"Cynic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Remember this: I didn't marry you because I thought you were a cynic. Now Walter as a young physician ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... kicked at the bondage to our common fleshly nature imposed on him by the mother of the little animal. But there had been a mother to his father: odd movements of a warmish curiosity brushed him when the cynic was not mounting guard. They were, it seemed, external—no part of him: like blasts of a wayside furnace across wintry air. They were, as it chanced, Nature's woman in him plucking at her separated partner, Custom's man; something of an oriental voluptuary ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Indian, whose paradise consists of happy hunting-grounds, where, of course, he will need his faithful hound to keep him company. The main argument of white men is generally found to be the superiority of canine virtue over the human. Whether the word "cynic" originates from a similar source I will not undertake to say; but I have more than half a suspicion that such talk proceeds rather from a prejudice against men than a genuine enthusiasm for dogs. This was doubtless the feeling of the Frenchman who said, "Plus je connais ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... his letters to Mr. Papineau) a "pure democracy in the Canadas." One of the serious drawbacks to the credit and interests of our country, amongst public and business men of all parties in England, is their supposed connection with such a restless political cynic as Mr. Roebuck, and such an acknowledged and avowed colonial ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... succeeding generations, left, in her autobiography and letters, a picture of the society about her as seen by one of the most refined and cultivated women of the time. Like many others, she was struck with disgust at the coarseness and immorality which surrounded her. "It is enough to make one a cynic, to shun the world, and shut oneself up in a tub as Diogenes did; but I must acknowledge, though the age is very degenerate, that it is not quite void of perfection. I know some persons that still reconcile me to the world, and that convince me that ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... and prodigal nature to subdue all hearts to his love; men of all minds and dispositions tendered their services to Lord Timon, from the glass-faced flatterer, whose face reflects as in a mirror the present humour of his patron, to the rough and unbending cynic, who affecting a contempt of men's persons, and an indifference to worldly things, yet could not stand out against the gracious manners and munificent soul of Lord Timon, but would come (against his nature) to partake of his royal entertainments, and return most rich in his own estimation ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... day that Dionysius the elder, the Sicilian tyrant, was born,—Fortune (as Timaeus hath it) at the same time taking out of the world a representer, and bringing into it a real actor, of tragedies. Besides, we remembered that Alexander the king and Diogenes the Cynic died upon the same day. And all agreed that Attalus the king died on his own birthday. And some said, that Pompey the great was killed in Egypt on his birthday, or, as others will have it, a day before. We remember Pindar also, who, being born at the time of the Pythian ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... rich man's nature. Your wealth will only bring you happiness in so far as you use it to benefit others less fortunate though equally deserving. It is given you as a trial, not as a reward.'—To you, oh Cynic, this message have I also: 'Your eyes see but through a veil of dulled and vainglorious senses. Some truths you have learned, but in the passage through your mind they take the colour and shape of a ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... man is a cynic. He sees goodness nowhere. He sneers at virtue, sneers at love; to him the maiden plighting her troth is an artful schemer, and he sees even in the mother's kiss ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... politeness and good-breeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any, or all other good qualities or talents. Without them, no knowledge, no perfection whatever, is seen in its best light. The scholar, without good-breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... settlement of the matter in the speculum of a telescope, it may be some time before we have done with what Guillemin calls "the interesting, almost insoluble question, of the existence of living and organized beings on the surface of the satellite of our little earth." [425] Some cynic may interpose with ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... is very little intelligent design in the majority of marriages; but they are none the worse for that. Intelligence leads people astray as far as passion sometimes. I know you are not a cynic." ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... lobby; it was exactly the same length as the passage below, less the space taken up by the old-fashioned wooden staircase; and was lighted by a narrow casement on the street and a bull's-eye window looking into the yard. The chief characteristic of the apartment was a cynic simplicity, due to money-making greed. The bare walls were covered with plain whitewash, the dirty brick floor had never been scoured, the furniture consisted of three rickety chairs, a round table, and a sideboard ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... even in vice. A wicked man boasted much of his own wickedness to some fellow-travellers during a brief sea-voyage. He said, "I like doing wrong for the sake of doing it. When you know you are outraging the senses of decent people there is a kind of excitement about it." This contemptible cynic told with glee stories of his own vileness which made good men look at him with scorn; but he fancied himself the cleverest of men. With the grave nearly ready for him, he could chuckle over things which he had done—things which proved him base, although none of them brought him within ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... his "English Letters," "will our philosophers make a religious sect, for they are without enthusiasm." This was a favorite idea with the disciples of the great cynic, but the event has disproved its truth. The Philosophers in Voltaire's lifetime formed a sect, although it could hardly be called a religious one. The Patriarch of Ferney himself was something not unlike its pontiff. Diderot and d'Alembert were its ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... her worm of pride, By tossing victim to the courtier knave, Let peep, nor of the naughty pride gave sign. Rather 'twas humbleness in being pursued, As pilgrim to the temple of a shrine. Had he not wits to pierce the mask he wooed? All wisdom's armoury this man could wield; And if the cynic in the Sage it pleased Traverse her woman's curtain and poor shield, For new example of a world diseased; Showing her shrineless, not a temple, bare; A curtain ripped to tatters by the blast; Yet she most surely to this man stood fair: He worshipped like the young ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the most famous cities in the territory of Pontus. It was taken by Lucullus in the Mithridatic war, and afterwards received Roman colonies. It was the birth-place of Diogenes the cynic, who was banished from his country. The place is still called Sinope, a port town of Asiatic Turkey, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... Lay traps for fancied frailty, disenthrall "Manhood" by "playing for" a woman's fall; Redeem the wreckage of a "noble" name By building hope on sin, and joy on shame; Redress the work of passion's reckless boldness By craven afterthoughts of cynic coldness; Purge from low taint "the blood of all the HOWARDS" By borrowings from the code of cads and cowards! Noblesse oblige? Better crass imbecility Of callow youth—with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... said that Solomon and Job have best spoken of the misery of man, the former the most fortunate, the latter the most unfortunate of creatures. And yet it seems strange to me that John Benham, the millionaire, Jerry's father, cynic and misogynist, and Roger Canby, bookworm and pauper, should each have arrived, through different mental processes, at the same ideal and philosophy of life. We both disliked women, not only disliked but feared and distrusted ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... caused the most lively pleasure to all, but particularly to the native soldiers, who heard with pride and exultation that their deeds and dangers were not unnoticed by that august Sovereign before whom they know all their princes bow, and to whom the Sirkar itself is but a servant. The cynic and the socialist may sneer after their kind; yet the patriot, who examines with anxious care those forces which tend to the cohesion or disruption of great communities, will observe how much the influence ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... us, and to look askance upon the little band of Clive's friends. It seemed as if there were two parties in the house. There was Clive's set—J. J., the shrewd, silent little painter; Warrington, the cynic; and the author of the present biography, who was, I believe, supposed to give himself contemptuous airs; and to have become very high and mighty since his marriage. Then there was the great, numerous, and eminently respectable set, whose names were all registered in little Rosey's ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with voluptuous melodrama. On the annual "Show Sunday" no studio was more popular than Long's. His subjects perhaps had something to do with it. They were in keeping with the Sabbath. The work too was as smooth and as highly finished as the most orthodox sermon. Ars longa est. Yes, said some cynic, but art is not Long. But anyway Long's art was commercially successful, and he was what is known ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... honours of the house to a lady who had had so little profit of her visit. Beeching carried off the reluctant Farnborough. Mrs. Freddy kept up her spirits until after the exodus; then, with a sigh, she sat down beside Vida. 'It's true what that old cynic says,' she admitted sorrowfully. 'The scene has put back the Reform ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... [that] have been taken to bring this poor country into ruin and disgrace, or they are of the number of those who have had a share in the actings and contrivances against it; for my lord, he must rather be an insensible stoic than an angry cynic, who can survey the measures of some men without horror and indignation—To see men act as if they had never taken an oath of fidelity to their king, whose interest is inseparable from that of his people, but had sworn to support the ruinous projects of abandoned men (of whatever ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... cunningly the creature works, now back to his earth, anon stealing an unsuspected run across country, the clever rascal;" and his ethical disapproval ever, as usual, with English critics of life, in the foreground, clearly enhanced a primitive predatory instinct not obscurely akin, a cynic might say, to those dark impulses he holds up to our reprobation. This self-realization in his fiction is one of Trollope's principal charms. Never was there a more subjective writer. Unlike Flaubert, who laid down the canon that the author should exist in his work as God in creation, to ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... CYRENAICS. Cynic succession. The proper description of the tenets of both schools comes under the Summum Bonum. The Cynic Ideal was the minimum of wants, and their self-denial was compensated by exemption from fear, and by pride of superiority. ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... differences would in modern philosophy. The most ideal and the most sensational have a tendency to pass into one another; Heracleitus, like his great successor Hegel, has both aspects. The Eleatic isolation of Being and the Megarian or Cynic isolation of individuals are placed in the same class by Plato (Soph.); and the same principle which is the symbol of motion to one mind is the symbol of rest to another. The Atomists, who are sometimes regarded ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... that which afterwards became Bartley Hubbard's. "Get a basis," said the softening cynic of the Saturday Press, when I advised with him, among other acquaintances. "Get a salaried place, something regular on some paper, and then you can easily make up the rest." But it was a month before I achieved this vantage, and then I got it in a quarter where I had not looked for it. I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in you," Bertha said, half in jest, half in earnest. "You are not at all the person I thought you were. Whatever I may have fancied about you, I never imagined you a cynic or ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... to audience, DOLLY TELFER, a bright little woman about thirty, busied with bills and papers. Bending over her, back to audience, is her father, MATT BARRON, a pleasant-looking, easy-going cynic of sixty. HARRY TELFER, DOLLY'S husband, an ordinary good-natured, weakish, impulsive Englishman about thirty-five, is standing with his back to the fire. Sitting on sofa, reading a scientific book, is PROFESSOR ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... tricks soon enough. It never seems to have occurred to Frederick that the possession of genius might imply a quality of spirit which was not that of an ordinary man. This was his great, his fundamental error. It was the ingenuous error of a cynic. He knew that he was under no delusion as to Voltaire's faults, and so he supposed that he could be under no delusion as to his merits. He innocently imagined that the capacity for great writing was something that could be as easily separated from the owner of it as ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... can write a book to live—as, of course, neither has done as yet. Mr. Kipling is the more audacious, which is probably a matter of training. He was brought up in India, where one's beard grows much quicker than at Oxford, and where you not only become a man (and a cynic) in a hurry, but see and hear strange things (and print them) such as the youth of Oxford miss, or, becoming acquainted with, would not dare insert in the local magazine of the moment. So Mr. Kipling's first work betokened a knowledge of the world that is by no means to ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... from Carew that you were in town, and I have only escaped from Pontygarvan, where I have been playing the dutiful kinsman to my immortal relative. I don't know which is most to be avoided, his enmity or his liking. He is an amusing old cynic at times, but a born despot. He only let me away to prosecute a scheme that he has taken up, and which I have gone pretty deeply ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... increasing disposition to take refuge from practical life in indolent apathy or empty irony, that occasioned during this epoch the extension of the system of Epicurus to a larger circle and the naturalization of the Cynic philosophy of Diogenes in Rome. However stale and poor in thought the former might be, a philosophy, which did not seek the way to wisdom through an alteration of traditional terms but contented itself with those in existence, and throughout recognized ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... never known, his mother he knew only as his tormentor and oppressor: no tie seems to have bound him to his brother, and up to this hour he had never yet slept one night under the paternal roof. These were no ordinary trials; and if the youth who was subjected to them became in after-life a cynic, is it to be wondered at? Indeed, a hasty view of this remarkable man's character might lead to the conclusion of M. Colmache, that the untoward accidents of his infancy and boyhood afforded an explanation ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... abandoned Ribbons. The times were very much changed since the period when she drove to Mudbury in the spring-cart and called the small tradesmen "Sir." It may have been shame, or it may have been dislike of his neighbours, but the old Cynic of Queen's Crawley hardly issued from his park-gates at all now. He quarrelled with his agents and screwed his tenants by letter. His days were passed in conducting his own correspondence; the lawyers and farm-bailiffs who had to do business with him could not reach him but through the Ribbons, who ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with his cynic, repellent smile. "But you do wrong to feel for my loss. I feel for it; but no one who cares for me should ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... phenomenon; but in Lord Houghton the astonished world beheld as well a politician who wrote poetry, a railway-director who lived in literature, a libre-penseur who championed the Tractarians, a sentimentalist who talked like a cynic, and a philosopher who had elevated conviviality to the dignity of an exact science. Here, indeed, was a "living oxymoron"—a combination of inconsistent and incongruous qualities which to the typical John Bull—Lord Palmerston's ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... "Cynic! The thought seems to please you! You want to see me discomfited and defeated. Very well; you can drop me right here if you like, but I'll wager something handsome that you'll regret your skepticism all the rest of your days. Resistance to the course of events marked by the stars is ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... his subjects deposed, Whose strength he, by seeking to crush it, disclosed, In resigning the power he lack'd power to support Turns his back upon courts, with a sneer at the court, In his converse this man for self-comfort appeal'd To a cynic denial of all he conceal'd In the instincts and feelings belied by his words. Words, however, are things: and the man who accords To his language the license to outrage his soul, Is controll'd ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... she is already thinking what it will be like to dine alone with him this evening, and several thousand evenings hereafter. Cynic, you say? There are no more cynics. They are all married, and must turn stoics if they can. Let us be off. No—there is mass. Well then, go down on your knees and pray for their souls, for they are in a bad case. Marriage is Satan's hot- house for poisonous weeds. ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... shall transcribe some of his own expressions from a short religious discourse which the Imperial pontiff composed to censure the bold impiety of a Cynic. Orat. vii. p. 212. The variety and copiousness of the Greek tongue seem inadequate to the fervor of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... of the summer scenery along the Omaha road, and the shy and beautiful troutlet, and the dark and silent Chippewa squawlet and her little bleached out pappooselet, were it not for the unkind and cruel thrusts that I would invoke from the scenery cynic who believes that a newspaper man's opinions may be largely warped ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... unscathed in health and fortune. Yet they had left their mark. During those months of all-encompassing disappointment and disaster the eternal laughter—in which she trusted—had rung harshly sardonic, to the breaking down of self-confidence, and light-hearted, cynic philosophy. It scared her somewhat. It made her feel old. It chilled her with suspicion of the actuality of The Four Last Things—death and judgment, heaven and hell. The power of a merry scepticism waxed faint amid the scream of shells and long-drawn, murderous crackle ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... right is right, and wrong wrong, and he is never tempted to jingle his jester's bell out of season, and make right look ridiculous. And if the humour of "Pickwick" be wholesome, it is also most genial and kindly. We have here no acrid cynic sneeringly pointing out the plague spots of humanity, and showing pleasantly how even the good are tainted with evil. Rather does Dickens delight in finding some touch of goodness, some lingering memory of better things, some hopeful aspiration, some trace ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... to understand why Dr. Wyville Thomson, not being a cynic, should relegate the "Land of Promise" to the bottom of the deep sea, they may still more wonder what manner of "milk and honey" the Challenger expects to find; and their perplexity may well rise to its maximum, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... vile Whig"), but most of all perhaps to a sort of horrified recoil from the novelist's easy handling of temptations which were no easy matter to his critic—was nearly if not quite propitiated by it: and the enthusiasm for it of such a "cynic" as Thackeray is well known. Of the very few persons whom it would not be ridiculous to name with these, Scott—whose competence in criticising his own art is one of the most wonderful though the least generally recognised things about him—inclines, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... of a bite, I should like to know? A bite is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring! A bite is of no use for breakfast, dinner, tea, or supper! Bites can neither be fried nor boiled, measured nor weighed. A bite, indeed!'—and once more the cynic loses himself in laughter. That is all he knows about it, and it merely supplies us with another evidence of the superficiality of cynicism. The critic is sometimes right, but the cynic is never right; and the roar of laughter that I hear from the cynic's chair, as he talks about ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... and enthusiasm of his feelings, with respect to nature, renders him bigotted and intolerant in his judgments of men and things. But it happens to him, as to others, that his strength lies in his weakness; and perhaps we have no right to complain. We might get rid of the cynic and the egotist, and find in his stead a common-place man. We should "take the good the Gods provide us:" a fine and original vein of poetry is not one of their most contemptible gifts, and the rest is scarcely worth thinking of, except as it may be a mortification to those who expect perfection ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... "O thou whose cynic sneers express The censure of our favorite chess, Know that its skill is Science' self, Its play distraction from distress. It soothes the anxious lover's care; It weans the drunkard from excess; It counsels warriors in their art, When dangers threat and perils press; And yields us, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... of the universe. We hear much of Treitschke today—no doubt a man of genius with a gift for research—but what ferocious pyrotechnics were poured forth by this apostle of mendacious swagger. And as to Nietzsche, he was anticipated by Shakespeare in Timon—a diseased cynic— ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... dread and hate the old man, but all his ordinary tactics were powerless against this impenetrable eighteenth century cynic. If he resorted to his Congressional practise of browbeating and dogmatism, the Baron only smiled and turned his back, or made some remark in French which galled his enemy all the more, because, while he did not understand it, he knew well that ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... cynic philosopher who affected great contempt for riches and honors and the comforts of civilized life, and is said to have taken up his residence ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... not like your lovely rose," said the old woman. "At any rate I looked nice enough for the men in disguise—fauns and satyrs and were the cynic hypocrites in their ragged cloaks, to think it worth while to look at me and to take a rap on the knuckles when they tried to put an arm round me or to steal a kiss, I did not care for the handsomest of them, for Euphorion had done ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... on your conscience and honor, that mothers will not be found to offer their young girls to supply the lamented lady's place? How stale this misanthropy is! Something must have disagreed with this cynic. Yes, my good woman. I dare say you would like to call another subject. Yes, my fine fellow; ogre at home, supple as a dancing-master abroad, and shaking in thy pumps, and wearing a horrible grin of sham gayety to conceal thy terror, lest I should point thee out:—thou art prosperous ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... seriously than his contempt for his literary reputation. It lasts only till some vivid sensation occurs in the present. In congenial company he could take a lively share in conversation, as is proved not only by external evidence, but by his very amusing book of conversations with Northcote—an old cynic out of whom it does not seem that anybody else could strike many sparks,—or from the essay, partly historical, it is to be supposed, in which he records his celebrated discussion with Lamb, on persons whom one would wish to have seen. But perhaps some of his most characteristic ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... with these thoughts: I shall meet the meddler, the ingrate, the scorner, the hypocrite, the envious man, the cynic. These men are such because they know not to discern the difference between good and evil. But I know that Goodness is Beauty and that Evil is Loathsomeness: I know that the real nature of the evil-doer ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... to eat for fear of poison, and thinks that he might escape by jumping out of the window. And yet he gives vent to his feelings and lets his tongue run on about himself without stopping, concerning his past, his character, unreservedly, indelicately, trivially; like a cynic and one who is half-crazy; his ideas run loose and crowd each other like the anarchical gatherings of a tumultuous mob; he does not recover his mastery of them until he reaches Frejus, the end of his journey, where ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... bitterness filled his soul once more at this harsh, cynic turn of fate. But most of all he yearned toward Beatrice. That he should die mattered nothing; but the thought of this girl perishing at their hands there in the lost Abyss was dreadful as the pangs of all the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... satisfaction in cannibalism," observed the cynic who had spoken before. "There are people upon ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Laevsky, since he is the fated victim of the age, of influences, of heredity, and so on. All the officials and their ladies were in ecstasies when they listened to him, and I could not make out for a long time what sort of man I had to deal with, a cynic or a clever rogue. Such types as he, on the surface intellectual with a smattering of education and a great deal of talk about their own nobility, are very clever in posing as exceptionally ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... making characters from those who were in a world sense undistinguished. On this position Chesterton lays great stress. It was this, he thinks, that made him an optimist. It was the same position that made Browning an optimist. It is the disbelief in the Divine image in Man that makes the cynic ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... mule is a wit; an' all day long he'd be throwin' off remarks that keeps a ripple of laughter goin' up an' down the team. You-all finds trouble creditin' them statements. Fact, jest the same. I've laughed at the jokes of that swing mule myse'f; an' even Jerry, the off wheeler, who's a cynic that a-way, couldn't repress a smile. Shore! anamiles talks all the time; it's only that we-all ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... cunning few Cynic favors I will strew; I will stuff their maw with overplus until their spirit dies; From the patient and the low I will take the joys they know; They shall hunger after vanities and still an-hungered go. Madness shall be on the people, ghastly jealousies arise; ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... me live in a house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by— The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. I would not sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban— Let me live in a house by the side of the road, And ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... be a historical novel," said the gaunt young recruit from Grand Rapids. He was a cynic who had tried newspaper work, and who still maintained that the generals did not have as ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... have done the heart of a cynic good to have been there; song and joke and hearty laugh followed in such quick succession that it seemed more like working for ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... not discouraged, but as idealist or cynic, lived on a crust of bread, sincerely rejoicing or grieving over the destinies of humanity, and his own vocation, and troubling himself very little as to how to escape dying of hunger. Mihalevitch was not married: but had been in love times beyond number, and had ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... in travelling sandhills from mirage to summer mirage. Tim was used to hot places. That is why he became a stretcher-bearer for his company in Gallipoli, and transferred to the regimental bombers when they reached France. When they came to a sea of brown mud waves, which some cynic had misnamed the "Grass Bank," it was not Tim who volunteered to take it. He had been in far too many hot corners to retain any of his old hankering after them, and the Grass Bank was hotter than Booligal. He went for the place because his colonel ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... in the work he wrought. The traveler paid it tribute, as he passed Along the highway—paused and, turning, cast A lingering, last look—as though to take A vivid print of it, for memory's sake, To lighten all the empty, aching miles Beyond with brighter fancies, hopes and smiles. The cynic put aside his biting wit And tacitly declared in praise of it; And even the apprentice-poet of the town Rose to impassioned heights, and then sat down And penned a panegyric scroll of rhyme That made the Snow-Man ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... "is an invalid. He lives at a cove called Black Harbor, and all his truck goes through to him over the company's road. We receive it here, and send a pack-mule through once a month. I've met him; he's a bad-tempered hypochondriac, a cynic at heart, and a man whose word is never doubted. If he says he has a great auk, you may be satisfied ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... shift of mood and mood, Mine ancient humour saves him whole— The cynic devil in his blood That bids him ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... development under American conditions of life which illustrates peculiarly the anomalous position of black men, and the terrific stress under which they struggle. And the struggle and the fight of human beings against hard conditions of life always tends to develop the criminal or the hypocrite, the cynic or the radical. Wherever among a hard-pressed people these types begin to appear, it is a visible sign of a burden that is threatening to overtax their strength, and the foreshadowing of the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... a philosopher, an unconscious cynic, so greatly had he simplified his life. Two pairs of shoes, a pair of boots, a couple of suits of clothes, a dozen shirts, a dozen bandana handkerchiefs, four waistcoats, a superb pipe given to him by Pons, with an embroidered ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... his shoulders and looked up in his face with eyes few men could resist. They were quite alone in the vast hall—no prying eyes to see that tender caress. Mr. Parmalee was a good deal of a stoic and a little of a cynic; but he was flesh and blood, as even stoics and cynics are, and the man under sixty was not born who could have resisted that dark, ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... stateliness by which the same language is equally characterized. Tacitus has been sometimes represented as a very Diogenes, for carping and sarcasm—a very Aristophanes, to blacken character with ridicule and reproach. But he is as far removed from the cynic or the buffoon, as from the panegyrist or the flatterer. He is not the indiscriminate admirer that Plutarch was. Nor is he such a universal hater as Sallust. It is the fault of the times that he is obliged to deal so much in censure. If there ever were perfect monsters ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... an old cynic. If she had any snobbery in her she'd be here to-night, rubbing elbows with the women who never knew of her existence twenty years ago, although their husbands did. It has satisfied her ironic French soul to sit in the court of the Palace Hotel day after day and defy San Francisco to recognize ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... These are but two notes of a mighty anthem whose chorus is never hushed in the temple of Masonry! Of course, there are those who say that the finer forces of life are frail and foolish, but the influence of the cynic in the ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... dust, Wagner suddenly leaves tragedy and gives us a melodious duet between the brother and sister on the theme: "What can equal a brother's love?" This duet and finale unite to form a masterpiece; a deserved rebuke to any cynic who may consider that Wagner could not adopt the enervating methods of the Italian school if he desired. His cadenzas here are miracles of compressed technique, and, although the melody is conventional, the music itself is never for a ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... polite way of calling me a fool," said Pickering. "You are a sceptic, a cynic, a satirist! I hope I shall be a long ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... never half as bad as Frank [Vine's], for instance. Where he shone particularly was in excoriating those whom he did not like. In this connection he could—and did—use the worst expressions I have ever heard. He was a born cynic, who said his say in 'plain talk,' not 'langwidge.' For all that, he was filled to the neck with humor, and was a past-master in the art of repartee, always in plain talk, remember. Explain it if you can. Bill ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... deduction of my own reasoning [applause], and if you have shown me gratitude on this matter I will not say that I have not felt in a certain sense it was not deserved, from the motives I have alluded to. And if, as some cynic has said, gratitude is nothing whatever but the means of securing favors to come, I can assure you that you have accomplished your object [laughter and applause], and if you have desired that, in any means which Providence has placed in ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... a gun" is a worthy old phrase That doesn't quite seem to apply in our days; And that man is a cynic, or talking in fun, Who says he's "as sure as an 'African' gun." The Birmingham gun-makers loudly protest That their products are good, if they're not quite the best. Mr. Punch with the Brummagem boys will not quarrel, But all guns should be trustworthy, stock, lock and barrel; Be the game one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... and sure faith. Would he not betray himself an alien cynic who should otherwise portray Main Street, or distress the citizens by speculating whether there may ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Paris, whither she pressed me to accompany her, but I declined it, on account of the short time which I had before me to spend in Paris. Madame H—— was not only a beauty, but a woman of wit and learning, and had accordingly admitted Voltaire amongst the number of her household gods; the arch old cynic, with his deathlike sarcastic face, admirably represented, by a small whole length porcelain statue, occupied the centre of her chimney piece. Upon finding that I was disposed to remain in town, she recommended me to a restaurateur, in the gardens of the Thuilleries, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... in greatest reputation among them, and lived a private quiet life, he sent Onesicritus, one of Diogenes the Cynic's disciples, desiring them to come to him. Calanus, it is said, very arrogantly and roughly commanded him to strip himself, and hear what he said, naked, otherwise he would not speak a word to him, though he came from Jupiter himself. But Dandamis ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and repulsive forces (more commonly the latter, the cynic will say) in our social system, but each individual is the centre of various forces acting upon him. In nature all matter possesses the force of gravity, and whatever the size of two particles may be, they mutually attract each other. The earth attracts the moon; the moon attracts the earth. ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... "Flummery!" observed the cynic, "I had a selfish motive: I wished to appear generous—I wished to be praised—I wished to attach you to my service, in order to employ you, when the time came, in ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... had to enact the Cynic philosopher to Moriarty and Butler, and the aristocratic man with a 'past' to Mrs. Beaudesart; with the satisfaction of knowing that each of these was acting a part to me. Such is life, my fellow-mummers—just like a poor player, that bluffs and feints his hour upon ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... please, it continually sinks into Court government, and ever will." Finally he urged a limitation of armaments, and prophesied that wars would cease when nations had their freely elected Conventions. The cynic will remember with satisfaction that, two months later, began the war between France and Austria, which developed into the most tremendous series of wars recorded ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... and extremes, and as he thought of his ardent words and tones, of his ready acceptance of Esteban's good faith, of his description of Christina, he fell to wondering whether so sudden and violent a conversion from passionate cynic to passionate believer would not lack permanence. There was that little instructive accident of the dropped fan. Even in the moment of conversion so small a thing had almost ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... returned with a wry smile at Kit, and a touch of cynic humor, "you had right in going. The lieutenant would have had no pleasure in adding me to his elopement, and, as we hear,—your stolen trail carried ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... is impatient—it's a symphony concert, and I must go—the horrid little cynic!—I half believe she suspects that I'm writing to you and tearing off yards of sentiment. It is likely I'd do that, isn't it!—but I don't care what she thinks. Besides, it behooves her to be agreeable, and she knows that I ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... from agreeing with the cynic Geoffroy, who used to say that modern works were deficient in power because authors now ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... debarked at Phalerum. Joined by these allies, Hippias engaged and routed the enemy, and the Spartan leader himself fell upon the field of battle. His tomb was long visible in Cynosarges, near the gates of Athens—a place rendered afterward more illustrious by giving name to the Cynic philosophers. [246] ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one's taste should become too fastidious, or that natural feeling should be refined away. And a cynical young man is bad, but a cynical old one is a great deal worse. The cynical young man is probably shamming; he is a humbug, not a cynic. But the old man probably is a cynic, as heartless as he seems. And without thinking of cynicism, real or affected, let us remember, that, though the taste ought to be refined, and daily refining, it ought not to be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... him with Duke Orsino, Orsino the poet-lover being, so to speak, Shakespeare's easiest and most natural portrait. In Hamlet, if one may dare to say so, Shakespeare has discovered too much of himself: Hamlet is at one and the same time philosopher and poet, critic and courtier, lover and cynic—the extremes that Shakespeare's intellect could cover—and he fills every part so easily that he might almost be a bookish Admirable Crichton, a type of perfection rather than an individual man, were it not for his feminine gentleness and forgivingness of nature, and particularly for the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... an artless humour in the formality of the ancestral attitude—in the splendid pose which they had handed down like an heirloom through the centuries. Among them he saw the comely, high-coloured features of that gallant cynic, Bolivar, the man who had stamped his beauty upon threegenerations, and his gaze lingered with a gentle ridicule on the blithe candour in the eyes and the characteristic touch of brutality about the mouth. Then he passed to his father, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... to look upon the advice that we give to young people as something that shall disillusionize them. The cynic of forty sneers at what he terms the platitudes of commencement addresses. He knows life. He has been behind the curtains. He has looked upon the other side of the scenery,—the side that is just framework and bare canvas. He has seen the ugly machinery that ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... Parthians was that Vologaesus had not acceded to his request for the extradition of Tiridates and a certain Antiochus with him. Antiochus was a Cilician and pretended at first to be a philosopher of the cynic school. In this way he was of very great assistance to the soldiers in warfare. He strengthened them against the despair caused by the excessive cold, for he threw himself into the snow and rolled in it; and as a result he obtained money and honors from Severus himself and from Antoninus. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... take just the opposite form. We may be just as proud of our bad looks, as of our good looks. This is the trick of the Cynic. This is the reason why almost every town has its old codger who seems to delight in wearing the shabbiest coat, and driving the poorest horse, and living in the most dilapidated shanty of anyone ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... all the servants on their mettle. The cook sent up such meals as she did not at any other time. "Sure Sir Shawn and her Ladyship never minded what they would be atin," she said. The gardener, a gruff old cynic usually, gave his best grapes and peaches for "Master Terry"; even the small sewing maid who sat in a slip of a room at a remote corner of the house, mending the house-linen under the supervision of the housekeeper, was known to have ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... difference!" thought the young man—hoary cynic pro tem. "What a miserable deceiving difference between the manners of a maid's life at dancing times and at others! Look at this lovely Fancy! Through the whole past evening touchable, squeezeable—even kissable! For whole half- hours I held her so chose to me that ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... cynic you are to-night! You condemn all the world, and find fault even with yourself—a rare thing in cynics, I imagine. As a rule they are right, and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... man, sitting at the feet of a philosopher, noticed a cynic smile tugging at the silence of the ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... man feared for the faithfulness of his spouse, it seems Father the Hadj could secure it with a charm, and so allow him to spend the night elsewhere in perfect enjoyment and content. That is what the quiet old cynic told me, and invited me to inspect his display of amulets and fetishes, coloured glass tablets with Arabic inscriptions, and a deal of stuff which looked unreasonable to me, articles the holy man either could not or ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... starting, with the stigmata of the scuffle still on his body, a surprising new theory that the things of the soul alone matter, and that love of honour is the first of the moral virtues. We see him, the cynic and sensual brawler of 1640, turned within a few years into a model of regularity, the anarchist changed into a serious citizen with a logical scheme of conduct, the atheistical swashbuckler become the companion ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... getting to his feet. "You'll make me think you are a hardened cynic. Well, if you believe me, that's all right! And now, come on, let's walk a little, and you tell me why English people treat their girls so differently from their boys. You are a perfect gold mine of information to me, do you ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... for him!" said Clementina. "Epictetus was a Cynic, a very cruel man: he broke his ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... look it fair in the face: because it is the main practical difficulty with which I propose that, in succeeding lectures, we grapple. Against Knowledge I have, as the light cynic observed of a certain lady's past, only one serious objection—that there is so much of it. There is indeed so much of it that if with the best will in the world you devoted yourself to it as a mere scholar, you could not possibly digest its accumulated and still ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... too much in praise. That home life, so loving, so wise, and so helpful, was beautiful to its end. Miss Zimmern has treated it with delicate appreciation. Her book is refined in conception and tasteful in execution,—all, in short, the cynic might say, that we expect a woman's book to be."—New ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... such labor. For coupled with his unsurpassed gift of story-telling was another distinct trait of the Cossak in him,—the ability of seeing good-humoredly the frailties of man; and his humor, undefiled by the scorn of the cynic, proved a most powerful weapon in his hands. Ridicule has ever proved a terror to corruption. But in the hands of Gogol this ridicule became a weapon all the more powerful because it took the shape of ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... that, not long after the publication of the "Vestiges," a shrewd and sarcastic countryman of the author defined it as "cauld kail made het again." A cynic might find amusement in the reflection that, at the present time, the principles and the methods of the much-vilified Vestigiarian are being "made het again"; and are not only "echoed by the dome of St. Paul's," but thundered from the castle of Inverary. But my turn ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... rude while he strives to be courteous, and to the bold, free, conscienceless child of nature whose favour he buys, and with whom, after all his barren metaphysics, he departs, only to attain, when his brief spell of foolish freedom is over, loneliness and cynic satiety. It may amuse us to circle with him through his arguments, though every one knows he will yield at last and that yielding is more honest than his talk; but what we ask is—Was the matter worth the trouble of more than two thousand lines of long-winded verse? Was ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... gondoliers sing their barcarolle and compel even the cynic of the drama to break out into an enthusiastic exclamation: "Oh, beautiful Venice!" The world has heard more of the natural beauties of Naples than of the artificial ones of Venice, but when Naples is made the scene of a drama of any kind it seems that its attractions for ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... "since you are the accused, pray define what you mean by a cynic, and then Mr. Isaacs, as the accuser, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... bring The scene to height, making the fool the king. And, noble sir, you vigorously have trod In this hard path, unknown, un-understood By its own countrymen, 'tis you appear Our full enjoyment which was our despair, Scattering his mists, cheering his cynic frowns (For radiant brightness now dark Rabelais crowns), Leaving your brave heroic cares, which must Make better mankind and embalm your dust, So undeceiving us, that now we see All wit in Gascon and in Cromarty, Besides ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... fresco, and the whole company are to display all their charms in puris naturalibus. The pantheon of the heathen gods, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Titian's prints, will supply them with sufficient variety of undressed characters." A cynic might harbour the suspicion that this critic was in ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... all others. For he had thought less of all the world because he had thought so little of himself. He had overestimated his own faults, had made them into crimes in his own eyes, and, observing things in others of similar import, had become almost a cynic in intellect, while in heart he had remained, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... role is a modern day fad, But, Roger, you make a poor cynic, my lad. Your heart at the core is as sound as a nut, Though the wheels of your mind have dropped into the rut Of wrong thinking. You need a strong hand on the lever Of good common sense, and an earnest endeavor To pull yourself out of ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... neither made any inquiry after the authors, nor when information was laid before the senate against some of them, would he allow a severe sentence to be passed. Isidorus, the Cynic philosopher, said to him aloud, as he was passing along the streets, "You sing the misfortunes of Nauplius well, but behave badly yourself." And Datus, a comic actor, when repeating these words in the piece, "Farewell, father! Farewell mother!" mimicked the gestures of persons ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... arrogance of intellect, and his servant Sganarelle, the futile and superstitious supporter of decency and law, come before us as the only alternatives for our choice; the antithesis is never resolved; and, though in the end the cynic is destroyed by a coup de theatre, the fool in all his foolishness still confronts ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... magistrate, a kind-hearted man, troubled at what seemed to him a certain sardonical disdain, lurking beneath the foundling's humble mien, and in Christian sympathy more distressed at it on his account than on his own, dimly surmising what might be the final fate of such a cynic solitaire, nor perhaps uninfluenced by the general strangeness of surrounding things, this good magistrate had glanced sadly, sideways from the speaker, and thereupon his foreboding eye had started at the expression of the unchanging ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... and his admirable goodness and kindness, he has all sorts of amusing peculiarities. With a temper never known to fail, an indulgence the largest, a tenderness as of a woman, he has the habit of talking like a cynic! and with more learning, ancient and modern, and a wider grasp of literature than almost any one I know, professes to read nothing and care for nothing but 'Shakespeare and the Bible.' He is the finest reader ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... uncovering some new tragic element in life. Anything optimistic falls flat. The literary men of Europe are recklessly underbidding each other in the attempt to show that life is sadder, or meaner, or baser, or emptier than had been supposed. The cynic and the pessimist share public attention. Not that European writers are insincere. The authors and thinkers themselves have been the first to feel the Zeitgeist. They have written as they have because they have found the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... the cynic that ye are entirely?" rejoined the visitor, broadly grinning. "Sure, it's time I introduced myself to the lady of the house. I'm Donovan Kelly, late of His Majesty's Imperial Yeomanry, and at present engaged in the peaceful avocation of ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... was favoured. Because he had been scrupulous about trifles, all scruples were treated with derision. Because he had covered his failings with the mask of devotion, men were encouraged to obtrude with Cynic impudence all their most scandalous vices on the public eye. Because he had punished illicit love with barbarous severity, virgin purity and conjugal fidelity were made a jest. To that sanctimonious jargon which was his Shibboleth, was opposed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Eck Flagg gets the news I'd rather take my chances with the dynamite than with the wimmen," stated the cynic. ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... expect a cynic and a misogynist to understand the simple fervour of an inexperienced soul—Oh! drat it all, Quatermain, stop your acid chaff and tell me what is to be done. Really I am in ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... all?" the cynic sneers, "The remnant of a shrine?" Alas for him who never hears Or heeds the world divine And in this fragment fails to see ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... it, my lad. La Rochefoucauld said that there are convenient marriages, but no delightful ones. You don't know the comfort of seeing through and through a thundering liar and rotten cynic like that fellow. Ha, ha! Now off with you to the park, and write your poem. Half past one, sharp, mind: we ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw |
