"Cynically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... help that," replied the ruffian, cynically. "I've got to get to Cologne some time to-day, and there seems no other way of doing it ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... temperament, his fine mountain atmosphere of mind, that calm, sabbatic, mystic, wellbeing which De Quincey, [87] a little cynically, connected with worldly (that is to say, pecuniary) good fortune, kept his conviction of a latent intelligence in nature within the limits of sentiment or instinct, and confined it to those delicate and subdued shades of expression which alone perfect art allows. In Coleridge's sadder, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... evening cloak over a filmy effect of cream-coloured lace. She was a small, pretty woman, with a cloud of fluffy, artificially blonde hair and large, innocent, absolutely blank blue eyes. A year ago she had resembled, if one might imagine the existence of such a being, a perfectly worldly wise and cynically minded baby, but twelve months of late suppers and many plays had already blighted her rose-leaf skin and sown three fine, nervous little wrinkles between her delicately arched eyebrows. She was very vivacious, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... exceptions to the otherwise fair record of the farming class in this respect is the tax on oleomargarine and the special favor accorded to farmers' associations in the Clayton Act. It might be cynically said that the farmer has not been "sharp" enough to get his share of the "good" things" that the business classes were passing around in protective legislation. But farmers have, as has every economic ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... sir, he is a thoroughly bad man," said Hale cynically, "though I daresay other people are just as bad. However, I will give you a week to ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... extent of his learning, Pierre gloated in a freedom of speech, the which no man dared deny him. He turned to eye his companion cynically for a second time, and contempt was patent in his gaze. Willard appeared slender and pallid in his furs, though his clear-cut features spoke a ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... safe now. What harm could anyone's mere suspicion do him? And yet, for all that, he was not sorry to free himself from further intrusions of a visitor in whose glance he sometimes surprised a subtle mockery, almost as if his friend had actually detected his secret and was cynically enjoying the humour of the thing. It was only imagination on his own part, but it was not ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... laugh again suddenly and cynically—the bitter laugh of a man who hides his soul; and Larpent leaned back in his chair again, as if he recognized that the discussion ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... tell you that," said Chip, cynically. "There's just two bunches to choose from. There's the Sweet Young Things, that faint away at sight of a six-shooter, and squawk and catch at your arm if they see a garter snake, and blush if you happen to catch their eye suddenly, and cry if you don't take off your hat every ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... pit for others and falling into it yourself," Millar remarked cynically. "However," he went on, "things are not so bad. I have reliable information that the later crop will ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... Turkish massacres in Armenia or the horrors of Bolshevik rule in Russia. In their determination to secure Southern Albania for themselves, the Greeks apparently adopted the policy followed with such success in Armenia by the Turks, who asserted cynically that "one cannot make ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... short and red-faced, magnificently mustached, and always a little out of breath. With a cigar in his hand, over a glass of beer, he talked most cynically about his ship, in the immemorial fashion of engineers. But in reality, Watkins was foolishly infatuated with Dierdre, idealized her, humanized her, and couldn't conceive of anything ...
— Death Wish • Robert Sheckley
... fear of an accident was, however, less than their dread of a flogging, and the hustling went on, much, apparently to the amusement of Captain Pigot, who smiled cynically as he silently watched the struggle. The two captains of the to were in the most disadvantageous position of all, as they, bent supposed to be the two smartest hands on the yard, had laid out, one to each yard-arm to pass and haul out ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... mistake if an allowance of ten per cent. at least, is not made for that unknown quantity—woman. Third: it is beneficial to remember that one man rarely knows everything. Other morals will doubtless present themselves, and at the end the cynically-inclined person may reflect upon the adage about the frying-pan and ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... all this, Red Creek gave the impression, not in the least incorrect, of falling apart into two watchful sections which eyed each other suspiciously, being cynically and unsociably inclined. Its main street was as wide as Van Ness Avenue and down the middle of it, like a border line between two hostile camps, sprawled a stream which shared its ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... officer to start railing at the culprit, while the crowd listened as silently and attentively as though he had been saying something worthy to be heard and heeded, rather than foully and cynically miscalling their mothers. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... lived a long time, the count on the 23rd of March made himself drunk from daybreak, in order to pass in oblivion the dreaded anniversary which awoke in his mind a remorse which was only slumbering. "That's the regular mode of deposition in Russia," said Talleyrand, cynically, on hearing of the emperor's assassination. The First Consul's anger overcame his judgment. "The wretches!" he exclaimed; "they failed here on the 3rd Nivose, but they have not failed in St. Petersburg." ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... noblesse of France fallen so low that it sends its women to intercede for the lives of its men? But, perhaps," he added cynically, "it had not far ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... coffee and tea for Sanda. He tended the camel she rode in order that it might be strong and in good health. When the caravan came into the country of the Touaregs he rode near her day by day, and at night lay as close to her tent as he dared. Sometimes he noticed that Stanton eyed him cynically when he performed unostentatious services for Sanda, but outwardly the only two white men were on civil terms. Stanton even seemed glad of Max's companionship, and discussed routes and prospects with him, asking his advice sometimes; and once, when the explorer ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... some twenty machines, and half as many bath-men and bath-women, who waded into the water and watched that the bathers came to no harm, instead of a solitary lifeguard showing his statuesque shape as he paced the shore beside the lifelines, or cynically rocked in his boat beyond the breakers, as the custom is on Long Island. Here there is no need of life-lines, and, unless one held his head resolutely under water, I do not see how he could drown within quarter of a mile of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... voice, stern and hard as ever, expressed no jot of compassion for her, rather such an impatient contempt as a puling child might elicit—"you are safe here. And here you will stop! Weep if you please," he added cynically, "you will have ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... pleased. The fellow if he was as pure as a lily now was just about as devoid of the goods of the earth. And there were misfortunes, however undeserved, which damaged a man's standing permanently. On the other hand, it was difficult to oppose cynically a noble impulse—not to speak of the great love at the root of it. Ah! Love! And then the lady was quite capable of going off by herself. She was of age, she had money of her own, plenty of pluck too. Moorsom must have concluded that it was more truly paternal, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... morality, have found out that coarseness of language is, to say the least, unfit and inexpedient; that if it be wrong to do certain things, it is also, on the whole, right not to talk of them; that even certain things which are right and blessed and holy lose their sanctity by being dragged cynically to the light of day, instead of being left in the mystery in which God has wisely shrouded them. On the whole, one is inclined to suspect the defence of coarseness as insincere. Certainly, in our day, it will not hold. If any one wishes to hear coarse language in 'good society' ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... road to Alfredston now. It stared him cynically in the face. The wayside objects reminded him so much of his courtship of his wife that, to keep them out of his eyes, he read whenever he could as he walked to and from his work. Yet he sometimes felt that by caring for books he was not escaping common-place nor gaining rare ideas, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... from the moon they could scarcely have less acquaintance with terrestrial conditions; but afterwards, when ruthlessly, with the grinning assistance of the onlookers, the facts of the social scheme were cynically revealed, and the role imperiously allotted—with much admonition and moving appeals to conscience and religion, and all the other aides-de-camp at command—after all that, how in the name of heaven could they continue to "babble of green fields"? Was it conceivable ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... observed Fleetwood cynically, "all this Fourth Avenue antique business; dingy, cumbersome, depressing. Good God! I see myself standing it. ... Look at that old grinny-bags in a pig-tail over there! To the cellar for his, if this were my house. ... We've got some, too, in several rooms, and I never go into 'em. They're ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... that the Administration are pledged to refuse admission to the tables to any subject of the Prince of Monaco, or to any French subject of Nice or the department of the Maritime Alps. The proclamation of this fact cynically stares in the face all who enter the Casino. The local authorities will not have any of their own neighbours ruined. Let foreigners, or even Frenchmen of other departments, care ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... hence, wrote of Tennyson to Emerson: "One of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of dusky hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... marketplace of old time, in a strangely costumed crowd, which was clamouring violently. The poor bridegroom was being held back by his friends; a handsome young man in knee-breeches and a cocked hat watched the proceedings cynically in the right-hand corner, whilst on the left a big fat man frantically endeavoured to recover his wig, that had been lost in the melee. The advertisement was headed, 'Morton and Cox's Operatic Company,' and concluded with the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... quite indifferent to war," he had cynically declared at last. "The confiscations it would produce will provide for many ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... not bear it. She had made Osborn burst into a big, harsh laugh one day when she had hinted to him that there were occult things to be done which might prevent ill luck. He had laughed first and scowled afterwards, cynically saying that she might as well be ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... would tell us that the Nationalist unit in Ireland is three times as large as the Unionist unit, and that therefore the smaller entity should submit, because, as he has cynically observed, "minorities must suffer, for that is the badge of their tribe." But a minority in the United Kingdom is not to be measured by mere numbers; its place in the Constitution is to be estimated ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... He put it cynically, scowling critically at Jarvo and Akko. "All in the way av fair fight, that'll be about Mor-rocco, if I've the full av my wits about me, an' music to my eyes, by the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... in once when I was being scrapped to death. He jumped right in, when he looked like gettin' killed for it. And," he laughed cynically, "he gave me a few more years of the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... has ceased to love him as she has discarded her "white wimples," which, if she marries this inferior person, she may long for once again! And he adds, rather cynically, for a blessed soul in Purgatory, that through her ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... be very glad to have you keep me in countenance. We will discourse cynically upon the follies of the day and ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... things, since the beginning, have men said of women, though neither so many nor so bitter, as the witty Frenchman cynically remarks, as the things women have said of one another. Poor Eve has paid very dear for that apple: the only wonder is, that she was not made responsible also for the Flood: but we have not got the whole of that story: Noah's wife may have dropped ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... invitation sometimes comes so late that the master has long since devoured everything in his basket and is dead of starvation. But that makes not the slightest difference to humanity, which will take no refusal, and props the cynically amused skeleton up at the board next the toastmaster. My point is, however, that humanity is often forehanded enough with its invitations to give the masters a charming time of it before they, too, into the dust descend, sans wine, sans song, etc. But I do not know that it ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... shallow steps, the arch accost of the soft eyes, the dimple in the round check. She had been sent to sue him, the invader, to soften him with blandishments. He had kept her waiting like a lackey, then had sought cynically to discover how far her devotion to her country's safety would carry her. And when her pitiful little basket of tricks had been emptied, her little traps sprung, he had sent her back to her husband with a message that crushed her woman's pride and shattered the hopes of her people. He ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... leads up to the Holidays. I hope that you will enjoy them. Nancy is having no end of a gay time, and knows how really good a time she is having, I do believe. She is the rarest combination of old woman and baby I have ever known, cynically wise, almost, and soft innocence. She has a dozen beaux and is extravagant ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... Cynically assured, therefore, at bottom of his own power with this ebullient nature, the squire was quite prepared to make external concessions, or, as we have said, to pay his price. It annoyed him that when Elsmere would press for allotment land, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Leicester Ralegh's sudden favour on his return from Ireland. A few months before he was, we have seen, soliciting the Earl for a change of employment. His introduction at Court may have been the answer. Sir Henry Wotton, adopting the view, cynically surmised that Leicester wished to 'bestow handsomely upon another some part of the pains, and perhaps of the envy, to which long indulgent fortune is obnoxious.' By others, whom Scott has partly followed, the Earl of Sussex has been credited with the elevation ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... approached with respectful petitions praying for redress of the most glaring causes of discontent; but those were invariably either disdainfully rejected or ignored, or, if some matter was relieved, other more exasperating enactments were defiantly substituted. They were cynically told that they had come to their (the Boer's) country unasked, and were at liberty, and in fact invited, to leave it if the laws did not please them. This was said, well knowing that to leave would involve too great sacrifices of homes and investments. The Uitlanders could not, however, ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... process by which a man is taught to submit his wishes, his instincts, and, to a great extent, his personal liberty to the control of one who may be his inferior morally, mentally, and physically. It has also been cynically defined as the art of making a man more afraid of his own officers than of the enemy. Its function seems to be the formation of certain military qualities which Patriotism and the Sense of Duty are by themselves believed incapable of creating. It has always been considered an ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... she asked, cynically, and her hands were clasped closely, so close the ring must have hurt her. He noticed it, and kept his eyes on her hand as ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... his friends the Tristrams with a good deal of frequency, though if you had listened to Mrs. Tristram's account of the matter you would have supposed that they had been cynically repudiated for the sake of grander acquaintance. "We were all very well so long as we had no rivals—we were better than nothing. But now that you have become the fashion, and have your pick every day of three invitations to dinner, we are tossed into the corner. I am sure it is very good of you ...
— The American • Henry James
... the white man' is good," cynically observed Ed Rogers, after calling Lowell's attention to the article. "If those cattlemen ever get the reservation opened, they'll keep the nesters out for the next forty years, if they have to kill a homesteader for every hundred and ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... him for not recording the history of ideal engagements, and who remarked, "You know, there are sound potatoes and rotten potatoes in this world," Ibsen cynically replied, "I am afraid none of the sound ones have come under my notice"; and when Guldstad proves to the beautiful Svanhild the paramount importance of creature comforts, the last word of distrust in the sustaining power ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... ever, have the monuments of piety and of learning and those sentiments of religion and national association, of which they are the permanent embodiment, even in the worst times of the most ruthless warriors, been so shamefully and cynically desecrated; and behind the actual theatre of conflict with its smoke and its carnage there are the sufferings of those who are left behind, the waste of wealth, the economic dislocation, the heritage, the long heritage of enmities and misunderstanding which war brings ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... I asked, yet feeling an immense relief come over me as I heard. But I asked in ignorance, not cynically. Frances would know. She knew all this kind ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... satisfied his conscience by the performance of what no doubt seemed to him sacred duties, Caius at once set to work to build up his new constitution. It is commonly represented that in order to gain over the people to his side he cynically bribed them by his Lex Frumentaria. Now if this were true, and Caius were as clear-sighted as the same writers who insist on the badness of the law describe him to have been, it is hard to see how they can in the same breath eulogise his goodness and nobleness. To gain his ends he would have been ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... neglecting to check in on time," he rationalized cynically to the operator. He rubbed his long nose and hoped the operator would agree that's all ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... wonder," remarked Malcolm, cynically, as he delivered the message, "for I heard him a' through the wee hours walkin' and walkin' up and doun, for a' the world like a wolf in a cage. And eh, ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... laboriously. Stopping from time to time to shape a quill pen to his liking, he would write a few lines carefully, kill a number of flies, take a peep at Alban from beneath his shaggy brows and then resume the cycle of his labors. Alban pitied him cynically. This labor of docketing scarred backs seemed wretchedly monotonous. He was really glad when the fellow spoke to him, in as amazing a combination of tongues as man had ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... existence? Why couldn't life be simple and straightforward with people like his father and himself and that girl Maggie alone somewhere with nothing to interfere? Life was never just as you wanted it, always a little askew, a little twisted, cynically cocking its eye at you before it vanished round the corner? He didn't seem to be able to manage it. Anyway, he wasn't going to have that ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... office of the Bulletin it was a gleeful occasion. Nonchalant reporters sat down with that amazing front page spread out before them, studied the brutal face of Stone and chuckled cynically. Lean Doc Miller, "assistant city editor," or rather head copy reader, lit one cigarette from the stub of another and observed, to nobody in particular but to everybody ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... amusement were about equally blended. It was amusing to note the signs of apprehension on the part of Miss Wickham's disagreeable relatives as they noted their aunt's doting fondness for her hired companion. And while she felt that they richly deserved this little punishment, it was humiliating to be so cynically ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... Lady Dawn would return. Now that she was gone, he was invaded with his old loneliness. The dead lords eyed him cynically from their canvases. Through leaded panes the moonlight fell. It seemed the sorcery of her spirit. The perfume of the rose-garden was her breath. How pale she had made his dream of Terry! How trivial ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... mean, but a few extras don't make much difference when one is so liberally supplied already," he said cynically. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... half a dozen lovers, since men grow weary and change and women, in loneliness or desperation, change also. Never would I let myself sink to the degrading level of sex complaisance that is sadly or cynically accepted by many women, self-supporting and self-respecting, in many American cities, simply because they cannot combat conditions that have been created and ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... Parliament was summoned to meet, 15th November, was to see the full purpose of the faction carried into effect. As almost always occurs in such cases, warnings reached the ears of the intended victim. Some of the conspirators, struck with remorse, had so far revealed the plot. Others boasted cynically that they would soon be rid of the oppressor. The Duchess de Rignano conjured the minister to remain at home. Equally solemn and urgent words of warning came from other quarters, and were alike unheeded. If, indeed, he believed that ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... I must settle accounts with this gentleman, but I don't want to use this," he added thoughtfully, as he pushed up the safety-catch and dropped the weapon in his pocket; "we might be able to gas him. Anyway, you can do no more good or harm," he said cynically. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... of Heloise is only inflamed by this letter from Abelard. She has got him to write, and now she wants to see him and to hear more about him. She cynically remarks that he has made greater advances in the way of devotion than she could wish. There, alas! she is too weak to follow him. But she must have his advice and spiritual comfort. "Can you have the cruelty ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... himself of his friendly relations with Pierre as a boon companion, Dolokhov had come straight to his house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled how Helene had smilingly expressed disapproval of Dolokhov's living at their house, and how cynically Dolokhov had praised his wife's beauty to him and from that time till they came to Moscow had not left them ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... outrage against justice as a fresh starting-point for new attacks. He assailed bitterly and fearlessly the countless abuses of the time, until at last he was recognized as a dangerous opponent by the heretofore cynically amused higher criminals. Many rumors of plots against King's life are to be found in the detailed history of the day. Whether his final assassination was the result of one of these plots, or simply the outcome of a burst of passion, matters little. Ultimately it had its source in the ungoverned ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... cynically as he looked down toward the tent. He could not, of course, distinguish the figures as plainly as Jimmie could with the glass, but he knew from the excited manner of the boys that something ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... trooper Berkley and discovered in her room by her landlady after her departure. A perusal of them is sufficient to leave no doubt concerning the character of this young woman—who, apparently, neglected by the fellow, Berkley, pleaded piteously with him for an interview, and was, as you see, cynically rebuffed. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... to be,' and 'ought to be,'" repeated Leila cynically. "May I ask you, Miss Remson, do you know the signature to the president's letter to you to be by his own hand? I would not hesitate to set a trumped-up letter down to ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... will, we may hope, remember his multiplication table, and forget his fragments of the Athanasian Creed. Let the wheat and tares be planted together, and trust to the superior vitality of the more valuable plant. The sentiment might be expressed sentimentally as easily as cynically. We may urge, like many sceptics of the last century, that Christianity should be kept "for the use of the poor," and renounced in the esoteric creed of the educated. Or we may urge the literary and aesthetic beauty of the old training, and wish it to be preserved to discipline the imagination, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... rejoined Casanova cynically, though he was not altogether unmoved. "I think my friend Olivo would have a word ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... was such a devil of a good match," interposed Craven cynically, moving from his chair to the padded fireguard. Gillian was sitting on the arm of Miss Craven's chair, sorting the patience cards into a leather case. She looked up quickly. "I thought that in England all girls choose their own husbands, ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... him cynically. "Say, Latisan, I hope you're not the kind who would bite a gold coin stolen from a dead man's eye. You woods fellows have too much time for joint debates with your own selves. Go find that girl and square yourself. I want her to have what she wants, if she is in love ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... poverty that awaits her. Then the pilgrim discloses to her that he it is who is the King of Gaul, and Cordelia marries him. Instead of this scene, Lear, according to Shakespeare, offers Cordelia's two suitors to take her without dowry, and one cynically refuses, while the other, one does not know why, accepts her. After this, in the old drama, as in Shakespeare's, Leir undergoes the insults of Goneril, into whose house he has removed, but he bears these insults in a very different way from that ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... have believed that anybody with oblique eyes and a shingled queue could have hurt him so. Of the three men he had befriended, two had turned the knife in him. He wondered cynically how soon he would ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... John Fox, present-day Kentucky; to Mary Johnston, colonial Virginia; to Ellen Glasgow, present-day Virginia; to Stewart Edward White, the great northwest. Others cultivate a field peculiar to themselves. Frank R. Stockton is whimsically humorous, Edith Wharton cynically dissective; Mary Wilkins Freeman is most at home with rural New England character; and Thomas Nelson Page has done his best work in the South of ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... found it easy to fasten his mind upon the prospective war. He regarded himself cynically in most affairs, but he could not be cynical of war, because had he - seen none of it. His rejuvenated imagination began to thrill to the roll of battle, through his thought passing all the lightning in the pictures of Detaille, de Neuville and Morot; lashed battery horse roaring over bridges; ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... I have really let out too much (as I feared I should in the end) as to the usual contents of my sea-cradle. But let it stand. And if anybody remarks cynically that I must have been a promising infant in those days, let that stand, too. I am concerned but for the good name of the Tremolino, and I affirm that a ship is ever guiltless of the sins, transgressions, and follies ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... discussed Vane's sermon on their way home. In fact, whether people walked or rode home, it was the universal topic. Some discussed it with timorous sympathy; others, perhaps with more worldly wisdom, talked of it quietly and cynically as the outburst of a half-fledged clerical enthusiast who would very soon find out that his superiors, on whom he depended for preferment, regarded the doctrines of Christianity as one thing and the practises of the Church as something ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... acted with the greatest caution in no weak or superficial, or haphazard, or fitful way. Nevertheless, the outlook was dismal. This first step in decline from his ideal caused him much pain and restlessness, and led him to think cynically of many doctrines to which, in serene moments, he had unconditionally subscribed. He compared his own case with Robert's. Robert, in his headstrong passion, had certainly rattled up sleeping lions, heedless of all consequences, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... forensic bellow, so that Addington, passing the brick wall in its goings to and fro, heard, and communicated to those at home that Jeffrey Blake, dear fellow, was going back to the land. Jeffrey did, as he had cynically foreseen, become a cause. All persons of social significance came to call, and were, without qualification, kind. Sometimes he would not see them, but Anne one day told him how wrong he was. If he hid himself he put a burden on his father, who stood in the breach, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... was the answer, cynically delivered, accompanied by a short, sharp laugh. "When I have settled other accounts, and put all my affairs in order, I shall save the provost-marshal the trouble of further seeking the slayer. And you didn't know then, Sylvia, when you lied so glibly to the court, that your ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... 'Bah!' retorted Vandeloup, cynically, brushing some dust off his coat, 'this is not the point; you insinuate that I committed a crime, perhaps you will tell me what kind of ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... asked him what he proposed to do with Rustum Khan's prisoner, smiled cynically and ordered him searched by two of the Zeitoonli standing guard. Rustum Khan was standing just out of low ear-shot absorbed in contemplation of the lie of the country. I noticed that Fred began to look nervous, but ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... well,' with the same queer smile, he answered. 'Come, now, you're a grave-digger, my fine fellow,' he continued, accosting the sexton cynically; 'how long do you suppose that skull's been ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... gone to bed. And two of the Englishwomen who knew him quite well teased him and said how beautiful his bride was and how strange-looking, and what an iceberg he must be to be able to come out to supper and leave her alone! And they wondered why he then smiled cynically. ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... was absolutely without any intimacy with the intricacies of civic finances. He merely saw a man—his host—who seemed cynically to be avowing his own corruption and shame,—or at least his willingness to lean ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... be so different here. He heard a sound behind him and turned. Dunlavey was standing just inside the door, his great arms folded over his chest. He had been watching Hollis, his eyes narrowed with a cynically humorous expression. ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... grand masked ball. And Bill Totts liked the girls and the girls liked him, while Freddie Drummond enjoyed playing the ascetic in this particular, was open in his opposition to equal suffrage, and cynically bitter in his ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... Pilot" was the living contrast of his companion. More slovenly still than M. Costeclar was careful of his dress, he exhibited cynically a loose cravat rolled over a shirt worn two or three days, a coat white with lint and plush, muddy boots, though it had not rained for a week, and large red hands, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... Nevertheless in those few moments the men seemed to have exchanged dispositions. The Expressman looked doubtfully, critically, and even cynically before him. Bill's face had relaxed, and something like a bland smile beamed across it, as he drove confidently and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... for the weather had been trying. He has blue, honest, direct-gazing eyes with small humour wrinkles at the corners. I never knew a man with fewer theories, or with a simpler devotion to the thing at hand, whatever it may be. At everything else he smiles, not cynically, for he is too modest in his regard for his own knowledge; he smiles at everything else because it doesn't seem quite real ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... more. He returned to his chest, and cynically composed himself to slumber. The casting of the lots went on rapidly among the officers and men. In another half-hour chance had decided the question of "Go" or "Stay" for all alike. The men left the hut. The officers entered the inner apartment ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... heal it thoroughly again. He read the letter in silence; read it twice over; and when his wife broke out into a series of rapt congratulations, and reproached him mildly for not appearing to think it true, he rather cynically inquired what then, if true, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... materialism. Force was the prime minister, self -gratification the supreme legislator. Exaggerated superstition was balanced by decaying faith. It was a time of coordinately high mental activity, an intellectuality that cynically rejoiced at its own failure to solve the riddle of the universe, maliciously suggested new difficulties, raised barriers against its own research, and prostrating itself in the name of mere brutism, worshipped nature as the ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... and Louisiana thereby ruined. The steaming ones were a goodly fraction of the family—the timid, the apathetic, the "conservative." The conservatives found ease better than exactitude, the trouble of thinking great, the agony of deciding harrowing, and the alternative of smiling cynically and being liberal so much easier—and the warm weather coming on with ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... and screams with harsh collision. True, the essence of finer motive, becoming intermixed with baser and coarser ingredients, often clogs, obstructs, jars, and deranges the free and noble action of social life. But he is neither grateful nor wise, who looks cynically on all this, and loses the fine sense of social good in its perversions. That I can be a friend, that I can have a friend, though it were but one in the world; that fact, that wondrous good fortune, we may set against all the sufferings of our social nature. That there is such a ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... employees of the factory with many of their wives and children were gathered in the factory yard. At first they seemed cynically amused by what they called Moore's bluff. By mid-afternoon, however, after repeated assurances from Roger that his father was going to be a farmer, the crowd became surly. A strange man got up and made a speech. He said that capitalists like Moore should be destroyed, that men ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... history of the great Oliver; for Oliver, as will be presently seen, and all his tribe were fed upon no other food than the possessions of the Church. Cromwell, in his business of suppressing the great houses, embezzled quite cynically—if we can fairly call that "embezzlement" which was probably countenanced by the King, to whom account was due. Indeed, it is plainly evident from the whole story of that vast economic catastrophe which so completely separates the England we know from the England ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... she was "wonderful." His stale spirit soared in ecstasy, and left him tongue-tied. In vulgar parlance he was rattled to death, this commonplace little lawyer who for a score of years had dealt cynically with the loves and lives of the flock of female butterflies who fluttered annually in and out of the office. Throughout that period he had sat unemotionally behind his desk and listened in an aloof, cold, professional manner to the stories of their wrongs as they sobbed or hissed them forth. Wise ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... set well apart and his hands thrust into his trousers pockets. The trim, natty figure, the spruce and Summer-like attire, the small, wizened face with its cynically humorous and wide-awake aspect— above all, a certain jauntiness of air and cocksure expression— certainly did not suggest a comedian ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... him and he told her somewhat doggedly, but not unkindly, to cease. "Do you know what the bells are ringing for?" he asked cynically, ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... court attendant. The fortune snatched from his client had procured for him the most adroit of counsel, the most exhaustive of trials. He knew that nothing had been left undone to enable him to evade the consequences of his crime, and he was cynically content. ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... and knowledge. The two tendencies create the bold and graceful orbit on which his well-balanced books revolve. With one alone, his impetuosity would hasten to quench itself in the molten centre; and with the other alone, he would fly cynically beyond the reach of heat. This reconciling humor sometimes shakes his book with Olympic laughter; as if the postprandial nectar circulated in pools of cups, into which all incompatibilities fall and are drowned. You drink this recasting of the planet's joys ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Ronny snorted cynically. "Sounds good to me. The more I read about New Delos and its God-King and his priesthood, the more I think the best thing that ever happened to the planet was this showing ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... The ostler grinned cynically, and we meanwhile mounted to our seats, Hawkesbury and Whipcord being in front, and I, much to my disgust, being placed beside Masham on the ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Dougal spat cynically. "It seems they're a dour crop to shift. Sir Erchibald was sayin' that him and the lassie had been to the Chief Constable, but the man was terrible auld and slow. They persuadit him, but he threepit that ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... town, stopped at the sheriff's office, and demanded cynically the thousand dollars offered by the ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... out his plan of campaign. He reviewed every detail of the interview that had taken place on New Year's Eve—more than a week ago—and it pleased him to re-construct the scene, but without the slightest indignation or excitement, only smiling cynically both at Elena and himself. Why had she come?—Simply because this impromptu tete-a-tete with a former lover, in the well-known place, after a lapse of two years, had tempted a spirit always on the look-out for fresh emotions, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... their habit often of an afternoon." All which,—the bad teeth, pallid skins, and rustic toilets of the fair, and the very moderate horsemanship of the brave,—privates, standing at ease in the ranks, take note of, not cynically, but as men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... unjustly, "a cynically candid document." The "unity of the Party," and "pledges to constituents" are the only considerations alluded to in favour of the recall of a man to whose worth almost the whole of South Africa had witnessed, in spite ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... side of the picture, the side which friendly Chinese are painting for us. Yet when you glance at the eleven Legations, placidly living their own little lives, you will see them cynically listening to these old women's tales, while at heart they secretly wonder what political capital each of them can separately make out of the whole business, so that their governments may know that Peking has clever diplomats. Clever diplomats! There have been no clever diplomats in Peking ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... opinion,' said the Puddin' cynically, 'them puddin'-thieves are too clever for you; and, what's more, they're better eaters than you. Why,' said the Puddin', sneering at Bill, 'I'll back one puddin'-thief to eat more in a given time than three ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... which he expresses his conviction that all beauty and romance are fled from the world. At the end of the play the line, "Yes, and yet I dare say he is just as dead," must not be said flippantly or cynically, but slowly and with much philosophic concentration on the thought. From the moment when Columbine cries, "What's that there under the table?" until Pierrot calls, "Cothurnus, come drag these bodies out of here!" ...
— Aria da Capo • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... stage at the far end and a large orchestra; and every now and then actors and actresses in preposterous comic dresses came out and sang the most extravagantly funny songs, to judge by their absurd actions; but that audience merely suspended its chatter, stared cynically, and never once smiled, never once applauded! I had always thought that Frenchmen were ready to laugh at ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... finds friends for men, and has great (he said the greatest) power among Mankind, cynically adding, "A mighty person indeed is a rich man, especially ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... long since has my fame winged its way to a station from which it can never descend." One is surprised to find such a Miltonic spirit in the contracted soul of Hobbes, who in his own system might have cynically ridiculed the passion for fame, which, however, no man felt more than himself. In his controversy with Bishop Bramhall (whose book he was cautious not to answer till ten years after it was published, and his adversary was no more, pretending he had never heard of it till then!) he breaks ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... men, after overreaching and ruining themselves, starting pitifully the race of life afresh, a sinister experience their sole advantage over the faltering novice; and that other common spectacle of democratic life, the secure and cultured rich cynically eschewing the active business of government,—with these and some social aspects still less agree able to contemplate there is ample subject-matter for any novelist who may have the disposition and ability to carry on ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... must be under forty, not much under it. One of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair; bright-laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;—smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,—fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech, and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe!—We shall see ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... smile that was almost ill-natured, and quoted cynically: "'Unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not, shall be taken away ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... credulous lot of people. Old Bismarck himself once cynically remarked that there was a special Providence that watched out for plumb fools and Americans. More recently, Von Papen, whom our Government asked to have withdrawn from his post as German military attache at Washington, referred to us affectionately as "those idiotic ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... return; there belongeth further to the handling of this part, touching the duties of professions and vocations, a relative or opposite, touching the frauds, cautels, impostures, and vices of every profession, which hath been likewise handled; but how? rather in a satire and cynically, than seriously and wisely; for men have rather sought by wit to deride and traduce much of that which is good in professions, than with judgment to discover and sever that which is corrupt. For, as Solomon saith, he that cometh ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... forest, ardently believing in themselves; they are not hypocrites. The somewhat bedraggled figure of Joanna follows them, and the nightingale resumes his love-song. 'That's all you know, you bird!' thinks Joanna cynically. The nightingale, however, is not singing for them nor for her, but for another pair he has espied below. They are racing, the prize to be for the one who first finds the spot where the easel was put up last night. The hobbledehoy ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... first roused himself with a quick, writhing movement. "We two," said he, smiling half sadly, half cynically,—"we two must not longer waste time in talking sentiment. We know both too well what life, as it has been made for us by our faults or our misfortunes, truly is. And once again, I entreat you to pause before ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... finest-looking men in the world, with a great shock of rough, dusky, dark hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive, aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous. I do not meet in these late decades such company ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... remember my strong, old, rooted belief that I shall die by drowning? I don't want that to come true, though it is an easy death; but it occurs to me oddly, with these long chances in front. I cannot say why I like the sea; no man is more cynically and constantly alive to its perils; I regard it as the highest form of gambling; and yet I love the sea as much as I hate gambling. Fine, clean emotions; a world all and always beautiful; air better than wine; interest unflagging; there ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... uncle's will, for he knew that George had made none. Angela, too, tried, like a good girl as she was, to lash herself into enthusiasm about it, though in her heart she went as near hating her cousin, since his attempted indignity towards herself, as her gentle nature would allow. Arthur alone was cynically indifferent; he hated George without ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... strife and disunion, but no principle of any substance divided the parties. The absence of large issues had encouraged a senseless rivalry between individuals. Surveying the scene not long after, Goldwin Smith, fresh from English conditions, cynically quoted the proverb: 'the smaller the pit, the fiercer the rats.' The upper and lower branches of parliament were elective, and in both bodies the ablest men in the country held seats. In those days commerce, manufacturing, or banking did not, as they do now, withhold men of marked ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... told himself that he was just a whim of hers; that he merely furnished her with a little amusement, gave her a pleasant imitation of adventure; that if something more exciting came into her dull life there in the Basin, she would never bother with him again. He told himself cynically that she would merely be proving her good sense if she stopped meeting him or sending those brief little messages; but Lord, how they did put heart into a fellow!—those little dots of brightness, with now and then a wider, longer splash of ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... it out of a different plane of thought. I may not have been able to write then—or I may; but I did know enough to recognise the flagrantly, the indecently bad, and, upon my soul, the idea that I, too, must cynically offer this sort of stuff if I was ever to sell my tens of thousands very nearly sent me back to my solitude. Callan had begun very much as I was beginning now; he had even, I believe, had ideals in his ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... grieving'? With what difficulty was he induced, nay, compelled, to speak the truth against the lieutenant! Another man might have felt a touch of satisfaction at the thought that the post he had coveted was now vacant; but Iago not only comforted Cassio, talking to him cynically about reputation, just to help him over his shame, but he set his wits to work and at once perceived that the right plan for Cassio to get his post again was to ask Desdemona to intercede. So troubled was he at his friend's disgrace that his own wife was sure 'it grieved her ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... their command hundreds and thousands of dedicated foreign communists, people in nearly every free country who will serve Moscow's ends. Thus the masters of the Kremlin are provided with deluded followers all through the free world whom they can manipulate, cynically and quite ruthlessly, to serve the purposes of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various |
