitimate daughter. He is crafty, covetous, miserly, and yet he lives in a scornful splendor here. Both my sister and myself look forward to learning the whole story through my visit here. Of course, on our arrival, Nadine and myself wondered not at the gloomy solitude of the marble house. But the affronts to society, the practical ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... scornful tone he used when referring to those whose walk in life was not so practical as ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... the same class at home, and in the colonies, the laughing, careless faces of the Hawaiian women have the effect upon me of a perpetual marvel. But the expression generally has little of the courteousness, innocence, and childishness of the negro physiognomy. The Hawaiians are a handsome people, scornful and sarcastic-looking even with their mirthfulness; and those who know them say that they are always quizzing and mimicking the haoles, and that they give everyone a nickname, founded ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... scornful is one of the special dangers of this age. Pride, presumption, and scorn are closely linked together, and are far indeed from the mind which was in CHRIST JESUS. This spirit often shows itself in the present day ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... reply, she hesitated an instant and over her features, which looked as if they had been flattened by a blow, there came an expression which was half scornful, half inviting, yet so little personal that it might have been worn by one of her treetop ancestors while he looked down from his sheltering boughs on a superior species of the jungle. The chance effect of light and shadow on a grey rock was hardly ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... roastin dere in de coals on de hearth en if us belly sets up a growlin twixt meals, us just rakes a 'tatoe out de ashes en breaks it open en makes out on dat. My God, child, I think bout how I been bless dat I ain' never been noways scornful bout eatin chitlins. Yes, mam, when I helps up dere to de house wid hog killin, Mr. Moses, he does always say for me to carry de chitlin home to make me en Koota a nice pot ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... still of a mind to go, too. You see, Auntie was scared almost out of her boots when she heard there was prospect of war in Graustark, just as though a tiny little war like that could make any difference away up in Russia—hundreds of thousands of miles away—" (with a scornful wave of the hand)—"and then I just made Auntie say she'd go to St. Petersburg in April—a whole month sooner than she expected to go in the ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and enormous theatrical barmaids dressed up in outrageous imitation of Alsatian peasants—yet the fixed French colour seemed all the stronger for these specks of something else. All day long and all night long troops of dusty, swarthy, scornful little soldiers went plodding through the streets with an air of stubborn disgust, for German soldiers look as if they despised you, but French soldiers as if they despised you and themselves even more than you. It is a part, I suppose, ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... better condense one theology and two civilizations. The Latin mind is particularly capable of this sort of excellence. Tacitus alone could furnish a hundred examples. It goes with the power of satirical and bitter eloquence, a sort of scornful rudeness of intelligence, that makes for the core of a passion or of a character, and affixes to it a more or less scandalous label. For in our analytical zeal it is often possible to condense and abstract too much. Reality is more fluid and elusive than reason, ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... hearthstone bare of life and love, still striven hard for strength to say, "It is the Lord! let Him do what seemeth to Him good"—and sometimes striven in vain, until the kindly Light returned? If through all these dark waters the scornful reviewer have passed clear, refined, free from stain,—with a soul that has never in all its agonies cried "lama sabachthani,"—still, even then let him pray with the Publican rather ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... were Kennedy and the recaptured, half recalcitrant Pete; the latter turned state's evidence. Kennedy told how he had wandered down into the flats after "the few dhrinks" that made him think scornful of Sioux; of his encounter with Eagle Wing, his rescue by Field and a girl who spoke Sioux like a native. He thought it was little Fawn Eyes when he heard her speak, and until he heard this lady; then he understood. He had been pledged to secrecy ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... of youth and riot As yet no grief has marred thy quiet, Thou haply throw'st a scornful eye at The Hermit's prayer: But if Thou hast a cause to sigh at Thy fault, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... was the older woman's answer. "Your uncle and I was good friends once; we haven't seen each other so often of late years, but that ain't changed my feelin's. Now you must go home and rest. Don't let any of these"—with a rather scornful glance at Josiah Badger and Ezekiel and the Reverend Absalom—"these Job's comforters bother you. Nat, you see that they let ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... old enough to be," replied the mermaid; "and to speak of that being her own hair!" she added with a scornful laugh, as she rearranged her own luxuriant tresses with characteristic grace, a comb, and ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... and of the ridicule, infinitely more painful to him, with which his wife's social splendour was bespattered. He remembered well the attempt which Mr. Quintus Slide had made to obtain an entrance into his house, and his own scornful rejection of that gentleman's overtures. He knew,—no man knew better,—the real value of that able Editor's opinion. And yet every word of it was gall and wormwood to him. In every paragraph there was a scourge which hit him on the raw and opened wounds which he could show ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Martin's scornful laugh, forced and hard, drove the happiness from Shandon's eyes and a quick hot flush into ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... and went white as the lace of her cloak. Then she hugged the kiddie clost to her, standing straight and queenly, her eyes ablaze, her lips moist, and red, and scornful. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... still believed that as saviors of the Union they had a prescriptive right to the government. During the campaign, Eugene Field, the famous Western poet, had given a typical expression of this sentiment in some scornful verses ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... of saints and sages, how they connect this life with endless stages beyond, how they look for the same dignity in all action, the same motive in every companion; I see what they have signified by heaven, a state wherein the best loved is the best: but we must not be scornful, or miss to-day the common delight of living, the moderate hopes of the healthy multitude. For no exceptional joy is so wonderful as the universality of joy, the love of life under every burden and stroke. The beginning of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... On the present occasion, he did not heed the piteous pleadings of the disappointed boatmen, nor Sobrina's explanations, nor Can Grande's arguments. But when the whole five of us fixed upon him our mild and scornful eyes, something within him gave way. He felt a little bit of the moral pressure of Boston, and feebly broke down, saying, "You better do as you like, then," and so the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... principle of existence, the one reality in the universe, and all else is mere appearance. History is a record of turmoil and wretchedness, and the world and life essentially evil. High moral earnestness and great literary genius are shown in his graphic and scornful pictures of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... so Ju will have to give hers, or you'd better borrow Miss Bat's frisette," added Mabel, with a scornful laugh. ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... coast Representatives insisted upon exclusion of Asiatics, in the face of serious admonitions of the Secretary of State that such a course would cause international friction; the labor members were scornful in their denunciation of "the pauper and criminal classes" of Europe. The traditional liberal sympathies of the American people found but few champions, so completely had the change been wrought in the thirty years since the Federal Government ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... the doorway of the 'Nave d'Oro,' the people struggling with each other lest they should lose the sight as he passed through the Piazza, and suddenly there came a voice,—cold, and scornful, and low, but no man lost the words,—'Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosticators stand up and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee!' The people stopped their pushing and looked aghast to ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... followed. Her skirts were drawn up almost to the knees and pinched closely about her grey-stockinged legs. He gallantly turned away and pretended to be studying the house across the road. Presently he felt his ears burning; he turned to meet the onslaught of her scornful, convicting eyes. ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... moved round the counter and with scornful finger-tips took up the tiny wreckage of a great hope. The gold was twisted and bruised, the little pearls were loose in their places. All at once she felt a horrid pain in her throat. . ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... turning a fine, but scornful eye upon me, "I have never cared for any man in the world except ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... was a trough, but——' and Philip was about to describe the group of roses and columbines he had made for the Squire's chimney-piece, but was interrupted by a scornful laugh from the foreman. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Her scornful indifference only filled him with a more furious desire to triumph over it; he had felt so secure of her that morning, and now she had placed this immeasurable distance between them. He had never felt the full power of her beauty till then, as she stood there with that haughty pose of ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... times may nevertheless be giving a demonstration of the thing we are most interested in conserving—the durability and persistence of the family. And so the social worker who is enabled by experience or imagination to enter into the real meaning of family life is neither scornful nor amused when Mrs. Finnegan is found, on the morning when her case against Finnegan is to come up in the domestic relations court, busily washing and ironing his other shirt in order that he may make a proper appearance and not disgrace the family ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... what about the maid? Fancy bringing a maid! Nora's sentiments on the subject were extremely scornful. However Connie had simply taken it for granted, and she had been housed somehow. Nora climbed up an attic stair and looked into a room which had a dormer window in the roof, two strips of carpet on the boards, a bed, a washing-stand, a painted chest ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... altogether to suspect this wholesale denunciation; for they will observe that our author is convicted out of his own context. They will remark how he repels an inconvenient question of Tischendorf by a scornful reference to 'the frivolous character of the only criticism in which they [Eusebius and the other Christian Fathers] ever indulged [167:1].' Yet they will remember at the same time to have read in this very ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... thing. I saw a shop in Plymouth once with young women by the dozen sittin' at desks, and when they pulled a string little balls came rollin' towards them over on their heads like the stars in heaven, all full of cash; and they'd open one o' these balls and hand you out your change just as calm and scornful as if they were angels and you the dirt beneath their feet. You can't think how I longed to be one o' them and behave like that. But the two things didn't seem to ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... had given a somewhat scornful sniff at first; but when grandma praised his father, the young man thought better of the matter, and regarded the flowers with more respect as he asked, "Which is ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... time to you; come back safe to us. You shall have a great homecoming," shouted the Admiral. "There, another cheer, lads; he is going to fight for his country," and amidst wild shouting Trevanion entered the carriage, while only looks of derision and scornful glances ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... swiftly, but evenly onward, while behind him fell the measured tread of Hal and his companions. Arrived at the pier, instead of crossing over by the ferry, the stranger unloosed a small boat, and springing into it, seized the oars, turning back a half scornful, half merry glance at his pursuers. Hal was not to be outwitted thus. He quickly procured a boat, and the three soon overtook the stranger. They rowed silently along, not a word spoken from either boat, the oars falling musically upon the waves, darkness still brooding over ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... went, it was precisely equal. But the fighting was a farce. For behind the three small armies with which Wayne's small army was engaged lay the great sea of the allied armies, which looked on as yet as scornful spectators, but could have broken all four armies by ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... was less an evil than an amusement, after all. It was rather a serious matter to hear the poet's denunciation of the railway, and to read his well-known sonnets on the desecration of the Lake region by the unhallowed presence of commonplace strangers; and it was truly painful to observe how the scornful and grudging mood spread among the young, who thought they were agreeing with Wordsworth in claiming the vales and lakes as a natural property for their enlightened selves. But it was so unlike Mrs. Wordsworth, with her kindly, cheery, generous turn, to say that a green field, with buttercups, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... them when I go past," said the other, elevating her scornful little nose; it was ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... two about the catastrophe. "Scandalous sort of bungle," he pronounced it, being alike ignorant of the strength of the rapids, and fain, as an honest soldier of Haviland's army, to take a discrediting view of anything done by Amherst's. He waxed very scornful indeed. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his reward, he demanded the valuable drinking-cups, whereupon with scornful and mocking words the lady who was the leader of the band fixed on his breast the hump she had taken from Friedel. Immediately the clock struck one, and all disappeared. The poor man's rage was boundless, for he found himself now saddled with two humps. He became ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... inquiry until it had made possible the great victories of Darwin and Huxley and Wallace. If we take Macaulay at the beginning of the epoch and Huxley at the end of it, we shall find that they had much in common. They were both square-jawed, simple men, greedy of controversy but scornful of sophistry, dead to mysticism but very much alive to morality; and they were both very much more under the influence of their own admirable rhetoric than they knew. Huxley, especially, was much more a literary than a scientific man. It ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Sir Kay, thou scornful wight?' Quoth Kay, 'Nay, by my troth! What noble dame would kiss a knight That kissed so foul ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... own heathen religion, he set himself to destroy all other forms of faith. 'I am king; all my subjects shall think as I do,' he said. He was told that the Jews believed in only one God, but he cried with a scornful laugh, 'Yes, but I will ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... scornful reply. "I poured a cup of coffee down Dad's collar and burned his neck—oh, I didn't do it on purpose, Thomas Catt! 'Twas really his fault, for he joggled my elbow just as I was reaching up to set it ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... ship, but must needs entice us for'ard, one man at a time, upon the pretence that fire had broken out in the hold. Ugh! I don't envy Bainbridge his crew of bold buccaneers—not a little bit!" and with a scornful laugh he swaggered out on deck, followed by ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... nothing more than to bring up a people who would be content with amusements, and not ask after their rights or think too closely how they were governed. 'Gild the dome of the Invalides,' was Napoleon's scornful prescription, when he heard the Parisian population were discontented. They gilded it, and the people forgot to talk about anything else. They were a childish race, educated from the cradle on spectacle and show, and by the sight of their eyes could they be governed. The people of Boston, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... insolent and encroaching. A burly Englishman or stolid German will not hesitate to turn a timid lady out of her seat; and if ladies have no gentlemen with them, they may be insulted by rude staring or scornful looks from women provided with escorts or a little more finely dressed. All these causes of disturbance are escaped among the third class, where the utmost deference is always shown ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... secret societies the humble man may be a chief and director—the ostensible leader but a puppet moved by unseen hands. Never mind who was chief, or who was second. Never mind my age. It boots not to tell it: why shall I expose myself to your scornful incredulity—or reply to your questions in words that are familiar to you, but which yet you cannot understand? Words are symbols of things which you know, or of things which you don't know. If you don't know them, to speak is idle." (Here ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... comical!" and the silver laugh was a little scornful. "To think of Olive's stealing any girl's lover! She, who will probably never have one in ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... up she's pattin' down some of the red puffs that makes the back of her head look like a burnin' oil tank, and she swings around languid and scornful to see who it is that dares butt in on her presence. All the way she recognizes him is by a little lift ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... a dumpling pot." Solomon cocked his head and stared Hetty down. She paused at the foot of the backporch steps and threw the rooster a final remark. "You don't do any better than this you're liable to wind up in that pot yourself." Solomon gave a scornful cluck. "Better still, I'll get me a young rooster in here and take over your job." Solomon let out a squawk and took out at a dead run, herding three hens before him towards the ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... have seemed to be and the men they prove. Browning in his earlier days had gloried in these moments of disclosure; now they served to emphasise the normal illusion. "Ah me!" sounds the note of the proem to the second series, scornful and sad:— ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... to make her laugh sound brave like Cousin Ann's, which always seemed so scornful of being afraid. As a matter of fact, she was beginning to fear that they HAD made the wrong turn, and she was not quite sure that she could find the way home. But she put this out of her mind and walked along very fast, peering ahead into the dusk. "Oh, it hasn't anything to do with wolves," ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... of the charter had necessarily separated him from Gamba and the advanced liberals. He knew that the hunchback, ever scornful of expediency, charged him with disloyalty to the people; but such charges could no longer wound. The events following the Duke's birthday had served to crystallise the schemes of the little liberal group, and they now formed a campaign of active opposition to the government, attacking ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... anger of Poseidon, at last reaches his native island, but finds his wife beset, his youthful son insulted, and his substance plundered by a troop of insolent suitors; he is forced to appear as a wretched beggar, and to endure in his own person their scornful treatment; but finally, by the interference of Athene coming in aid of his own courage and stratagem, he is enabled to overwhelm his enemies, to resume his family position, and to recover his property. The return of several other Grecian chiefs ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... came from under an old oak, the only one on the hill-side of pines, and was in a faded black calico. He scarcely took in at first that it was Vashti, she was so changed. He had always thought of her as he last saw her that evening in pink, with her white throat and her scornful eyes. She was older now than she was then; looked more a woman and taller; and her throat if anything was whiter than ever against her black dress; her face was whiter too, and her eyes darker and larger. At least, they opened ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... our age once visited upon Browning, whose mind is slowly becoming recognized as one of the rich-gold minds of our century. Witness the sport over Ruskin's "Munera Pulveris," and the scornful reception given Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." Now that a few years have passed, those who once reviled are teaching their children the pathway to the graves of the great. The harshness of the world's treatment of its greatest teachers makes one of the most pathetic chapters in history. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... though the critic's scornful eye Condemn his faltering lay, And though with heartless apathy, The cold world turn away— And envy strive with secret aim, To blast and dim ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... cut the connection with the entire family, treating Miss Ward with the most distant and supercilious bows on the unpleasantly numerous occasions of meeting her in the street, and contriving to be markedly scornful in his punctilious civility to Henry Ward when they met at the hospital. His very look appeared a sarcasm, to the fancy of the Wards; and he had a fashion of kindly inquiring after Leonard, that seemed to both a ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... occupied with the girl. Her image haunted him; all his manhood was subdued and mocked by her scornful witchery. From the infinitudes of reverie, her eyes drew near and gazed upon him—eyes gleaming with mischief, keen with curiosity; a look now supercilious, now softly submissive; all the varieties of expression caught in susceptible moments, and stored by a too faithful ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... away from her, like an autumn flower in the frosts of winter; and she, as if she had been but a flower, did not seem to care. What was life worth, when it had not strength to desire even its own continuance? Heartless she returned from the grave, careless of George's mute attentions, not even scornful of her aunt's shallow wail over the uncertainty of life and all things human,—so indifferent to the whole misery that she walked straight up to the room, hers once more, from which the body had just been carried, and which, for so many many weary weeks, had been ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... had money and cattle he would pay me. "Go, then, and bring me the money; till you do so, don't come to me again." Off he went. Days passed and nothing was done to repair the mischief. Meantime, the scandal was the talk of the small town, and the scornful things said were so keen that Liu, my assistant, got quite wild. He was indignant that I did not go to law with the man, who all the while was swelling about on a donkey bought with the money he stole from me, and using the most ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... sat side by side on the big rock, just where they had sat on that June day which seemed to Candace so long ago. Gertrude was no longer critical or scornful. She sat a little farther back than Candace, and from time to time glanced at her side-face with a sort of puzzled expression. Cannie, happening to turn, caught the look; it embarrassed her a little, and to hide the embarrassment she began ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... had one or two difficulties which may have been vanquished. Your uncle will bear me out in this," answered Geoffrey, who would have spoken more freely had he not feared the girl's keenness. Helen's face, which was at first scornful, grew ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... his companion, with a scornful, though nervous, laugh. "Find the marriage certificate—find the witnesses who saw them married, the clergyman who performed the ceremony, the church register where their names are recorded, ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the instrument of nature, to balance matters between the sexes. The cruelty of scornful mistresses shall be return'd; the slighted maid shall grow into an imperious gallant, and reward her undoer with a big ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... thrust or a cross-bow shot killed the Infant; a common soldier cut off his head and carried it to Affonso in the hope of knighthood. Almada, who fought till he could not stand from loss of blood, died with his friend. Hurling his sword from him, he threw himself on the ground, with a scornful, "Take your fill of me, Varlets," and was cut ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... blindest of men!—I prefer the simplicity of his mind to the false enlightenment of yours; and if I had to tell his life, it would be more pleasant for me to bring out its attractive and affecting aspects than it is creditable to you to depict the abject condition to which the scornful rigor of your social ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... with an abrupt and mutilated curtsey, which Catherine, returned with an air rather of defiance than obeisance. Outside the door Margaret Van Eyck found Reicht conversing with a pale girl on crutches. Margaret Van Eyck was pushing by them with heightened colour, and a scornful toss intended for the whole family, when suddenly a little delicate hand glided timidly into hers, and looking round she saw two dove-like eyes, with the water in them, that sought hers gratefully and at the same time imploringly. The old lady read this wonderful ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Chatterton, paying scant attention to the rest of the information. Then she gave a scornful cackle. "Haven't you gotten over that ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... of scornful pride Casts forth his eyes abroad, But with humility and awe, Still walks ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... says J. Bayard, shruggin' his shoulders scornful. "The poor devil! I didn't see what good ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... pleasure; we will have it so. Lan. Your grace doth well to place him by your side, For nowhere else the new earl is so safe. E. Mor. What man of noble birth can brook this sight? Quam male conveniunt!— See, what a scornful look the peasant casts! Pem. Can kingly lions fawn on creeping ants? War. Ignoble vassal, that, like Phaeton, Aspir'st unto the guidance of the sun! Y. Mor. Their downfall is at hand, their forces down: We will not thus be fac'd and over-peer'd. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... never worked too hard that she was aware of; but—she had always worked, and never done anything else. No lover had ever looked into her eyes or taken her hand tenderly. Not likely! she would say to herself with a scornful sniff, eyeing her homely face in the glass. Men weren't such ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... outward manifestations of impatience were confined for the most part to dissatisfied glances at the hard cloudless blue sky to windward, as it met their gaze morning after morning when they came on deck, to shrugs of the shoulders whenever the subject happened to be mentioned, and to scornful, sarcastic, or despondent allusions to the proverbial longevity and obstinacy of easterly winds in general. Except Mr Forester Dale, and he, I regret to say, made himself a perfect nuisance to everybody on board by his snappishness and irascibility. ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... were more of an offensive than of a defensive character. In several prettily prepared handbooks the voters were implored by the Austrians not to be so old-fashioned as to plump for a monarchy when they had such a chance of becoming republicans; one could almost see the writer of these scornful phrases stop to wipe his over-heated brow after having pushed back his old Imperial and Royal headgear. You might imagine that the Austrians in their deplorable economic condition would have avoided this topic; on the contrary, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... rose which was on both the obverse and reverse of the coin. Beaumont and Fletcher, in the 'Scornful Lady,' show the difference between the penny and three-farthing piece, and inform us of a knavish trick then practised, to impose upon ignorant people the lesser as the greater coin. Lovelass, speaking of Morecraft, the usurer, says: 'He had a bastard, his own toward issue, whipt and thin cropt, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... bannere the Moore did rear, ere many days were gone, In foul disdain of Charlemagne, by the church of good Saint John; In the midst of merry Paris, on the bonny banks of Seine, Shall never scornful Paynim that pennon ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... running out of the Ark to meet me. I was secretly relieved. Mr. Rollin had been watching me narrowly; his lips curled, and his eyes flashed with a half angry, half scornful light. He cast an unloving glance at the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... he admired them. "If you feel that way you surely aren't under the spell of that wicked witch Independence that Mary Rose talks of." There was nothing scornful in his laugh. It held so little scorn and so much admiration ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... Empire began most brilliantly, but there was no lack of morose criticism. The Faubourg Saint Germain was for the most part hostile and scornful. It looked upon the high dignitaries of the Empire and on the Emperor himself as upstarts, and all the men of the old rgime who went over to him they branded as renegades. The title of "Citizen" was suppressed and that of "Monsieur" restored, after ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... was she the independent woman, censorious and scornful, but a silly, timid little thing. Though she condemned herself savagely for school-girlishness, she could do nothing to arrest the swift change in her. The fact was, she was abashed, partly by the legendary importance of the renowned Batchgrew, but more by his physical presence. His mere ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... looking at him with a scornful smile, "you are, all of you, afraid of my telling what I know; but now that the way is clear, I will so far relieve you as to say, that nothing which any of you have told me shall ever pass my lips again. The knowledge that I have gained or may gain by other means is my own property, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... which surprised and irritated his partner. This was honesty. Nothing would induce him to steal, or even to share stolen booty; hunger, threats, bitterly sarcastic speeches were alike in vain, and at last Barney's scornful amusement at the "boy without a carikter" began to be mingled with a certain respect; not that he was the least inclined to follow his example and give up pilfering himself, but he thought it was "game" of the ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... another scornful laugh and a flight of arrows from every Indian in the two opposing canoes. By a miracle Phil again escaped unhurt, although no less than five arrows lodged in the puma-skin tunic which he was wearing, and the sail of the canoe was literally riddled with ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... a scornful wonder Men see her sore opprest, By schisms rent asunder, By heresies distrest; Yet saints their watch are keeping, Their cry goes up, "How long?" And soon the night of weeping Shall ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... to the rescue of his darling, and Captain March—out of his seat in a second—was unfastening the straps and anxiously extricating Diana from the passenger's perch. I couldn't help feeling ashamed before all the people—scornful or sympathetic, who were looking on—that my sister had shown herself a coward; but I was sorry for her, too. She had quite collapsed, and lay in Father's arms as Captain March unfastened her helmet. I wasn't mean enough to think of rejoicing because, in taking my ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... by her Sicilian Majesty, and pressed by the unaffected eloquence of her ladyship, was too powerful to be opposed. His lordship could offer nothing sufficiently substantial against such persuasive wisdom; and, being unable longer to reason, he could no longer continue to resist. Should the scornful insolence, that is ever awakened, in low and vicious minds, by even the slightest mention of virtuous deeds, endeavour to interpose the mean malignity of it's cold suspicions on hearing this recital; let the humbler bosom, that cherishes more generous sentiments, reflect but for a moment, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... souls this mill we fed, That ground the grain for Slavery's bread; With cringing men, and grovelling deeds, We dwarfed our land to Slavery's needs; Till all the scornful nations hissed, To see us ground ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... try To make me graceful in thine eye; Nor sing the merry roundelay, To cheer thee at the close of day. Yet ne'ertheless tho' we must part, I'll bear thee still upon my heart; And oft' I'll fill the ruddy glass, To toast my lovely scornful lass. Far hence, upon a foreign shore, Still will I keep an open door, And still my little fortune share With all who ever breath'd my native air. And who thy beauteous face hath seen, Or ever near thy dwelling been, Shall push about ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... red of her cheeks had fled and left them clear olive. One might have thought the scornful eyes had absorbed all the fire of ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... be here soon, though. I told him that he must let me go on ahead, to give due notice of his coming, or he would have arrived, and taken you by surprise. He is a gallant-looking knight; a true don of the old school. But I say, Hilda, don't treat him to the scornful glances you cast at me, or he ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... chair. Her brown eyes surveyed her brother from between heavy chestnut lashes, and just now they were very haughty eyes. Her curving, crimson lips were scornful. "I find it difficult to believe," she observed, "that a boy whom I particularly detested, one of the most awkward, solemn-faced, uninteresting boys I ever saw in my life, can have blossomed into such a wonder. As for Ridgeway Jordan, I like him very much. He may be a society man—which ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... retreateth back again, and paleness hath hold of his cheeks, even so did godlike Alexandros for fear of Atreus' son shrink back into the throng of lordly Trojans. But Hector beheld and upbraided him with scornful words: "Ill Paris, most fair in semblance, thou deceiver woman-mad, would thou hadst been unborn and died unwed. Yea, that were my desire, and it were far better than thus to be our shame and looked at askance of all men. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... my eyes for a moment in a glance towards Suzee and saw her make a scornful gesture at the prostrate figure. The gold bracelets on her arm below the yellow silk sleeve shewed in the action a contrast to the old, worn clothing of the poorest material that ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... mild form, the suggestion annoyed the old man. He flung it aside with scornful gesture, and turned to leave the office. "Tell the gentleman to go to Zermatt and ask in the street if Christian Stampa the guide would throw himself on ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... or value, the attainment of which demands some postponement or some privation of the fulfillment of immediate desire. The man who compromises his political ideals in the attainment of his personal success, is a scornful figure morally. And we estimate more highly the character of an individual who can persist in the strenuous attainment of an ideal in the face of the counter-inclination of passing pleasures. In its emphasis on ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... measure of sacrifice was no deterrent. She was in a mood in which self-immolation seemed the natural penalty of her mistakes. She was not without the knowledge that money could buy the help she purposed to obtain by direct intervention; but her inherited instincts, scornful of roundabout methods, urged her to pay the price in something more personal than coin. It replied in some degree to her self-accusation, it assuaged the bitterness of her self-condemnation, to know that she was to be the active agent in putting right that which her errors of judgment ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... secrets, for she is at once a virgin and an experienced woman! How can a man remain cold, like St. Anthony, before such powerful sorcery, and have the courage to remain faithful to the good principles represented by a scornful wife, whose face is always stern, whose manners are always snappish, and who frequently refuses to be caressed? What husband is stoical enough to resist such fires, such frosts? There, where you see ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... she echoed, scornful of all deceit. "Surely I heard shots as I came through the orchard?" "One fire has been exchanged," he reluctantly admitted. "And Captain Wayne ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... had been eloquent; and now driven to bay, had been unequivocal enough in his declarations, his determinations, and his promises. The Diva had shown herself a Diva at every point. She had wept, she had smiled, she had been scornful, she had been suppliant, she had been repellent, she had been loving! And in every mood she had seemed to the fascinated eyes of the Marchese more lovely than in that which preceded it. Finally, she had conquered. Instead of coming away from ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... inconsistent life, obviously does not exclude the further belief that deliberate heresy is on the same level with deliberate profligacy. But the clear sense of what is substantial, the power of piercing through accidents and conditions to the real kernel of the matter, the scornful disregard of all entanglement of apparent contradictions and inconsistencies, enable him to bring out the lesson which he finds before him with overpowering force. He sees before him immense mercy, immense condescension, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... parties is something deeper and more fundamental than anything that in England is called difference of opinion. This feeling accounts for much that sometimes perplexes even the sympathetic English observer, and moves the hostile partisan to scornful criticism. The ordinary Protestant farmer or artisan of Ulster is by nature as far as possible removed from the being who is derisively nicknamed the "noisy patriot" or the "flag-wagging jingo." If the National ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... YOURSELF wish me to leave you for him?" she cried with a scornful look and a proud smile. Never before had ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... What a serene disdain is in his smile! He seems to gaze into the very depths of your soul. I see that there is a curtain to his shrine; and I shall take leave to draw it." With these words she went to the scornful divinity, and shut his offending eyes behind the folds ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... tingles with the thought of how, if the opportunity were again mine, I should reply to such an imperious mandate. If men said and did at the crucial moment all the wise, strong things that occur to them afterward, this would be a different world. The brave and scornful words I should have uttered I choked back, and, as countless others had done before me, I bowed my head and—submitted. Conscience and honesty slunk sadly into the background as I flaunted off on the arms of policy and discretion, pirouetting to ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... with a scornful smirk. 'Well, I look in at their tertulia at least twice a week. But you seem interested in the family—sweet upon the senorita, eh! Admire your ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... the lesson of the year 1000—for then, too, people had anticipated the end. The star was no star—mere gas—a comet; and were it a star it could not possibly strike the earth. There was no precedent for such a thing. Common sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. That night, at seven-fifteen by Greenwich time, the star would be at its nearest to Jupiter. Then the world would see the turn things would take. The master mathematician's grim warnings were treated by many as ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells |
