"Sneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before I could trust myself to speak respectfully of any privileged class or person who had not distinguished himself in some good way and therefore earned the right to public respect. There was still the sneer behind for mere pedigree—"he is nothing, has done nothing, only an accident, a fraud strutting in borrowed plumes; all he has to his account is the accident of birth; the most fruitful part of his family, as with the potato, lies underground." I wondered that intelligent men could live ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... Mr. Jackson," the sheriff remarked with a sneer, for he was out of temper at the ill success of the day's work, "that he has already laid hands on your son. It seems to me quite as likely that he will lay hands on you as you ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... seal forever. It can be explained, perhaps, on the ground that it did not at the time possess that importance which we have been taught to give it; though roughly, thus, we do away with the poetry of it, to be sure. Let Voltaire, whose function it was to deny, enjoy his feeble sneer, that "the difficulty of pronouncing those respectable names"—to wit, Melchtad, and Stauffager, and Valtherfurst, to say nothing of Grisler—"injures their celebrity." Neither are we to conceal the fact, that it is doubted, if not denied, that there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... thing for our English nobs that their slips of sons have taken to marrying young women of the stamp of Maidie Trevail and Gwennie Harker— or Lil; keen-witted young women full of the joy of life, with strong frames, beautiful hair and fine eyes, and healthy pink gums and big white teeth. Sneer at the Pandora girls! Great Scot, it's my belief that the Pandora girls'll be the salvation of the aristocracy in this country in the ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... A sneer from Jake; but when Hammersmith, crossing to the door I've just mentioned, opened it and let in Huldah, this token of bravado gave way to a very different expression and he exclaimed half ironically, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... the democratic class were pressing one of their frequent schemes for free land, Southerners and their sympathetic Northern henchmen were furthering a scheme that aimed at the purchase of Cuba. From the impatient sneer of a Southerner that the Northerners sought to give "land to the landless" and the retort that the Southerners seemed equally anxious to supply "niggers to the niggerless," it can be seen that American history is sometimes ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... my boyhood, Sylvia!" cried her father, and for the first time his voice became embittered. "I was brought up by a respectable father. Yes, respectable," he said, with a sneer. "Everything about us was respectable. We lived in a respectable house in a respectable neighborhood, and twice every Sunday we went to church and listened to a respectable clergyman. But!—Well, here's a chapter out of the inside. ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... would have fallen out if it hadn't been for Clump-clump. She was enough to set mountains to fighting. Ah! the Boches knew her well now, they could understand how much the Lorilleuxs must suffer. And whenever she passed beneath the doorway they all affected to sneer at her. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... pikes, movements were impossible, and an army could no more have marched across country than across Chesapeake bay. Closet warriors in cozy studies, with smooth macadamized roadways before their doors, sneer at the idea of military movements being arrested by mud. I apprehend that these gentlemen have never served in a bad country during the rainy season, and are ignorant of the fact that, in his Russian campaign, the elements proved too strong ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... hatred! What a power of misery, from fretting to madness, lies in that mean but mighty word—Temper! The face, to whose meek beauty smiles seemed native during the days of virgin love, shows now but a sneer, a scowl, a frown, or a glare of scorn. The shape of those features is still fine—the eye of the gazelle—the Grecian nose and forehead—the ivory teeth, so small and regular—and thin line of ruby lips breathing ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... flight sublime Exalt the mind, by tenderest pathos' art, Dissolve, in purifying tears, the heart, Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime; The fond illusions of the youth and maid, At which so many world-formed sages sneer, When by thy altar-lighted torch displayed, Our natural religion must appear. All things in thee tend to one polar star, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... March 18th. The sneer at the godly man for his imperfections is ill-judged. A blade is a small thing. At first it grows very near the earth. It is often soiled and crushed and downtrodden. But it is a living thing,. . . and "it doth not yet appear ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... forefathers. These are days in which we are too apt to sneer at those who have gone before us; to look back on our forefathers as very ignorant, prejudiced, old-fashioned people, whose opinions have been all set aside by the ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... one," said he, advancing with a half-sneer upon his lip, "thou wilt not too harshly blame the violence of love." He attempted to take her hand ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... person, except Rollitt, was Dangle. He tried at first to brazen it out, and came down to the field with a sneer on his face to look, so he said, "at the good boys exercising themselves." But the juniors soon routed ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... the time. Had Mr Paton sent Walter out of the room before; had he at the end said, "Evson, you are not yourself to-day, and I forgive you," Walter would have been in a moment as docile and as humble as a child. But as it was, he left the room quite coolly, with a sneer on his lips, and banged the door; yet the next moment, when he found himself in the court alone, unsupported by the countenance of those who enjoyed his rebelliousness, he seated himself on a bench in the courtyard, hung his head on his ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... your opinion," said Anne of Austria, with a sneer and biting her lips with rage, "that yesterday's riot, which to-day is already a rebellion, to-morrow may ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not say that," answered he, with a half sneer—and then, "Farewell, friend Leigh—farewell, gallant Dick Grenville. God send I see thee Lord High Admiral when I come home. And yet, why should I come home? Will you ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... is a cheap sneer, which speaks perpetually of the hollowness of so-called society, as if rich people could not make and did not make as honest friendships as the poor and middle class; but, at the same time, few would deny how much of what would be such a good thing is disfigured by ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... treated as its only master. If Augustus desired to do anything by "post-obits," let him ruin himself after his own fashion. "It is not very likely that Augustus can raise money by post obits, circumstanced as the property is," he had written to Mr. Grey, with a conveyed sneer and chuckle as to the success of his own villany. It was as though he had declared that the money-lenders had been too well instructed as to what tricks Mr. Scarborough could play with his property to ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... sneer. "He's a very good sort and I'm grateful to him; but it doesn't follow that I ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... in our public worship where congregations almost invariably betray an awkward embarrassment, simply because there is nothing to tell them whether they are expected to stand or to sit or to kneel. It is easy to sneer at such points as trifles and to make sport of those who call attention to them; but if it is worth our while to have ritual worship at all it is also worth our while to make the directions as to how people are to behave ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... escape, nor my accomplice either. Out with it, and at once. With a show of regretful resignation I gave in. For once I would break my rule and "tell on" my informant. I thought I detected a slight sneer on the Doctor's lip as he said that was well; for he was a gentleman, every inch of him, and I know he hated me for telling. The ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... has, out of spite because he was forced to come; and when we got back he would be one of the first to grin and sneer at us. I want to run back as fast as I can, but you'll ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... them that they could not keep away from her. "Damn!" they said under their breath, and rushed to her. If rumour is to be believed, Sir Harry Pippinworth proposed to her in a fury brought on by the sneer with which she had surveyed his family portraits. I know nothing more of Sir Harry, except that she called him Pips, which ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... important than that. It's a host of silly, insignificant things that no one notices except yourself ... a change of expression, eyes shining-lips curled in a sneer-the deep import of a phrase that is lost! Yet take these things together and they compose the mask of our race ... terrible ... grotesque ... a race that ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... I'd not stay six months in the place. I looked once or twice to Miss Donnehue, so as to be sure I was "getting the note" of the talkee-talkee; but I could see that she didn't take it as a joke, at all. Partly, I think, because there was a bit of a sneer in the way the men were tackling me, and partly because she really believes there is something in this yarn ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... reason for the resolution, and her manner, without being sullen, aggravated her brother into wrath, the effusion of which was a withering sneer. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... judged you well," answered Soa with a sneer; "also you are wise: little work for little wage. Listen now, this is the ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... a triumphant sneer. He turned to Tommy, who was standing near with half a dozen men who had just come out from breakfast. "Here you, Tommy, get a couple of teams ready and all the buffalo robes you need and be ready to start in an hour. ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... zodiac, or as ursa major is like a bear." [99] This last remark of the old mathematician is "a hit, a very palpable hit," at those unpoetical people who catalogue the constellations under all sorts of living creatures' names, implying resemblances, and then "sap with solemn sneer" our myths of ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... if a new light of fear crept into his eyes, his lips belied it in a sneer. "Two of a kind!" he laughed. "So that's the story yuh brought over here, is it? Hell of a lot uh good it'll ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... how wretched and despised all the Irish rebels are here. O'Connor alone is an exception; and this he owes to Talleyrand, to General Valence, and to Madame de Genlis; but even he is looked on with a sneer, and, if he ever was respected in England, must endure with poignancy the contempt to which he is frequently exposed in France. When I was in your country I often heard it said that the Irish were ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... Only at times were there any signs of life—an occasional meteor flash that told of her olden spirit—of her deathless race. Degraded and apathetic as this nation of Helots was, it is not strange that political philosophy, at all times too Sadducean in its principles, should ask, with a sneer, "Could these dry bones live?" The fulness of time has come, and with one gallant sunward bound the "old land" comes forth into the political day to teach these lessons, that Right must always conquer Might in the end—that by a ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... was Alexander Paulvitch immune. A sneer curled his bearded lip as his forefinger closed upon the trigger of his revolver. There was a loud report. A little hole appeared above the heart of the sleeping boy, a little hole about which lay a ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The Yankee gibe and sneer, Till Yankee insolence and pride Know neither shame nor fear; But ready now with shot and steel Their brazen front to mar, We hoist aloft the Bonnie Blue Flag That ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Do not malign or backbite your absent friend. What is friendship worth if the moment the person is out of sight the tongue that has professed affection becomes a poisoned fang, and the lips which gave their warm kiss utter the word of ridicule, or sneer, or aspersion? Better be dumb than have the gift of speech to be used in the miserable idle words, insincerities, and backbitings too common in modern society. Surely something better can be found to talk ...
— Girls: Faults and Ideals - A Familiar Talk, With Quotations From Letters • J.R. Miller
... your own plans, no doubt, and it doesn't trouble you that you are standing in the way of your mother's respectability!" His voice was harsh, his sneer open. "Bless my soul! Is the generosity to be all on my side? Or has this man O'Neil forbidden you ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... perceive on her part any desire to forward it; her behavior was not colder, but more distant than usual, and I believe she avoided my looks for fear of not being able sufficiently to govern her own. The cursed clerk was more vexatious than ever; he even became a wit, telling me, with a satirical sneer, that I should unquestionably make my way among the ladies. I trembled lest I should have been guilty of some indiscretion, and looking at myself as already engaged in an intrigue, endeavored to ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... stood firmly in the place to which he was born and have spoken in a voice which might have been listened to. He might have fought against folly and blindness and lassitude. I deliberately chose privately to sneer at the thought of lifting a hand to serve any thing but the cold fool who was myself. Life passes quickly. It does not turn back." He ended with a short harsh laugh. "This is Fear," he said. "Fear clears a man's mind of rubbish and non-essentials. It is because I am AFRAID that ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... really friendly neighbor, was always offending her—though he was rather nice about inside repairs. "Why do I endure him?" Mrs. Richie said to herself sometimes. Perhaps it was because, in spite of his manners, and his sneer that the world was a mighty mean place to live in, and his joyless way of doing his duty to his little niece, he certainly did see how good and sweet her David was. She reminded herself of this to check her offense at his snub about Mrs. Maitland; ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... chronology, and from unwarranted assumptions and erroneous and incomplete data draws unreliable conclusions. Before this letter of February 24 and the new cumulative evidence of the crisis, there falls to the ground the sneer in Mr. Lodge's question, "if [Webster's] anxiety was solely of a public nature, why did it date from March 7 when, prior to that time, there was much greater cause for alarm than afterwards?" Webster was anxious before the 7th of March, as so many others were, North and South, and his extreme anxiety ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... me that this is a truth which we have great need, my friends, to lay to heart. It is of no great consequence that we should practically confute the impotent old sneer about religion as being a gloomy thing. One does not need to mind much what some people say on that matter. The world would call 'the joy of the Lord' gloom, just as much as it calls 'godly sorrow' gloom. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... his friendship for de Tobar. There were many young gallants about the vice-regal court who, jealous of Alvarado's favor and envious of his merits, had not scrupled in the face of his unknown origin to sneer, to mock, or to slight—so far as it was safe to do either of these things to so brave and able a soldier. Amid these gilded youths de Tobar with noble magnanimity and affection had proved himself Alvarado's staunchest ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... I, with a sarcastic sneer, "at the time that you have been engaged to another woman for years. To one or the other you must acknowledge yourself a scoundrel: I do not, therefore, withdraw my appellation, but repeat it; and as you seem so very patient under injuries, I inform you ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... stories about her—but maybe they're not all true," said Isabel, unable to keep the sneer of malice out of her voice. At that moment Alan's secret contempt for her crystallized into pronounced aversion. He made no reply and they went the rest of the way in silence. At her gate Isabel said, "You haven't been over to see us very ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sneer and a smile, and was turning to obey the order, when a shot from the privateer cut him nearly in two. The other Frenchman, who was close to him, made a ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... fun with myself; to sneer at the coward flesh, so to speak. I used to long for dangers, and when they came upon me I would jeer at and revile the quaking I could not repress. I pushed my shrinking body into peril and exulted in the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... gliding by as tranquilly as if there were not a great war on hand, and still the citizen at home read each morning in his newspaper the stereotyped bulletin, "All quiet on the Potomac;" the phrase passed into a byword and a sneer. By this time, too, to a nation which had not European standards of excellence, the army seemed to have reached a high state of efficiency, and to be abundantly able to take the field. Why did not its commander move? Amid all the drilling and band-playing the troops had been doing hard ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... suspected Harold, and when I told him of my disappointment, for I never kept a thing from him—traitor that he was—he laughed at me for losing my heart to my housekeeper's daughter! I, who, he said, might marry the greatest lady in the land. I could have knocked him down for his sneer at Amy, and I wish now I had, the wretch! He will not marry your daughter, madam; and if he does not I will ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... exclaimed, stamping. '"Yes," one moment; "No," the next. Come, you don't know what you refuse. That old hall is my uncle's own, and he has nobody else to leave it to. As soon as he's dead I shall throw up farming and start as a squire. And now,' he added with a bitter sneer, 'what a fool you are to hang ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Dorothy of her interview with Richard; she appeared to believe that Richard had saved her that labor. There was a kind of sneer in this. Feeling the sneer, Dorothy put no questions; she was willing, in her resentment, to have it understood that Richard had told her. Why should he not?—she who was to be his wife! Dorothy would have been proud to proclaim her troth ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... is merely the sore old bear, who was too stupid to perceive the genius of Pope. The grace and discrimination lavished by Francis Jeffrey over a thousand pages, weigh like a feather beside one sentence about Wordsworth's Excursion, and one tasteless sneer at Charles Lamb. Even the mighty figure of Sainte-Beuve totters at the whisper of the name Balzac. Even Matthew Arnold would have been wiser to have taken counsel with himself before he laughed at Shelley. And the very unimportant but sincere and interesting writer, whose book occupies us to-day, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... correspondents speaks of 'the sneer of one of Johnson's ghastly smiles.' Garrick Corres. i. 334. 'Ghastly smile' is borrowed from Paradise Lost, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... a negro; you would say, madam?" said Robert, with a sneer. "Bertrand of Artois would be annoyed perhaps if I had a title ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... M'Iver's voice had a sneer in every word of it when he answered in a very affected tongue of English he was used to assume when he wished to be at ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... choose to sneer, O, Though deals in lands and stocks you swing, Though handsome as a movie hero, Though wise you ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... means entering into fellowship with Christ, (in a very feeble sense, it is true,) in His broad sympathy with humanity, in His sacrificing love; it means, many times, to have our names cast out as evil, to brave the sneer and ridicule of fashionable society, to be willing to be misunderstood by those nearest and dearest to us; to some it means all this and more; still, with a firm conviction of duty, of being called of God, we come to this ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... the lot among us now, which two shall fight to-morrow;— For armour bright we'll club our mite, and horses we can borrow; 'Twere shame that bards of France should sneer, and German Dichters too, If none of British song might dare ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... shrine: I told him what the world would say, If Stella were unsung to-day: How I should hide my head for shame, When both the Jacks and Robin came; How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer, How Sheridan the rogue would sneer, And swear it does not always follow, That semel'n anno ridet Apollo. I have assur'd them twenty times, That Phoebus help'd me in my rhymes; Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove. But, finding me so dull and dry since, They'll ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... were written. Against this last he had always a particular spite, for he considered it as the grand instrument by which the master maintained his servants in allegiance; and when they could be once brought to sneer at the book, there was an end of submission to the master. Parley had not penetration enough to see his drift. "As to the book, Mr. Flatterwell," said he, "I do not know whether it be true or false; I rather neglect than disbelieve it. I am forced, indeed, to hear it read once a week; but I never ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... it, but it's there. It may be that it couldn't be trampled upon if it wasn't there. But that doesn't make it gentlemanly, that doesn't make it honourable, that doesn't justify throwing a person back upon himself after he has struggled and strived out of himself like a butterfly. The world may sneer at a turnkey, but he's a man—when he isn't a woman, which among female criminals he's expected ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... gun! Why the blazes couldn't you have come home and brought me a bit of peat from the pit? A fine hunter you are! I might as well have married the devil.—And his wife turned from him with a sneer. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... have suppressed his real name, or have taken for granted that Golias was a bona fide surname. On the theory that he knew Golias to be a mere nickname, and was aware that Walter of Lille was the actual satirist, we should have to explain his paragraph by the hypothesis that he chose to sneer at him under his nom de guerre instead of ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... Kakisas; well-favoured, and with a great shock of blue-black hair hanging to his neck. He was quite sprucely dressed in store clothes. His close-set eyes and extremely short upper lip gave him a perpetual sneer. He had the walled look of a bold child caught in mischief. He came up to Stonor and offered his hand with ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... retorted the blind man, with a sneer. "They all do; but a good many will steal for ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... resembled a death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some, little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated me—for I am considered a good artist—and, therefore, when you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and throw it angrily ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... You sneer at everything beautiful. Here in Russia we're more simple. And John's very like a Russian in many ways. Don't you ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... doubts of Montaigne; Julian the Apostate cross-questions Augustine; and Thomas-a-Kempis unrolls his old black letters for all to decipher. Zeno murmurs maxims beneath the hoarse shout of Democritus; and though Democritus laugh loud and long, and the sneer of Pyrrho be seen; yet, divine Plato, and Proclus, and, Verulam are of my counsel; and Zoroaster whispered me before I was born. I walk a world that is mine; and enter many nations, as Mingo Park rested in African cots; I ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the fair Antoinette, And so smiling she look'd and so tender, That our officers, privates, and drummers, All vow'd they would die to defend her. But she cared not for us honest fellows, Who fought and who bled in her wars, She sneer'd at our gallant Rochambeau, And turned Lafayette ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... therefore began mildly to expostulate with him. This gentleness he mistook for coy encouragement; and he would not be diverted from the subject. Perceiving his mistake, I seriously asked him how, using such language to me, he could profess to be my husband's friend? A significant sneer excited my curiosity, and he, supposing this to be my only scruple, took a letter deliberately out of his pocket, saying, 'Your husband's honour is not inflexible. How could you, with your discernment, think it so? Why, he left the room this very day on ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... never happier than when fighting, "I will answer your General with my cannon! I shall teach him that a man of my rank"—with covert sneer at Phips' origin, "is not to be summoned in such rude fashion! Let him do his ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... but, if he can, he raises some spiteful objection. If he can find nothing plausible to say against him, he will seem to know and to suppress something. He will say, "I know what I know; I know more than I'll say;" adding, perhaps, a significant nod or strong expression, a sarcastic sneer or smile, of what he cannot ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... prosperity and strength; but the process itself is resisted, and the nation kept alive and impelled forward, by the purifying, though disturbing forces, which come from the generous sentiments and fervid aspirations of youth. Wise old heads may sneer as much as they please at the idea of heart in politics; but if history teaches anything, it teaches that human progress is possible only because the benevolent instincts of the heart are permanent, while the reasonings of the head are shifting. "When God," says ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... uneasy after his long absence. Though, for that matter, this proved nothing; for, like all wise maidens, Paula never ventured on the game of the eyes with a lover in public; well knowing that every moment of such indulgence overnight might mean an hour's sneer at her expense by the indulged gentleman next day, when weighing womankind by the aid of a cold morning light and ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Majesty's officers shave so close," the pilot answered, with a sort of sneer I did not like. "They commonly send in hands with a ship, when they find it necessary to ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... yet with but doubtful and imperfect success. Paley, with his intuitive sagacity, saw through the difficulty of answering Gibbon by the ordinary arts of controversy; his emphatic sentence, "Who can refute a sneer?" contains as much truth as point. But full and pregnant as this phrase is, it is not quite the whole truth; it is the tone in which the progress of Christianity is traced, in comparison with the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... his knees, but he could not make him pray. And Kedzie fell back from him. She was afraid to pose as a saint worthy of genuflection. Connery re-entered the conflict with a sneer: ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... endeavoured to describe my journey, holding out to him at the same time, as the thing most likely to conciliate him, a watch somewhat larger than that I had bestowed upon my guide. He, however, did not come within arm's length; and when I repeated my signs, he threw back his head with a sort of sneer and uttered a few words in a sharp tone, at which my escort rushed upon and attempted to throw me down. For this, however, I had been long prepared, and striking right and left with my air-gun—for I was determined not to shed blood except ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... charming!' said he, with something between a smile and a sneer. 'David and Jonathan—or, to be more classical and less scriptural, Damon and Pythias—eh?' These papers, then, are from the faithful abroad, the exiles in Holland, ye understand, who are thinking of making a move and of coming over to see King James in his own country with their ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon their stout cobs or bits of half-blood, as the case might be; and, by and by, a spanking gig shoots rapidly ahead of them, driven by a smart-looking servant in murrey-colored livery, who looks back with a sneer of contempt as he wheels round a corner, and leaves the plebeian ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... very good of you to tell me," said Mary. "Thank you. It's so like me! When I'm agitated I become too appallingly absent-minded for words. That's the sort of thing I do. How you must sneer—I mean, laugh ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... lay down the schoolmaster's assistant, and take up another book every bit and grain as good as that, although these folks affect to sneer at it—I mean ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... advertise from now till doomsday, but they will never get a response from him! Let them rake the Susquehanna if they can! Perhaps, deep in its mud, they may find what the fishes have left of him!" she said, with a sneer. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... be a stickler for convention—of the Louis XVI sort more than for the XIX century variety," remarked Dysart with a sneer. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... them. And now I crave another boon, namely, the royal leave to withdraw myself to my own poor cities in the north till such time as the Queen shall say my suit nay or yea. Mayhap,' he added, with a sneer, 'the Queen will be pleased to visit me there, and to bring with her these stranger lords,' and he scowled darkly towards us. 'It is but a poor country and a rough, but we are a hardy race of mountaineers, and there shall be gathered ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... said, a flash in her eyes. "It was an Austrian court. The Count—my husband, I should say—is an Austrian subject. His interests must be protected." She said this with a sneer on her pretty lips. "You see, my father, knowing him now for what he really is, has refused to pay over to him something like a million dollars, still due for the marriage settlement. The Count contends that it is a just and ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... about a dirty old farm-house, but not fit company for riding and driving like any woman as young as I am is entitled to. You never thought that sort of a thing was too frivolous before we married, but now you sneer at it. Well, you just wait till I give you a chance to take me anywhere again. I lowered my pride to ask it this time, but I won't remind ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... getting me into trouble!" thought the stranger, trying in vain to smooth down the corners of the offending organ, which in spite of him would curve with what Hagar called a sneer, and from which there finally broke a merry laugh, sadly at variance with the suffering ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... romance by Voltaire, and written in ridicule of the famous maxim of Leibnitz, "All for the best in the best of all possible worlds"; it is a sweeping satire, and "religion, political government, national manners, human weakness, ambition, love, loyalty, all come in for a sneer." ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in calling them either 'the King,' 'Queen,' 'Prince,' or 'Princess.' It is true also that there are vast numbers of the Gipsies who, with a chuckle, tongue in cheek, wink of the eye, side grin and a sneer, say they have these important personages amongst them; and if any little extra stir is being made at a fair-time in the country lanes, in the neighbourhood of straw-yards, they will be sure to tell them that either the 'king,' 'queen,' or some member ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... story lodging in a young mind, an invitation to companionship and a drink, a sneer at religion which makes faith look silly—such things trip us up. They are stumbling-blocks, like wires stretched across a path in the dark. Just because we are social and easily influenced by friendship, admiration, or persuasion, one man's suggestion or example draws the other man on. Jesus ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt, Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt; Then, while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip, Defiance glanced in Casey's eye, a sneer ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... start again; he felt his face flush warm. But he managed to show a fairly controlled front, and he made shift to sneer. ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... morrow, when the Sheykh Yusuf received it with a scarce veiled sneer, seeming extremely mortified. Directly after we had left him, we heard later, he went down to the tavern by the village spring and cursed the elders who had turned my mind against him in unmeasured terms; annoying people so that they determined ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... board displayed beef and pudding, the statutory dainties of Old England. A small cupboard of plate, very choicely and beautifully wrought, did not escape the compliments of some of the company, and an oblique sneer from Sir Mungo, as intimating the owner's excellence in ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of my sneer at the faculty, but proceeded to strike my chest several times, with his finger tips. "Try a short cough now," said he. "Ah, that ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... the Boers are not intended to produce a sneer at their ignorance, but to excite the compassion of their friends. They are perpetually talking about their laws; but practically theirs is only the law of the strongest. The Bechuanas could never understand the changes which took place in their commandants. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the blandishments of a courtesan! See this fiery genius, how in six short years it hath burnt out the oil of life, and reduced his body to a living skeleton; so that passing scoffers point at him with a sneer and exclaim—"C'est l'amour qui a fait cela." Behold this bold, enterprising spirit—how it conceives and executes plans, compared to which the deeds of a Cartouche or a Howard sink into insignificance. And presently, when these precious germs of excellence shall ripen into full ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... more successful and more powerful but for that unhappy bribe, which turned the whole course of his humor into an unnatural channel. Cruikshank would not for any bribe say what he did not think, or lend his aid to sneer down anything meritorious, or to praise any thing or person that deserved censure. When he levelled his wit against the Regent, and did his very prettiest for the Princess, he most certainly believed, along with the ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Clare, on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic. They might say what they liked to him, but he would never be untrue to the girl whom he had left there. His aunt had spoken of the "affair of—the Irish young lady;" and he had quite understood the sneer with which she had mentioned Kate's nationality. Why should not an Irish girl be as good as any English girl? Of one thing he was quite sure,—that there was much more of real life to be found on the cliffs of Moher than in the ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... period, he asserted, when the serious attention of the house to public affairs was more imperatively demanded, and he boldly maintained that it was the duty of their lordships to lay the true state and condition of the country before his majesty. After indulging in a quiet sneer at the care the council had bestowed upon horned cattle, he remarked, that he was glad to hear that the king had reason to believe the peace of the country would be preserved, since peace could never be more desirable to a kingdom, than when ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... swampy forest, where no white man has ever been. The unknown is up against us on every side. Outside the narrow lines of the rivers what does anyone know? Who will say what is possible in such a country? Why should old man Challenger not be right?" At which direct defiance the stubborn sneer would reappear upon Professor Summerlee's face, and he would sit, shaking his sardonic head in unsympathetic silence, behind the cloud of ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with his disciples into the garden of Gethsemane. There, in the darkness and loneliness of night, the full anguish of his situation rushed upon his spirit. He shrank from the rude scenes that opened before him,—from the mocker's sneer and the ruler's scourge; from the glare of impatient revenge, and the weeping eyes of helpless friendship; from the insignia of imposture and of shame; and from the protracted, thirsty, torturing death. He shrank from these,—he shrank from the rupture of tender ties,—he shrank from the parting ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... Ottone Orseolo. The earliest recorded commercial treaty is with Pisa, made in 1169. From 1205 we find Venice supreme, and she remained so for nearly a hundred and fifty years, with an interval of Byzantine rule. In 1358 Ragusa was under the protection of the king of Hungary: the sneer against it of being "sette bandiere" (seven flagged) suggests that it sought protection from more than one power at a time. It was the headquarters of effort for the conversion of the Slavs, which explains the gifts made to its churches by Servian kings and nobles. From 1358 it was practically ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... nominal creed of the time, makes it rather less difficult for us to try to reconcile unflinching honesty with a just and becoming regard for the feelings of those who have claims upon our forbearance, than would have been the case a hundred years ago. 'It is not now with a polite sneer,' as a high ecclesiastical authority lately admitted, 'still less with a rude buffet or coarse words, that Christianity is assailed.' Before churchmen congratulate themselves too warmly on this improvement in the nature of the attack, perhaps they ought to ask themselves how far it is due ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time not what one wants to but what one can? Well—that was the way I painted; and as he lay there and watched me, the thing they called my 'technique' collapsed like a house of cards. He didn't sneer, you understand, poor Stroud—he just lay there quietly watching, and on his lips, through the gray beard, I seemed to hear the question: 'Are you sure you ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... woman found within her narrow bosom an echo to the sneer of the mysterious voice; yet, could she have become as Frances Cromwell, how great would have been her triumph! How curious are the workings of good and evil in the human heart! How necessary to study them, that so we may arrive ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the dark eyes of the man opposite him blazed with a quick fire, for a sneer at Sheila was worse than an insult to himself; but he kept quite calm, and said, "That, unfortunately, is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... and House were in the hands of his political opponents. He also throughout the whole term had to encounter the hardly disguised hostility of nearly all the great leaders of his own party in both Houses of Congress. Conkling never spoke of him in public or private without a sneer. I suppose he did not visit the White House or any Department during President Hayes's term. Mr. Blaine was much disappointed by President Hayes's refusal to give Mr. Frye a place in the Cabinet, which ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... I returned reluctantly, for I grudged the praise to Mr. Hamilton. He could benefit his fellow-creatures, and give time and strength and energy to the poor sick people, and yet sneer at me civilly when I wanted to do the same, just because I was a woman. Perhaps Max was disappointed with my want of enthusiasm, for he ceased talking of the lectures, and said he had some more letters to write before dinner, and during the rest ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a look that Ella and the city girls were all standing upon the platform, Henry replied with a sneer, "I don't see any ladies ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... a forgotten affair, Mademoiselle was not less agitated; she was filled with a variety of novel emotions. Looking about her salon, dining-room, and boudoir, cruel apprehensions took possession of her. A species of demon showed her with a sneer her old-fashioned luxury. The handsome things she had admired from her youth up she suddenly suspected of age and absurdity. In short, she felt that fear which takes possession of nearly all authors when they read over a work they have hitherto thought proof against every ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... like Magdalen, do not put any value on themselves, are slow to take offence. It was not that she did not perceive a slight, or a rebuff, or a sneer at her expense, but she never, so to speak, picked up the offence flung at her. She let it lie, by the same instinct that led her to step aside in a narrow path rather than that her skirt should ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... a sly old fellow rose, and waving his long brush with a graceful air, said, with a sneer, that if, like the last speaker, he had been so unfortunate as to lose his tail, nothing further would have been needed to convince him; but till such an accident should happen, he should certainly vote ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... "sensation," sub-editors will tell you. There is art in alliterative headlines and startling "cross-heads." The inevitable interview with "a member of the family"—who is generally anonymous, be it said—is sure to be eagerly devoured by the public. The world may sneer at sensational journalism, but after all it loves to have its curiosity excited over the tragic denouement of some domestic secret. As soon as the first information reached the Central News and Press Association, ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... The cut of your vest, or your boots, or cravat, If they know you're in debt for the new? There's no comfort, I tell you, in walking the street In fine clothes, if you know you're in debt, And feel that, perchance, you some tradesman may meet, Who will sneer—"They're not paid for yet." Good friends, let me beg of you, don't run in debt; If the chairs and the sofas are old, They will fit your back better than any new set, Unless they are paid for—with gold; If the house is too small, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... next day on the fishing wharf, where we were inspecting nets, he saw fit to laugh and sneer at us, and this before all the fishermen. Charley's face went black with anger; but beyond promising Big Alec that in the end he would surely land him behind the bars, he controlled himself and said nothing. ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... opening and shot his left like a bullet against the huge, gross mouth. Almost in the same second he side-stepped and brought his right in an arc to the mark above Garman's belt and leaped back out of danger. Garman did not stir, and though the blow on the mouth cut it did not efface the sneer on ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... other for a moment. Bland's thin lips twisted into a sneer. "We'll see," he said. "We'll settle all that in the morning." His tone took on a more friendly aspect "I'm going to pick out a downy couch in one of these rooms," he said, "and lay me down to sleep. Say, I could greet a blanket ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... Rochefoucauld closely to perceive why a book so searching, and even so cruel as his, has exercised on the genius of France a salutary and a lasting influence. His savage pessimism is not useless, it is not a mere scorn of humanity and a sneer at its weaknesses. It tends, by stripping off all the shams of conduct and digging to the root of action, to make people upright, candid and magnanimous on a new basis of truth. So we come at last to see the significance of Voltaire's dark saying of the "Maximes": "This book ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... referred to my estate without a touch of a sneer, when we were alone; but with strangers, he rang the words out like ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are alike in this, and will be so, let us hope, to the end of time. Even we old fellows recall those old-time stories with something of the same awe-struck admiration, and something of the same unquestioning belief, with which we listened to them, I don't know how many years ago. We sneer at the improbabilities and inconsistencies of modern fiction; but who thinks of being startled at the charming incongruities, the bold but fascinating impossibilities, of Cinderella, and Aladdin, and Puss in Boots? Don't we in our heart ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... far from good-tempered now, curled in a devastating sneer. She was looking at him as Claire, in the old days when they had toured England together in road companies, had sometimes seen her look at recalcitrant landladies. The landladies, without exception, had wilted beneath that gaze, and Mr ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... her son regarded her with an expression of mingled surprise and incredulity, then the sneer returned, and, turning to leave ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... greatest continent is ours; her highest mountains rise In unapproached sublimity beneath our starry skies; Ours, too, the cradle of the race; and at our Buddha's shrine Unequalled numbers of mankind adore him as divine. How dare you speak of Asian thought with pity or a sneer, When practically all you know originated here? What had you been, if our ideals, in art and faith expressed, Had not come down through Greece and Rome to civilize your West? The great religions of the world are all of Asian birth, And thence went forth resistlessly ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... splendour, and a standing army, (not in the city thank God, since the 5th March 1770, but within call upon occasion). While our independent governor is found to crouch to his superiors, and to look down upon and sneer at those below him, he is from time to time receiving instructions how to govern this people, to govern! rather to harass and insult his country in distress. . .where his adulating priestlings are reminding him he was ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... might write a canting book," said the general with a sneer; "that would be sure ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... France the work was enthusiastically received. This was the first of many translations into many European languages. Its influence in teaching patriotism cannot be estimated, nor can its value as an effective retort to the sneer "Who reads an ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... carelessness of the Italian tale, he tempers it with the English seriousness. As he follows Boccaccio all his changes are on the side of purity; and when the Troilus of the Florentine ends with the old sneer at the changeableness of woman Chaucer bids us "look Godward," and dwells ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... laugh that had a little sneer in it, "put them to the test! I will not object to that, if you will only keep your notions to yourself. Now, Christian, give me your word for silence, and we will freeze ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... colleagues that the relations of intimacy among the Roman senators surpassed all conception; that a single set of silver plate sufficed for the whole senate, and had reappeared in every house to which the envoys had been invited. The sneer is a significant token of the difference in the economic conditions ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... perhaps had better answer that question," suggested Barraclough with a little sneer. Day moved some papers with a hand ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... he answered with a sneer, "and I'll do with it what I've done with many others—see that it is not ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... with a trace of a harsh sneer outlined on his face. "If they get killed, I am sorry. If they live, they are useful. If they are lost, others take their places. They are merely a part of the general scheme. They are for ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... and for that, with the power which he had acquired over Kate's sensitive nature, he drew her into the sphere of his flaunted triumph, and made her wound Alec to the root of his vulnerable being. Had Alec then seen his own face, he would have seen upon it the sneer that he hated so upon that of Beauchamp. For all wickedness tends to destroy individuality, and declining natures assimilate as ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald |
