"Cynical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "well score off him. For the immediate present we've got to wait and watch his every movement with glittering eyes and cynical smiles concealed behind our ingenuous brows. You needn't say 'ingenuous' isn't a real word, because it is. I put it in an English comp. last term and got full marks, which shows that it must ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... also, had had the like strange capacity for misusing the adornments of life, with a masterly grace; as if such misusing were, in truth, the quite adequate occupation of an intelligence, powerful, but distorted by cynical philosophy or some disappointment of the heart. It was almost a sort of genius, of which there had been instances in the imperial purple: it was to ascend the throne, a few years later, in the person of one, now a hopeful little lad at home in ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... great unseen Hand that might at any moment swoop down upon any one of them and bestow fire, death and imprisonment upon its victims. To the ladies and gentlemen from the Mission the citizens of Bucket Lane presented an amused and cynical tolerance. If those poor, meek, frightened creatures chose some faint-hearted attempts at flattery and submission before this abominable ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... isolated chords Of that tremendous music which should bind All things anew in one, Newton arose And carried on their fire. Around him reeled Through lingering fumes of hate and clouds of doubt, Lit by the afterglow of the Civil War, The dissolute throngs of that Walpurgis night Where all the cynical spirits that deny Danced with the vicious lusts that drown the soul In flesh too gross for Circe or her swine. But, in his heart, he heard one instant voice. "On with the torch once more, make all things new, Build the new heaven and earth, and ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... third I preferred for she said in reply, * With expression most apposite, exquisite:— My soul and my folk I engage for the youth * Musk- scented I see in my bed every night! So when I considered their words to decide, * And not make me the mock of the cynical wight; I pronounced for the youngest, declaring her verse * Of all verses be that which is nearest ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... and blushed—no woman could have helped the blush. In truth, his will, steadily bent on one end, while hers was distracted by half a dozen different impulses, was beginning to affect her in a troubling, paralysing way. For all her parade of a mature and cynical enlightenment, she was just twenty; it was such a May day as never was; and when once she had let herself relax towards him again, the inward ache of jealous ambition made this passionate worship beside her, irrelevant as it ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not have guessed that Miss Montgomery was cynical. I fancy she finds entertaining in the open air rather sleepy work herself. Or perhaps she thinks they are sufficiently honoured in being asked within the sacred precincts of Menlo Park," he added mischievously. "I have been given to understand that ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... statesman versed in the policy of European courts. To the eyes of those who observed him superficially he might have passed for one of those cosmopolitans, curious of knowledge, but disdaining action; one of those opulent travelers, haughty and cynical, who move incessantly from place to place, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... and gasping for breath, he pointed to the gibbet at the other side of the yard, with the cynical inscription ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... to be cynical as the helicab hummed softly through the night over the city. The cab flew at two thousand feet, where lighted buildings seemed to soar toward it from the canyons which were streets. There were lights and people everywhere, and Cochrane sardonically reminded himself ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... moments in which he was tempted to think the same of himself; bitter moments of cynical world-wisdom, in which he scoffed at himself for having been led to play the part he had played for these last eight months. He would resolve at such moments to "speak plainly" to Paolina; and, if such plain-speaking failed of the effect it was intended to produce, to put her out of his mind and ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... unknown perhaps of all great writers, did know how; and a cynical person might echo the I nunc of the Roman satirist, and dwell on the futility of doing great things, in reference to the fact that it used to be fashionable, and is still not uncommon, to call Malory a "mere compiler." Indeed from the direction which modern study so often takes, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... us that, while in the East the dynastic principle was displaying with cynical indifference its true character to the world, events were occurring in the West which threatened to shake its very foundations. If Poland was the first martyr of the national idea, Revolutionary France was its first evangelist, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... that his conduct was daily scrutinised for further pretexts of offence. On the evening of the Emperor's birthday, March 22nd, 1887, certain Germans were congregated in a public bar. The season and the place considered, it is scarce cynical to assume they had been drinking; nor, so much being granted, can it be thought exorbitant to suppose them possibly in fault for the squabble that took place. A squabble, I say; but I am willing to call it a riot. And this was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... much as she could, and to try to make the home life pleasant. But this was by no means easy. To begin with, Raeburn himself was more difficult than ever to work with, and Tom, who was in a hard, cynical mood, called him overbearing where, in former times, he would merely have called him decided. The very best of men are occasionally irritable when they are nearly worked to death; and under the severe strain of those days, Raeburn's philosophic calm more than once broke down, and the quick ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... good, the popular notions of the gods would seem to have been just as convenient as for Socrates. And we know that Antisthenes, the founder of the school, made ample use of them in his ethical teaching. He represented Heracles as the Cynical ideal and occupied himself largely with allegorical interpretation of the myths. On the other hand, there is a tradition that he maintained that "according to nature" there was only one god, but "according to the law" several—a purely sophistic view. He inveighed against the worship ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... the persistent fallacious assumption that men can be made frugal and useful members of society by laws and edicts. Every thoughtful student feels sure that future generations will look upon our present efforts to regulate the self-regarding activities of humans with the same cynical leer as that which now flits over our faces as we ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... eyes, to be able to open them suddenly and realise—with fresh acuteness—his infinite variety. There was to me something poignant about his loveliness like an open rose in whose very perfection lies the herald of doom. I loved him too much. The cynical masterpieces of the past looking at his beauty smiled in satisfied revenge for they knew that he was alive and that life means death. Love gives ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... herring ever contrives to reach maturity at all. What with the mackerel and the seagulls and the barristers, everybody seems to be against it. However, Walter, Rupert and Foch succeeded. Stephanie just missed. Walter and Rupert and Foch had jolly soft roes, a fact which is recorded in a cynical little poem by the precocious Foch, believed to be the only literary work of a whitebait now extant. We have only space here to quote the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... to his uncontrollable desire to contradict and to antagonize. It was simply impossible to find a subject upon which he and anyone else could agree. There were, however, extenuating circumstances. "Chill penury," forced upon him by the state of his financial affairs, had much to do with his cynical and acrimonious spirit. Prosperity is certainly conducive to an amiable bearing, and I believe that Gurowski would have been more conciliatory if adversity had not so persistently attended his pathway. It is highly probable, too, that Gurowski would have retained his position under ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... engaged in the business of raising and selling plants, I have not lost my interest in the plants themselves. I hope to obtain much of my recreation in testing the new varieties offered from year to year. In engaging in such pursuits even the most cynical cannot suspect any other purpose than that of observing impartially the behavior ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... know what has come to me. I worship Dicky. He sweeps me off my feet with his love, his vivid personality overpowers my more commonplace self, but through all the bewildering intoxication of my engagement and marriage a little mocking devil, a cool, cynical, little devil, is constantly whispering in my ear: "You fool, you fool, to imagine you can escape unhappiness! There is no such thing as a ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... of love, suffering continual frustration from the evaporation of emotional interest that defies their own needs; the many types of efficient workers, alert, hard, self-satisfied, not wholly cynical, yet with a touch of something that borders on cynicism, submitting almost with a secret repugnance to the mysterious but supreme bond which holds the sexes miserably together; and the prostitute woman of all kinds, out to seize every advantage from ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... leisurely—she seemed to enjoy it more than all the rest of her dinner. And what could that expression mean on her face? Inscrutable—cynical was it? No—absorbed. As absolutely unconscious of self and others as if she had been alone in the room. What could she be thinking of never to ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... However, the world has not moved, the world has not trembled, the world is not now up in arms. And who would guarantee that another time when the case will be perhaps less flagrant, the crime more obscure, the aggressor less cynical, the world will tremble and ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... been drilled in the decencies of his profession. Off came his hat, of course; and his manner, however facetious and easy it may have been the moment before, changed on the instant to gravity and decorum. Not so with Jason. He entered St. Peter's, Albany, with exactly the same indifferent and cynical air with which he had seemed to regard everything but money, since he entered "York Colony." Usually, he wore his cocked-hat on the back of his head, thereby lending himself a lolloping, negligent, and, at the same time, defying air; but I observed that, as we all uncovered, he brought his own beaver ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... powdered wig of the period, a man of middle age, with clever, well-cut features, and a large, humorous, and rather sensual mouth. His book, with all its faults of scandalous plain speech, is one that few naval surgeons of that day could have written. The style, though flippant, is remarkable for a cynical but always good-natured humour, and on the rare occasions when he thought it professionally incumbent on him to be serious, as in his discussion of the best dietary for long voyages, and the physical effects of privations, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... Bank Building, a very large red-faced old man with a white moustache and goatee turned his head in the opposite direction, wrinkled his nose, which was naturally Roman and cynical, and grunted. This was Colonel Marshall Adams. He and the Judge did not "speak." They had not spoken to one another in thirty years. This requires great firmness of character when you live within speaking distance in ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... early boyhood. Then Cranston and the other troop leaders got to working down toward the agency and, during the rests, moving close up to the corral and watching the riding-school. It was capital work, said Cranston and his contemporaries, though some jealous youngsters used to say to their cynical selves that Parson probably "put up a prayer-meeting as a stand-off." McPhail and his people began to come out and look on, and Mira to watch from the window, for she still trembled and shrank at sight of the savage painted faces ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... a dwarfish thing of gold sufficient only for the heedless purchase of one flaming, brilliant hour of life. That husbanded it might purchase a lifetime of gray hours tinged intermittently with rose or crimson, Carl had dismissed with a cynical laugh, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... now you grow too cynical, Ventidius: A lady's favours may be worn with honour. What, to refuse her bracelet! On my soul, When I lie pensive in my tent alone, 'Twill pass the wakeful hours of winter nights, To tell these pretty beads upon my arm, To count for every ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... wind ditties in the chimney, the merry wrangling of sleigh-bells, the sonorous clash of fire-bells, and the manuscript grew under my pen, as if by magic. I came to love the nurslings of my fancy as no one else will. I liked the cold, cynical features of Mr. Flint, with his undertaker's aspect; the child-spirit, Bell; Daisy Snarle's eyes; the heart-broken old sailor; the pale book-keeper; Tim, the office boy; Mr. Hardwill, the great publisher; Joe Wilkes, and all ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Buren and respected him; he regarded him as touching, but also, at times, as a menace. A shadow sometimes came over their friendship, the alarming shadow of the future bore. What was now to his cynical mind screamingly funny about the American—his sensitive delicate feelings, his high standard of morals with regard to what he called the ladies, and illusions that one would rarely find in London in a girl of seventeen, ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... Her cynical brain informed her stormy heart that any woman must succumb finally to the one man who had never ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... wonderingly into her eyes. He knew that she saw a great deal of Benham; he believed that their friendship had developed into a deeper emotion on Benham's side at least; and it seemed to him unlike Corinna, who was, as he told himself, the most loyal soul on earth, to turn such an association into a cynical jest. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... Religion was the groundwork of his character,—faith in God and devotion to duty. His piety was also more enlightened than the piety of his age, since it was practical and not ascetic. His temper was open, frank, and genial. He loved books and strangers and travellers. There was nothing cynical about him, in spite of his perplexities and discouragements. He had a beautifully balanced character and a many-sided nature. He had the power of inspiring confidence in defeat and danger. His judgment and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... of the mere man: lawless desires which he seeks to divert, but fails, from the things of the flesh and of the world to the things of the reason; supersensuous desires for the beautiful and intangible, which he strives to crush, but in vain, with the cynical scepticism of science, which derides the things it cannot grasp. In this strange Faustus, made up of so many and conflicting instincts; in this old man with ever-budding and ever-nipped feelings of youthfulness, muddling the hard-won secrets of nature in search after impossibilities; in him so all-sided, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... with which Miss Bremer travelled included a Russian princess, two boyars, and some Englishmen; among others there was a professor with a cynical smile and a sarcastic wit, who possessed a happy faculty of describing, in epigrammatic phrase and always at the right moment, the more noticeable features of the manners of the natives. While the first-named of these eminent personages rode in advance, Mr. Levison, the professor, remained by the ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... while awaiting his turn to go to the confessional one Good Friday, he carved a figure of the Christ from a stick of wood. The impiety evidenced by that figure was too flagrant not to draw down chastisement on the artist. He had actually had the hardihood to place that decidedly cynical image on the top of ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... so far her apprehensions were merely the result of a rare imaginative flight, the result, no doubt, of her own threatened exposure. Once more he admired her courage in returning to San Francisco, and as he recalled the covert air of cynical triumph, with which she had accepted his offer for her daughter's hand, he made no doubt that one object had been to play a sardonic joke on ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... beginning of a long yarn. The second is entirely mine; and I think it rather unfair on the young man to couple his name with so infamous a work. Above all, as you had not read the two last chapters, which seem to me the most ugly and cynical of all. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the policy of European courts. To the eyes of those who observed him superficially he might have passed for one of those cosmopolitans, curious of knowledge, but disdaining action; one of those opulent travellers, haughty and cynical, who move incessantly from place to place, and ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... preservative of peace was preparation for war. Foremost in the avowed policies of the day, this was urged by some who really believed it, by some who hoped for war and intended to be ready for it, and by the cynical who did not wish for war but thought it inevitable. The other proposal was that war could and should be prevented by agreements to submit all differences between nations to international tribunals for judgment. In the United States, which had always rejected the idea ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... something of a cynical smile, born of this same frustrated anxiety to impress his ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... man, he had just succeeded to the Prussian kingdom which his father had left peaceful and prosperous, guarded by a powerful and well-trained army, made secure by a well-filled treasury. Young Frederick was undoubtedly great in intellect and in cynical frankness. He saw his opportunity, he made no pretence of keeping his promises; marching his army forward he seized the nearest Austrian province, the rich and extensive land of Silesia. The other kingdoms rushed to get their share of the spoils; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... smirching of honored names and hurt as well by his slighting reference to myself had I not known from the revealing editorial he had dictated what a sympathetic and kindly nature was really his and how he might, beneath this cynical pose, have an admiration great as mine for the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the shop; he was not quite ready to do a "rushin' business" and to advertise for it from the corner drug store. As he retreated the clerk looked at him with a cynical smile. In the clerk's vernacular, he wasn't "in the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... not official, of course. Tommy is not a sentimental sort of animal so some of his definitions are not exactly complimentary, but he is not cynical and does not mean to offend anyone higher up. It is just a sort of "ragging" or "kidding," as the American would say, that helps him pass the ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... writer on the Advocate staff was a man called Ernest Lane, who, after winning considerable distinction at Oxford, falsified cynical anticipations by winning a good deal more distinction in the world outside the university. It was known that he had been invited to submit himself to the electors of a constituency in one of the Home counties, and his work while secretary to a prominent ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... sanctuary of religion? If all these fail—if in these Alonzo cannot find a balsam sufficient to heal his wounded bosom; then if, in despite of graves and tomb-stones, Melissa will come to his relief—will pour the balm of consolation over his anguished soul, cynical critic, can ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... "guiltless and unoffending nation,"[1] whose neutrality and independence had been solemnly guaranteed by treaty, to which the powers concerned in the war were parties, has had her treaty rights violated by one of these powers on the cynical plea that there is no right or wrong as against national interest, that necessity obeys no law, and treaties are "scraps of paper." This is not matter for inquiry or judicial decision at some later date. It has been frankly ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... orb will you find it otherwise? I know all that can be said against her; and yet in her great library of streets, vast and various as Shakespeare, is beauty enough for a lifetime. O poets, why have you been so faint? Because she seems cynical and crass, she cries with trumpet-call to the mind of the dreamer; because she is riant and mad, she speaks to the ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... with a shrug worthy of a cynical Frenchman, "Ah, we are not Tanna-men! We don't eat ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... moral courage, without the rainbow of purity, counts low among the virtues. We have known kind people, have we not, who were weak, who were fickle, who were even treacherous, and there is a sad truth in that half-cynical statement that it is the province of the wise to remedy the mistakes of the good. But what captivated the whole Empire in the sympathy of Queen Victoria was its strength; that one so strong should ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... Rossitur, bursting forth,—"What will you say when I tell you that Mr. Carleton deserted me and the sport in a most unceremonious manner, and that he,—the cynical philosopher, the reserved English gentleman, the gay man of the world,—you are all of 'em by turns, aren't you, Carleton?—he!—has gone and made a very cavaliero servante of himself to a piece of rusticity, and spent all to-day ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... have an enormous longing after the highest and best in all shapes—a longing which haunts me and is the demon which ever impels me to work, and will let me have no rest unless I am doing his behests. The honours of men I value so far as they are evidences of power, but with the cynical mistrust of their judgment and my own worthiness, which always haunts me, I put very little faith in them. Their praise makes me sneer inwardly. God forgive me if I do ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... uglinesses of life, in mass and class and individual, are now impossible!—and all through Barty Josselin and his quaint ironies of pen and pencil, forever trembling between tears and laughter, with never a cynical spark or a hint ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... years of age; a strong, mature woman, but quite feminine where her heart or sense of beauty are concerned. Her eyes are wide apart. Has a dazzling smile, which she knows how to use on occasion. Also, on occasion, she can be firm and hard, even cynical An intellectual woman, and at the same time a very womanly woman, capable of sudden tendernesses, flashes of emotion, and abrupt actions. She is a finished product of high culture and refinement, and at the ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... song-writer nor the song-singer ever wearies. It is the one great passion with which the universal modern mind sympathises, and from the expressions of which it quaffs inexhaustible delight. This holds true even of the cynical people who profess a distaste for love and lovers. For love has for them its comic side,—it appears to them exquisitely humorous in the human weakness it causes and brings to light; and if they do not enjoy the song in its praise, they seldom fail to laugh heartily at the description of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... "And too cynical. They think only of revenues. They remind me of the report of the Reverend Commissary Blair who, having projected a college in Virginia, came to England to ask King William for help. The Queen in the King's absence ordered her Attorney-General ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... the idea. Even the lively excesses of Major Hardy's mob, even Jimmy Doon's cynical humour at the prospect of death had much in them like the Mediterranean on ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... is a very questionable piece of wisdom to make that the thing which we are most unwilling to think about. I do not want to be a kill-joy; I do not want to take anything out of the happy buoyancy of youth. I would say, as even that cynical, bitter Ecclesiastes says, 'Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth.' By all means; only take all the facts into account, and if you have joys which shrivel up at the touch of this thought, then the sooner you get rid of such joys the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... a power of learning and a power of work which were prodigious, even in those hard-working days. Rabelais chaffs Rondelet, under the name of Rondibilis; for, indeed, Rondelet grew up into a very round, fat, little man; but Rabelais puts excellent sense into his mouth, cynical enough, and too cynical, but both learned and humorous; and, if he laughs at him for being shocked at the offer of a fee, and taking it, nevertheless, kindly enough, Rondelet is not the first doctor who has done that, neither will he ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... delicate features, reminding one of Raphael's pictures. Talizac looked, and forgot that this child was the victim of a miserable conspiracy. He was so impressed by her beauty and her innocence that he was ready to kneel before her. But La Roulante touched his arm with a cynical laugh. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... through the town of La Ferte, Jeanne rode between the Archbishop of Rheims and Dunois. The Archbishop had never been friendly to the Maid, and now it was clear, watched her with that half satirical, half amused look of the wise man, curious and cynical in presence of the incomprehensible, observing her ways and very ready to catch her tripping and to entangle her if possible in her own words. The people thronged the way, full of enthusiasm, acclaiming the King and shouting their joyful exclamations of "Noel!" ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... love strong as death, and jealousy cruel as the grave. The brave and loyal subject passes, step by step, to the extremities of human depravity. We trace his progress, from the first dawnings of unlawful ambition to the cynical melancholy of his impenitent remorse. Yet, in these pieces, there are no unnatural transitions. Nothing is omitted: nothing is crowded. Great as are the changes, narrow as is the compass within which they are exhibited, they shock ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... dreary, companionless walks, unshared by any human fellowship, I saw at last a face which I remembered; it was that of the cynical spectator who had spoken to me in the noisy street, in the midst of my early experiences. He gave a glance round him to see that there were no officials in sight, then left the file in which he was walking, and joined me. 'Ah!' he said, 'you ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... road were well accustomed to the sight of a high, tremulous phaeton flashing past them, and the crimson face of the young Prince bending over the horses. There is something absurd in representing George as, even before he came of age, a hardened and cynical profligate, an Elagabalus in trousers. His blood flowed fast enough through his veins. All his escapades were those of a healthful young man of the time. Need we blame him if he sought, every day, to ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... sad, or the bride merry; the bride indeed sometimes weeps at the altar, and the mourner laughs a savage cynical laugh at the grave; but for those moments in which they awhile forget parts more important than themselves, the tailor and the dressmaker have provided symbolical garments, just as military decorations have been provided for heroes without ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... stories—for he often wrote poor ones—there was the atmosphere of sincerity, of realism, the marks of an acute observer, without prejudice and with a justifiable leaning toward a belief in the fundamental worth of humanity. Where others were cynical he was just. Where others were sentimental, he had sincere, healthful sentiment. Where others were hysterical, he calmly and accurately described, permitting the tragedy to reveal itself instead of burying it beneath high-heaped adjectives. Simplicity of style was his ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... would," retorted St. George with a cynical laugh, slipping on his gloves. "Pay it?—of course pay it. Pay everything and everybody! What do you think I'd bring at auction, Pawson? I'm white, you know, and so I can't be sold on the block—but the doctors might ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... women and girls are going year by year from bad to worse. That the earth does not hold a daintier, purer, more exquisitely lovable being than the well-educated, well-bred English girl, is an opinion held even by some very cynical males; but the literary shrew rattles out her libels, and, in order to show how very virtuous she is, she usually makes her articles unfit to be brought within the doors of any respectable house. Not that she is ribald—she is merely so slangy, so audacious, and so bitter that ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... of white light shaking and darting across the black sky like a gleaming sword; the man on the sidewalk looking backward with a startled glance; the big drops of rain falling sidelong in the wind—these were all reproduced on the canvas. His later pictures were characterized by a cynical tendency, which I observed with regret. It was evident that his sensitive mind had taken impressions from its brief contact with men, which were sadly affecting ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... spoke she earnestly considered the large head, wedged between the shoulders as if a giant's hand had pressed it down, the masterful nose, the keen grey eyes, and the cynical lips; and in that moment determined to make him Ada's husband. Yet he was the last man she would have chosen for a son-in-law. A loafer and a vagabond, he spoke of marriage with a grin. Half his time was spent under ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... "had no stomach," and "could not pick a lark's bones," she finished by eating more than Clare and Blanche put together. Jack, meanwhile, was attending to his own personal wants, and took no notice of his bride, beyond a cynical remark now and then, to which Gertrude returned a sharp answer. It was evident that no love ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... it left her faint and sick, not with cynical scorn of the spectacle, but with longing and self-pity. The crowd in the dressing-room was thinning now, but, whether she had finished her duty or not, she must escape. She could endure it no longer. Again ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... without counting the cost, but because he knew what poverty meant, and a fellow-feeling made him kind. Even in Venice he set aside a fixed sum for charitable purposes. It was to his credit that neither libertinism nor disgrace nor remorse withered at its root this herb of grace. Cynical speeches with regard to friends and friendship, often quoted to his disadvantage, need not be taken too literally. Byron talked for effect, and in accordance with the whim of the moment. His acts do not correspond with his words. Byron rejected ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... churches of pale Istrian stone, and where the Campo Santo has for centuries received the dead into its oozy clay. The cemetery is at present undergoing restoration. Its state of squalor and abandonment to cynical disorder makes one feel how fitting for Italians would be the custom of cremation. An island in the lagoons devoted to funeral pyres is a solemn and ennobling conception. This graveyard, with its ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Whitney, at the Union Club. Lester was dining there one evening, and Whitney met him in the main reading-room as he was crossing from the cloak-room to the cigar-stand. The latter was a typical society figure, tall, lean, smooth-faced, immaculately garbed, a little cynical, and to-night a little the worse for liquor. "Hi, Lester!" he called out, "what's this talk about a menage of yours out in Hyde Park? Say, you're going some. How are you going to explain all this to your wife when ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... care what you think him!' said Mrs. Capadose, looking, it seemed to him, as she smiled, handsomer than he had ever seen her. She was either deeply cynical or still more deeply impenetrable, and he had little prospect of winning from her the intimation that he longed for—some hint that it had come over her that after all she had better have married a man who was not a by-word for the most ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... through the torn tapestry of the trees with a startling sense of disclosure. The dishevelled world wore the distressed look of a nymph caught deshabillee. The expression, "the naked woods," occurred to one with almost a sense of impropriety. At least there was a cynical indecorum in this violent ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... Thirty-seven, the outlaws, Ann and Wendell, were married. It was a quiet wedding—guests were not invited because it was not pleasant to court cynical regrets, and kinsmen were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... reached the drug store, he did not go in, but walked past with his head in the air, looking neither to right nor to left. He felt as though every one must already know of the morning's experience; and he was fearful of meeting eyes alight with cynical understanding. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... never long absent from Mortimer's face, scrutinizing each feature in turn, the eyes, set rather close together, grotesquely shielded by the thick spectacles, the narrow cheeks, the rather cynical mouth half hidden by the heavy, drooping moustache, the broad forehead broken by a long lock of dark hair brushed out flat in a downward direction from ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... amid a great silence. And Laniboire, cynical as before, said 'All societies are cowardly; it's the natural law of self-preservation.' Here Epinchard, who had been busy near the door with Picheral the Secretary, rejoined the rest, and observed in a weak voice, between two fits of coughing, that the Permanent Secretary was not the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... was in his reign, as is well known, that a fierce fire consumed a great part of Rome and her monuments. The majority of historians accuse Nero of having himself been the cause of it; but at any rate he looked on with cynical indifference, as if amused at so grand a spectacle, and taking pleasure in comparing it to the burning of Troy. He did more: he profited by it so far as to have built for himself, free of expense, that magnificent palace called "The Palace of Gold," of which he said, when he saw it ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Wayland stopped storming. His cynical laugh came back an echo hard to his own hearing. Was It speaking the same mute language to her It had spoken to him since first he came to the Holy Cross? The violet shadows of twilight slowly filled with a primrose mist, with ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Rochester (Edward). Brusque, cynical lover of Jane Eyre. Having married in his early youth a woman who disgraces him and then goes crazy, he shuts her up at Thornhill, and goes abroad. He returns to find a governess there in charge of his child-ward; falls in love with her, and would marry her, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Aurelia's charms. And to a certain extent I felt that I should be responsible for that misfortune, for if I had never loved her she had never been in Florence; and if she had never been in Florence, she had never seen this accomplished, scoffing, cynical Tuscan. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... he said in a cynical amusement. "It is peculiar that one should love any woman, senores—or do you, Senor Bell, find it natural? I loved this girl. It pleased my father. She was of a family fully equal to my own: their ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... met all his old friends, and heard "Wild Bill" get up and deliver one of his tirades. Bill had in his hand a newspaper clipping telling of the amazing madness that had struck Wall Street. Munition stocks were soaring to prices beyond belief; "war-babies", men called them, with unthinkably cynical wit. On the "Great White Way", to which they rushed to celebrate these new Arabian Nights, there was such an orgy of dissipation as the world had never seen. "And is this what we have to slave for!" ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... was consistent; he hated Christmas as we hate anything that does not agree with our temperament. Merry Christmas was nonsense to him because he did not know how to be merry. He was a cold, cynical bachelor, and at that, so far, was perfectly within the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... the name of Nanny with an intelligence that was otherwise wholly employed in making trouble. It went up and down stairs, from cellar to garret, and in and out of all the rooms, like anybody, with a faint, cynical indifference in the glance of its cold gray eyes that gave no hint of its purposes or performances. In the chambers it chewed the sheets and pillow-cases on the beds, and in the dining-room, if it found nothing else, it would do its best to ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... listeners. Indeed, I thought I might be an object of scorn, if I were to plead here for my masculine innocence! Now, however, I feel young again; and there's something for which I'd like to ask mankind's forgiveness. If it weren't that I happened to see a cynical smile on the lips of the woman who seduced me when I was young. Come forward, woman, and look upon your work of destruction. Observe, how ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... does not add to its wealth by "capturing" another, that indeed one community cannot "own" another—while, I say, he believes all these things in his daily life at home, he disregards them all when he comes to the field of international relationship, la haute politique. To annex some province by a cynical breach of treaty obligation (Austria in Bosnia, Italy in Tripoli) is regarded as better politics than to act loyally with the community of nations to enforce their common interest in order and good government. In fact, we do not believe ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... strength. They unite us in a stewardship of peace and freedom with our allies and friends in NATO, in Asia, in Latin America, and elsewhere. They are also the values which in the recent past some among us had begun to doubt and view with a cynical eye. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... big black crow winging his solitary way across a leaden field. Gilbert speculated idly concerning that crow. Was he a family crow, with a black but comely crow wife awaiting him in the woods beyond the Glen? Or was he a glossy young buck of a crow on courting thoughts intent? Or was he a cynical bachelor crow, believing that he travels the fastest who travels alone? Whatever he was, he soon disappeared in congenial gloom and Gilbert turned to the ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pale and gloomy. He saw what was going on there and looked daggers at his wife. She did not move from her tracks and stood smiling in a cynical way. ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... irresponsible task of commanding troops in action, are a little unnerved by the difficulties and intricacies of embarking oneself militarily. He on whom all the responsibility rests remains aloof. A smile, half cynical, plays across his proud face. He knows he has but to flick the ash from his cigarette and the Army will spring to attention and the Navy will get feverishly to work. He has but to express consent by the inclination ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... artist must be admitted to have wrought successfully. She is somewhat minutely described as a 'tall and plump widow of twenty-five; a proud coquette, her beauty spoiled by its oddity; dazzling and not pleasing, and with a wicked, cynical expression.' That such a woman should befool Fiesco and rejoice in her triumph is quite thinkable, but her qualities are those which usually go with a certain amount of discretion. That she should suddenly lose her head and throw herself away in a voluptuous frenzy hardly comports with the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... of the Germans. Nothing of the kind has been reported. The commissioning of warships on the high seas is a different thing, which may possibly be regarded as an offence of a graver nature. Great Britain is not going to imitate the cynical contempt for treaties, evidenced by the action of Germany in Belgium and Luxemburg, in disregard not only of the well-known treaties of 1889 and 1867, but of a quite recent solemn undertaking, to which I have not noticed any reference. Art. ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... expresses the same idea more coarsely by saying that "finding a thing beautiful is simply another way of expressing the manifestation of the sexual appetite." But it remained for Mantegazza to give this view the most cynical expression: ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... day, so much at least was clear to him. With that same cynical smile on his lips, he pulled his shivering rags about him, and half unconsciously felt at the growth of beard about his chin. Nobody would recognise him now. His friends (as he had thought them) would pass by without a glance for the poor outcast ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... in every variety of feminine hand-writing. "A CAREFUL MOTHER" writes from Dorset—a locality hitherto associated in my mind with butter rather than with blame—to protest that she has been so horrified by my cynical tone, that she does not intend to take me in any longer. She adds, that "Punch has laid upon my drawing-room table for more than thirty years." Heavens, that I should have been so deeply, so ungrammatically, honoured without knowing it! Am I no longer to recline ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... executed them accordingly, yet lived and died obscurely. Another we shall consider as the work of him(5) who restored Painting when it had almost sunk; of him whom art made honourable, but who, neglecting and despising greatness with a sort of cynical pride, was treated suitably to the figure he gave himself, not his intrinsic worth; which, (he) not having philosophy enough to bear it, broke his heart. Another is done by one(6) who (on the contrary) was a fine gentleman and lived in great magnificence, and was much honoured ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... his uncle. He received him warmly and kindly. He not only promised him work, but kept his word. Hinton took chambers in a fashionable part of the town, and already was not idle. But he was a changed man. That shattered trust was making his spirit very hard. The cynical part of him was being fostered. Mrs. Home, when she looked into his face, was quite right in saying to herself that his expression had not improved. Now, however, again, as he paced up and down, soft thoughts ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... herself from so small and insignificant a thing as death, though she was vital and loved life for its own sake. She had not realized, either, until it had been almost done, how necessary it was. Yesterday she had been more cynical. Her own wickedness was teaching her the necessity of some good, and she saw now clearly that Bosio was one degree less base than herself. She believed that he would now be willing to marry Veronica, but she understood that until now he would not have done it—unless she had freed him from the galling ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... refinement. Many are ready to talk of some crafts under the name of art, which must now, forsooth, be spelt with a capital letter—why, I know no more than the artists. John Turner had his Art, and now exercised it. I always noticed that during the earlier and more piquant courses of a meal he was cynical and apt to give speech on matters of human meanness and vanity not unknown to many who are silent about them. Later on, when the dishes became more succulent, so would his views of life sweeten and acquire a mellower flavour. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... person, Jacqueline herself, was also pondering rather soberly this morning. And her thoughts fitted as oddly with her piquant, lightsome, cynical youth as the gloomily patriotic ones of the Storm Centre did with his youth, which was robust and boyish and swashbuckling. To judge from the way their brains worked now, both young people might have been grave wielders of state affairs, instead of the lad and the lass ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the rest in this drama of unworthy schemes,—Constance, the passionately devoted mother of Prince Arthur, who fights for her son with almost tigress-like ferocity, and Faulconbridge, the loyal lieutenant of King John, cynical and fond of bragging, but brave and patriotic, and gifted with a saving grace of rough humor, much needed in the sordid atmosphere he breathes. One single scene contains a note of pathos otherwise foreign to the play,—that in which John's emissary Hubert begins his cruel task of blinding poor ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... perfect mirror. Yet it is not that mirror he marries after all: for when at last he has come to know what that word—one so distasteful, so 'soiled' to his ear 'with all ignoble' domesticity—what that word 'wife' really expresses, he has learnt, too, to discredit those cynical guides of his youth who love so well to write Ego as the last ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... the cynical barefacedness of the dodge; that was indeed amusing; he was sanguine as to his ability to dominate any situation that might arise, and to a degree indifferent if the upshot should prove his confidence misplaced; and he did ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... under the cynical look to which he was subjected; yet he replied, firmly, "You have availed yourself, I see, of your opportunities; from your teachers you have brought away much knowledge and many graces. You talk with the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... from his book; his eyes were not cold or malevolent, his mouth was not cynical; he was ready and willing to hear what I might have to say: his spirit was of vintage too mellow and generous ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... though it had been hewn out of wood; one of those pale, almost white, honey-coloured woods would give the effect of his fair beard and eyebrows. His thick red lips were more startling than ever, curved as they usually were in cynical contempt of some foolish victim. How ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... will abuse us all for our land policies, but overlook the fact that the brutalities of these policies were committed in other days—those good, old Republican days. It really is a wonder that you are not cynical and that you still have enthusiasm. I should not be surprised if you said your prayers and had belief in another world, where all the bad Democrats would sizzle to the eternal joy of the good Republicans. In those days I shall look up to you ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... seems to have been blighted by early griefs, and she has grown cynical and misanthropic. Loving no one but her faithful and devoted nurse, she has completely isolated herself, and consequently the death of this servant—companion—nay, foster-mother—is a terrible blow to her. I want your promise that what you may hear or witness in this ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... deity of my adopted habitat—has handed down to shuddering posterity a definition of the act of eating which might have been framed by a dyspeptic ghoul. "Eat: to devour with the mouth." It is a shocking view to take of so genial a function: cynical, indelicate, and finally unforgivable by reason of its very accuracy. For, after all, that is what eating amounts to, if one must needs express it with such crude brutality. But if "the ingestion of alimentary substances"—to ring a modern change upon the older formula—is in ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... a tinge from their deep and politic genius, and their wisdom seems wholly concentrated in their personal interests. I think every tenth proverb, in an Italian collection, is some cynical or some selfish maxim: a book of the world for worldlings! The Venetian proverb, Pria Veneziana, poi Christiane: "First Venetian, and then Christian!" condenses the whole spirit of their ancient Republic into the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... two or three men of real gift. Forbes himself was a man of uncommon vivacity. Small, stocky, with an unruly thatch of yellow hair and a quaintly wry and homely face, he hid his shyness and his brilliancy behind a brusque manner. Ostensibly cynical and a witty satirist of his more sentimental fellows, his desk was full of charming ballades and pieces d'amour, scratched off at white heat in odd moments. His infinite fund of full-flavoured jest had won him ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... replied the General, wonderingly. "His secluded life here has kept him from the wear and tear of the world. It has not made him at all misanthropical or even cynical. His heart is as warm as ever. He ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... which he had planned for himself. It is an extraordinary peculiarity in unbelievers that they are often more subject to petty superstitions than other men; and similarly, it often happens that the most cynical and coldly calculating of conspirators, who believe themselves proof against all outward influences, yield to some feeling of nervous dislike for an individual who has never harmed them, and are led on from dislike ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... his cynical laugh: "I suppose you want to know what he's saying. I don't understand it all. I'm just learning their lingo. But he's offering me the homage of the ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... minutes the hesitations and subtleties that ought to have lasted them through a quarter of a life-time. But I think it is possible that the English reader might gather from this little book an unduly strong impression of the uniformity of Island life. The loves of white men and brown women, often cynical and brutal, sometimes exquisitely tender and pathetic, necessarily fill a large space in any true picture of the South Sea Islands, and Mr Becke, no doubt of set artistic purpose, has confined himself in the ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... more self-conscious, had a more glib way of expressing his convictions, but even he hid his purpose in the war under a covering of irony and cynical jests. It was the spirit of the old city and the pride of it which helped him to suffer, and in his daydreams was the clanging of 'buses from Charing Cross to the Bank, the lights of the embankment reflected in the dark river, the back yard where he had kept his bicycle, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the hand of mob violence; the casualness, even the levity with which black men were murdered: the chronic dishonesty with which negroes were treated: the constant enactment of adverse legislation against them; the cynical use of negro women. They were all vermin, animals; they were one with the sheep and the swine; a little nearer the human in form, perhaps, and, oddly enough, one that could be bred to a human being, as testified a multitude of brown and yellow and cream-colored ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... in Martial that we are able to sense the abandoned and cynical attitude of the Roman public toward this vice: the epigram upon Cantharus, xi, 46, is an excellent example. In commentating upon the meticulous care with which Cantharus avoided being spied upon by irreverent witnesses, the poet sarcastically remarks that such ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... clubs and "circles" people speak more freely. There one sometimes hears the entire diplomatic service ridiculed with cynical sarcasm by those of inferior rank, and the superiors listen smilingly, as though regretting that their higher dignity forbade them this freedom of speech. In these circles many a sharp word would sometimes escape me too, in regard to the structure of national prosperity, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... Memories of old Times, hath made me somewhat cynical, I think. I cannot but call to Mind her many ill Turns. 'Twas shortly after the Rupture of Anne's Match with John Herring. Poor Nan had over-reckoned on her own Strength of Mind, when she promised Father to speak ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... characteristic of Brookfield that when attacked with the tuberculosis to which he eventually succumbed, he should draw up the prospectus and rules of the "Ninety-nine Club" (those who have ever had their lungs tested will understand the allusion), a document in which he gave full rein to his vein of cynical and slightly ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton |
