"Cynicism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... efficacy, and one must doubt the healthiness, of reaction into cynicism and sophisticated cleverness. There are curious signs, especially in what we may call the literature of New York, of a growing sophistication that sneers at sentiment and the sentimental alike. "Magazines of cleverness" have this for their keynote, although as yet the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... The shameless cynicism with which the great public plunderers of our day brazen out their infamy, is only equalled by the apathy with which the public permits these robberies, and condone for them by lavishing place and power upon the offenders. "The way of the transgressor" has ceased to be "hard"—unless ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... busily devoted who would rise to the acknowledged eminence occupied by their author; and Beyle's mind, though singularly acute and penetrating, had too much of the hardness of a man of the world and of Parisian cynicism to be altogether agreeable. Mr. Howells, during four years of that consular leisure which only Venice could make tolerable, devoted himself to the minute study of the superb prison to which he was doomed, and his book is his "Prigioni." Venice has been the university in which he has ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... to note that Euphues embodies many of the characteristics of the Byronic hero—his sententiousness, his misogyny, his cynicism born of disillusionment, and his rhetorical flatulency; but he is no rebel like Manfred because he finds consolation in his own pre-eminence in a world of platitude. Conscious of his dearly bought wisdom, he makes it his continuous duty, if not pleasure, to rebuke the over-amorous Philautus, ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... desire to analyze the beauty. He had no mental reservation with regard to her. Indeed it would have been hard to find fault with Etta Sydney Bamborough, looking upon her merely as a beautiful woman, exquisitely dressed. In a cynical age this man was without cynicism. He did not dream of reflecting that the lovely hair owed half its beauty to the clever handling of a maid, that the perfect dress had been the all-absorbing topic of many of its wearer's leisure hours. He was, in fact, young for his years, and what is youth but a happy ignorance? It is ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... to me that she was reminded of the gentle observation of Carmen Eschelle, "The people I cannot stand are those who pretend they are not wicked." If one does not believe in anybody his cynicism has usually a quality of contemptuous bitterness in it. One brought up as Margaret had been could not very well come to her present view of life without a touch of this quality, but her disposition was so lovely —perhaps there is no moral ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... accompany great gifts, and what he did know of the Boy's shortcomings he condoned. He believed the young tone-poet's power was in itself an indication of high aspirations, and those he thought were only temporarily suppressed by a boyish affectation of cynicism. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... but the dramatist is still content that his puppets shall have the air of puppets; he stands in the arena of his circus and cracks his whip; they gallop round grimacing, and with labels on their backs. The verse comes between him and nature, as the satire comes between him and poetry. Cynicism has gone to the making of poetry more than once, but only under certain conditions: that the poet should be a lyric poet, like Heine, or a great personality in action, like Byron, to whom cynicism should be but one of the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... down, for as the idealist Schiller long since said, it is entirely built up on hunger and on love. To look upon love as in any special sense a delusion is merely to fall into the trap of a shallow cynicism. Love is only a delusion in so far as the whole of life is a delusion, and if we accept the fact of life it is unphilosophical to refuse to accept the fact ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... with the cynicism of the judicial mind, "let's see. You know now, if you didn't know at the time, that Noonan got Mike the Goat to assess the disorderly houses for the money to buy your wedding roses from the Y.M.R.C. All right. Noonan's bartender is on the ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... here, for God knows, she felt rejected and deficient enough elsewhere. In the life of thought, of the spirit, she was one of the elect. And she wanted to be universal. But there was a devastating cynicism at the bottom of her. She did not believe in her own universals—they were sham. She did not believe in the inner life—it was a trick, not a reality. She did not believe in the spiritual world—it was an affectation. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... training, naturally impatient of speculative dreamers, thoroughly practical in the only sense in which he understood the term, that is to say, determined to preserve Austrian supremacy. To a reactionary of this kind the Holy Alliance represented nothing but words. He knew, with the cynicism bred of long experience of mankind, that the rivalries and jealousies between different states would prevent their union in any common purpose, and in the long run the intensity with which he pursued his objects, narrow and limited as it was, prevailed over the large and vague ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... folly, man's submission to the creatures he should rule, man's agonies, and man's transgression, are a grim contrast to the Psalmist's vision. If we had only earth to look to, despair of the race, expressed in settled melancholy apathy or in fierce cynicism, were the wisest attitude. But there is more within our view than earth; 'we see Jesus'; we look to the heaven, and as we behold the true Man, we see more than ever, indeed, how far from that pattern we all are; but we can bear the thought of what men as yet have been, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... soul is the abiding-place of uplifting ideals, and the world—that vast collective individuality to which you and I belong—too often dispels those sensitive enthusiasms by its neglect or disapproval. Do we not find in our daily speech a certain cynicism toward youth? Does not our skeptic wisdom paste the label "illusions" over the word "ideals" written on the young man's brow? Is there not a refusal to recognize young manhood's force until it compels recognition by ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... of the most distinguished young men of his day and beautiful to look at, added to which he was light in hand, brilliant in answer and interested in affairs. When he went to Balliol he cultivated a kind of cynicism which was an endless source of delight to the young people around him; in a good- humoured way he made a butt of God and smiled at man. If he had been really keen about any one thing—law or literature—he ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... they parted, he stood for a few moments, holding her hand in his big, soft grasp while he looked down on her. The suspicion and the cynicism had gone from his face, and she understood all at once why people still trusted him, still liked him, notwithstanding his reputation, notwithstanding even his repulsiveness. He was all that—he was immoral, he was repulsive—but he was ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... themselves, owned Pulteney, a brilliant speaker and unscrupulous intriguer, as their head; they were reinforced by a band of younger Whigs—the "Boys," as Walpole named them—whose temper revolted alike against the inaction and cynicism of his policy, and whose fiery spokesman was a young cornet of horse, William Pitt; and they rallied to these the fragment of the Tory party which still took part in politics, a fragment inconsiderable in numbers but of far greater weight as representing a large part of the nation, and which ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... puzzled—he who was not often puzzled. His companion struck him as altogether too clever to be likely to indulge in a silly affectation of cynicism. And yet, without this, how could one account for her sneering ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... lay up in the prison of her bed and imagined vain things, interpreting the goings-on down-stairs with a fantastic cynicism that would have startled Boccaccio. She did not openly charge Eddie with these fancied treacheries. She found him guilty silently and silently acquitted him of fault, abjectly asking herself what right she had to deny him all acquaintance with ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... this one head, or enough to provide old-age pensions for three-fourths of our aged poor in the United Kingdom on the basis of 7s. 6d. per head per week."[445] "236,514 blackmailers suck the udder of industry through the convenient teat of what, with audacious cynicism, is ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... united in himself the contradictory attributes of high-priest and buffoon. He was great at telling a story, and though his tales were beyond the child's intelligence, they did not fail to leave behind a confused impression of recklessness, irony, and cynicism. Mademoiselle Servien alone never relaxed her attitude of uncompromising dislike and disdain. She said nothing against him, but her face was a rigid mask of disapproval, her eyes two flames of fire, in answer to the courteous greeting the tutor never failed to offer ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... What cynicism he had was mellowed by a fanciful humor. Whether with steel or with words, he was a master of fence; and if at times some one got under his guard, that some one knew it not. To let your enemy see that he has hit you is to give him confidence. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... warm darkness, and in such conversation as depressing reflections allowed. Roderick, clad always in white, roamed about like a restless ghost, silent for the most part, but making from time to time a brief observation, characterized by the most fantastic cynicism. Roderick's contributions to the conversation were indeed always so fantastic that, though half the time they wearied him unspeakably, Rowland made an effort to treat them humorously. With Rowland alone Roderick talked a great deal more; often about things related to his own work, or about ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... rather unfriendly," said Bancroft. "What you don't appreciate is the revolting stagnation and cynicism of this age." ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... back in his chair with a luxuriance in which it was hard to separate the cynicism and the admiration. "And can you tell us why," he asked, "you should know your own figure in a looking-glass, when two such ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... petulant instead of peevish, and cendree instead of sandy, passed the tedious moments of waiting in a running commentary upon the idiosyncrasies and oddities of the people and refreshments of the past hours, with a verve which she fondly believed to be a combination of sarcasm and cynicism, but which, in reality, was the kernel of the nut of spitefulness, hanging from the withering bough of the tree of ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... discredit, miscreance[obs3]; infidelity &c. (irreligion) 989[obs3]; dissent &c. 489; change of opinion &c. 484; retraction &c. 607. doubt &c. (uncertainty) 475; skepticism, scepticism, misgiving, demure; distrust, mistrust, cynicism; misdoubt[obs3], suspicion, jealousy, scruple, qualm; onus probandi[Lat]. incredibility, incredibleness; incredulity. [person who doubts] doubter, skeptic, cynic.; unbeliever &c. 487. V. disbelieve, discredit; not believe ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... shyness and reserve characteristic of many cultivated Englishmen, was accentuated in his case by a natural austerity and an absorption in serious thought. But though his temper was puritanic and inclined to moroseness, there was no sourness or cynicism in it. "If," he wrote to Miss Symonds, "I am rather a melancholy bird, given to physical fatigue and depression, yet I have never known for a moment what it was to be weary of life, as the youth of this age are fond of saying that they are. The ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... from the noise and tumult of the inn life, its curious, its delightful unmodernness, made this Marmouset room an ideal setting for any mediaeval picture. Even a sentiment tinctured with modern cynicism would, I think, have borrowed a little antique fervor, if, like the photographic negative our nineteenth-century emotionalism somewhat too closely resembles, in its colorless indefiniteness, the sentiment were sufficiently exposed, in point of time ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... morality more adequate than the prevailing codes, more is demanded than merely a reflective criticism of prevailing standards. Where reflection goes no further than this, the net result is merely cynicism and libertinism. For moral progress there is needed "a person who is individual in choice, in feeling, in responsibility, and at the same time social in what he regards as good, in his sympathies ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... the great dome was painted a lively and striking picture of Christ, probably done of old time, but in countenance resembling, strangely enough, the accepted portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson—a Christ with a certain amount of cynicism, one who might have smoked upon occasion. No doubt it was painted by a Greek: a Russian would never have done anything ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... somebody else's mistress until she developed her special talent as a manageress of high-class houses of accommodation, "private hotels" on the Continent, chiefly frequented by English and American roues—Praed kept an eye on her career, and occasionally rendered her, with some cynicism, unobtrusive friendly services in disentangling her affairs when complications threatened. He was an art student in those days of the 'seventies, possessed of about four hundred a year, beginning to go through the aesthetic ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... property—should be shared. Appetites, she argued, were meant to be appeased, and the preservation of game—or anything else—in the larder was an offence against the community. Now, at the age of five or so, she affected cynicism, pretended temporarily that life had left a bitter taste in ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... that one glimpse of light in public life, Bracciolini was more than compensated by a beam of beneficent Fortune in his private career, which threw such lustre on his path, that it rescued him from what must have been his inevitable fate, morbid cynicism: it was one of the happiest incidents that ever occurred to him:—he formed the acquaintance of a man, seventeen years his senior—who, in the lapse of a very short time, became to him a father and adviser, to whom present ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... pursued, hoping to frighten her. "Yes that I hadn't been there at all that evening when I told you I had just come from there, and you had been looking for me at Prevost's," she replied (judging by his manner that he knew) with a firmness that was based not so much upon cynicism as upon timidity, a fear of crossing Swann, which her own self-respect made her anxious to conceal, and a desire to shew him that she could be perfectly frank if she chose. And so she struck him with all the sharpness and force of a headsman wielding his axe, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Melbourne, who had led the young queen to the throne and long stood there as her protector. "No one has more respect for the Christian religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intruding it into private life——" What was pure paganism in the politics of Melbourne became a sort of mystical cynicism in the politics of Disraeli; and is well mirrored in his novels—for he was a man who felt at home in mirrors. With every allowance for aliens and eccentrics and all the accidents that must always eat the edges of any systematic circumference, it may still be said ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... bearing, and the purity of his life. He was unspoiled by fortune and applause; uncorrupted by the tempting chances of his time; stainless in the use of gifts which in the hands of a man less true would have caught the contagion of Pope's malice or of Swift's corroding cynicism. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... person was Colonel Philippe. His misfortunes in Texas, his stay in New York,—a place where speculation and individualism are carried to the highest pitch, where the brutality of self-interest attains to cynicism, where man, essentially isolated, is compelled to push his way for himself and by himself, where politeness does not exist,—in fact, even the minor events of Philippe's journey had developed in him the worst traits ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... of the superman. We hear his lonely cry of anger. But we cannot be quite certain whether his protest is the protest of the first anarchist against government, or whether it is the protest of the last savage against civilization. The cruelty of ages and of political cynicism or necessity has done much to burden the race of which Gorky writes; but time has left them one thing which it has not left to the people in ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... old officer, sir," said Bones, pained by the cold cynicism of his chief. "But I'm very serious, sir. This country is full of material. And everybody says I ought to write a book about it—why, dash it, sir, I've been here nearly ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... resisting and get entirely free of—or has each one of us signed with the blood of his human nature a compact with some such spiritual power, with the demonic element within him, with that spirit of negation, of cynicism, of cold unideal utilitarian worldly-wisdom which mocks at faith and love and every high and tender impulse—that part of our nature which, when some poor girl is sinking in the abyss, prompts us to answer ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... Dakie Thayne, though, for all that. He and Leslie and Cousin Delight,—the Josselyns and the Inglesides,—dear Miss Craydocke, hurrying up to congratulate,—Marmaduke Wharne looking on without a shade of cynicism in the gladness of his face, and Sin Saxon and Frank Scherman flitting up in the pauses of dance and promenade,—well, after all, these were the central group that night. The pivot of the little solar system was changed; but the chief planets made but slight account of that; they just felt that ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... because, Miss Roberta, beneath your cynicism and your assumption of masculinity, you are as sympathetic as a young mother. It would be mean to put over anything like that, and you just can't ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... much coloured by recent inspiring German and American sex psychology. But she did not know that. She thought that they began, continued and ended in Kraill and, though she fell down in adoration before his uncanny wisdom, his cynicism made her miserable. They showed her humanity in chains; particularly did they show her man in chains; she read them all—six of them—in one afternoon and evening; students and trained scientists had taken them in doses of one a fortnight. Naturally she got mental indigestion ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... piece in circulation far exceeds at last the number of performances. But as with the printed piece our own public, infatuated as it may be with the theatre, refuses all commerce—though indeed this can't but be, without cynicism, very much through the infirmity the piece, IF printed, would reveal—so the same horror seems to attach to any typographic hint of the proscribed playbook or any insidious plea for it. The immense oddity ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... remember what good advice he had given to Pen in former days, how an early wisdom and knowledge of the world had manifested itself in this gifted youth; how a constant course of self-indulgence, such as becomes a gentleman of his means and expectations, ought by right to have increased his cynicism, and made him, with every succeeding day of his life, care less and less for every individual in the world, with the single exception of Mr. Harry Foker, one may wonder that he should fall into the mishap to which most of us are subject once or twice in our lives, and disquiet ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was one of those precarious ladies who make uncertain incomes by writing full-bodied storyettes. In the most dismal circumstances she enjoyed a buoyancy bordering on the indecent; which always amused old Heythorp's cynicism. But of his grandchildren Phyllis and Jock (wild as colts) he had become fond. And this chance of getting six thousand pounds settled on them at a stroke had seemed to him nothing but heaven-sent. As things were, if he "went off"—and, of course, he might ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not become better acquainted, we two, who meet in this far place, where travellers are few and worth the knowing?" There was no cynicism in his smile now, and without waiting for a reply he continued: "My name you already know. I have only to add that I am an adventurer in the wilds—explorer of hinterlands, free-trader, freighter, sometime prospector—casual cavalier." He ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... statesmen; and his exceptional fondness for children would alone suffice to expose the falsity of his alleged reply to a manufacturer who complained that he could not get enough men—"Then you must take the children."[788] Cynicism at the expense of the weak was a trait utterly alien to him. It is also incorrect to assert, with Macaulay, that "pride pervaded the whole man, was written in the harsh rigid lines of his face, was marked by the way in which he walked, in which he sat, in which he stood, and, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... "Cynicism is old-fashioned," he said; "dogma is up to date. Credo! I believe in a personal devil, virtuous maidens in bowers, and rosewood furniture. As for illusions I cherish as many as you do!" He turned with subtle impudence to Wayward. "And the world is ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... full of the malformations of forty years, of children, of hard work, stands gripping her flanks with both hands. The naked woman has become impossible in modern art; it required Degas' genius to infuse new life into the worn-out theme. Cynicism was the great means of eloquence of the middle ages, and with cynicism Degas has rendered the nude again an artistic possibility. What Mr. Horsley or the British matron would say it is difficult to guess. Perhaps the hideousness depicted by M. Degas would frighten ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Aphra Behn, who was a female spy in the service of Charles II., at Antwerp, and one of the coarsest of the Restoration comedians. The profession of piety had become so disagreeable that a shameless cynicism was now considered the mark of a gentleman. The ideal hero of Wycherley or Etherege was the witty young profligate, who had seen life, and learned to disbelieve in virtue. His highest qualities were a contempt for cant, physical courage, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... however, a terrible humiliation awaited him. After all his care and pains, he slipped and fell in the ball-room, and his mortification at the smiles of the women round was so great that he never danced again, but looked on henceforward with cynicism which he expresses in the "Peau de Chagrin." That wonderful book, side by side with its philosophical teaching, gives a graphic picture of one side of Balzac's restless, feverish youth, as "Louis Lambert" does of his repressed childhood. Neither Louis Lambert ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... of "faith and love." The opposite to faith is uncertainty, and the opposite to love is cynicism, and who does not know that uncertainty and cynicism are the very hotbeds for the machinations of the evil one? When faith is enthroned the soul is open to the reception of grace, and when love shares the throne the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... of pleasant child-worship, the best passage of all being perhaps the dialogue between Tom and "Budge," at vol. i. p. 56, with the five-year-old cynicism of the elder's reply, "Oh this is false Budge, this is all false!" to his infant brother's protestations ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... knew that. Mr. R. O. PROWSE, in A Gift of the Dusk (COLLINS), speaks with subtle penetration for those other prisoners, interned victims of the dreadful malady. Of necessity he writes sadly; but yet he writes as a very genial philosopher, permitting himself candidly "just that little cynicism which helps to keep one tolerant." He is of the old and entertaining school of sentimental travellers, but he is far from being old-fashioned. The story running through his observations and modern instances is so frail and delicate a thing that I hesitate to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... more that bitter smile of new-born cynicism. Well, let the fellow follow him if he liked! He would reward him himself if ever they reached the coast in safety. And in any case, it was better to go attended by a native. An interpreter who can communicate in their own tongue with the people through whose territory ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... don't know. There are such things, no doubt, as cynics by temperament; congenital cynics. Then, indeed, you may cry: The eye of the beholder. But others become cynics, are driven into cynicism, by sad experience. I started in life with the rosiest faith in my fellow-man. If I've lost it, it's because he's always behaved shabbily to me, soon or late; always taking some advantage. The struggle for existence! We're all beasts, who take part in it; we must ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... audience she would smilingly have agreed with the Countess Cuerbo. But she pictured to herself what an effect this tone would have upon Wilhelm's German, middle-class sense of propriety, which she knew so well, and was indignant at her visitor's cool cynicism. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... smilingly reply "that few men were so scrupulous." There is something almost comical in the effort on the part of Clarendon to press upon the King that self-respect, which he had long since cast aside, and the place of which was supplied by a mask of cynicism. It was quite true that scruples such as those of Hyde were rare in his day, and formed no part of the usages of the Court of France. But Clarendon did not know that it would soon be unnecessary to go to France for an example ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... afterward Napoleon the Third had introduced into French political and social life a plain-spoken cynicism which characterises ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... Middle West and had probably seldom been out of it before. He breathed American and was as pure a type as you could find. Nothing of the cynicism of Europe about him, for he was that old-fashioned and extra-lovable product, the God-fearing man. He was kind to every one, and had the natural religion of being kind. His door-keeper and sub-clerk at the main hut was an ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... face turned a variety of colours, his languid eyes lost all trace of languor. Those who knew his nature might have expected that he would now deliver himself with that sneering sarcasm, that indolent cynicism, which he used upon occasion. But he was too deeply stirred for acting. His self-control deserted him entirely. Exactly what he said has not been preserved for us. All that we are told is that he signified his resentment in such terms as he had never before used; and that his Grace, ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... be on innocent territory, with no human beings living on it. There was a feeling, so far as I can remember it, of extraordinary freedom and lightness." She spoke with a sincere cynicism, an easy grimness that appeared quite dreadful to Ellen. The girl looked appealingly at her, asking her not to give the sanction of her impressive personality to such hopelessness about life, but had the ill luck to catch her in the act of a ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Love and Marriage, all these rebels have invented nothing. They have done nothing but take up once more the theories of the great feminist of 1832, and expose them with less lyricism but with more cynicism. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... (A Shropshire Lad) is known wherever modern English poetry is read. Originally published in 1896, when Housman was almost 37, it is evident that many of these lyrics were written when the poet was much younger. Echoing the frank pessimism of Hardy and the harder cynicism of Heine, Housman struck a lighter and more buoyant note. Underneath his dark ironies, there is a rustic humor that has many subtle variations. From a melodic standpoint, A Shropshire Lad is a collection of exquisite, haunting and almost ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... gone, and my swift-vanishing Southern womanhood wrinkles itself up into despised old age? Oh, counsel me,—help me, my friend, my preserver, my true master now, so brave, so wise, so all-knowing; under whose mask of cynicism lies hid (have I not cause to know it?) the heart of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... old Tom the eye of the Big City, which is an eye expressive of cold and justifiable suspicion, of judgment suspended as high as Haman was hung, of self-preservation, of challenge, curiosity, defiance, cynicism, and, strange as you may think it, of a childlike yearning for friendliness and fellowship that must be hidden when one walks among the "stranger bands." For in New Bagdad one, in order to survive, must suspect whosoever sits, ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... forswore it all in a moment of bitter cynicism. But, mon ami, I am a man—a very irregularly balanced man, too, I often think—and there rises from my soul an exceeding bitter cry sometimes. You see here my life—barmaid society, ship's tittle-tattle, unending ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Was there cynicism in his voice? It seemed so. Yet his eyes never left her. They held her by some electric attraction which she was ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... que cela, the inability to enjoy, of successful ambition and favoured, passionate love, is famous; and short of love even and ambition, we all know the flatness of long-desired pleasures. King Solomon, who had not been enough of an ascetic, as we all know, and therefore ended off in cynicism, knew that there is not only satiety as a result of enjoyment; but a sort of satiety also, an absence of keenness, an incapacity for caring, due to the deferring of enjoyment. He doubtless knew, among other items of vanity, that our wishes are often fulfilled without our even knowing it, so ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... fellow, Wingate," Phipps said, with a touch of his old cynicism, "if you weren't always sheering off towards the melodramatic. The girl wanted to see life, she attracted me, and I showed it to her. I'd have done the right thing by her if she hadn't behaved ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lady was tough and technical; she evidently didn't care for great movements; she became more and more interesting to Basil Ransom, who, it is to be feared, had a fund of cynicism. He asked her if she knew his cousin, Miss Chancellor, whom he indicated, beside Mrs. Farrinder; she believed, on the contrary, in wonderful times (she thought they were coming); she had plenty of sympathy, and he was sure she ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... was not an insuperable embarrassment to him. The too probable alternative was that both the unhappy pair had been prostrated by some disease which left them powerless to summon her—for summon her they surely would, Ann Eliza with unconscious cynicism reflected, if she or her small economies could be of use to them! The more she strained her eyes into the mystery, the darker it grew; and her lack of initiative, her inability to imagine what steps might be taken ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... placed himself on the side of the fascisti? Would degradation be the lot of any officer or soldier who "mutinied" and joined the fascisti?... Apparently it was due to the unhappy political condition of Europe that the whole civilized world did not launch an indignant protest against the baseness and cynicism of the Italians. But how utterly they failed to persuade others that the wishes of Rieka were as they represented them! Rieka desires to remain independent and this desire the Italians will have to respect. And the later they make up their mind to keep their ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... which accompany King Lear or Hamlet, and comes back religiously convinced that Shakespeare was a great artist. All because the passionate few could not keep their admiration of Shakespeare to themselves. This is not cynicism; but truth. And it is important that those who wish to form their literary taste ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... enters, carrying his hat and medicine case. He looks sharply at Rhoda, then turns to Michaelis. His manner towards him is politely contemptuous, toward Rhoda it is full of covert passion, modified by his habitual cynicism and satire. ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... we see quite clearly what is really at the bottom of all these articles and books. It is not mere business; it is not even mere cynicism. It is mysticism; the horrible mysticism of money. The writer of that passage did not really have the remotest notion of how Vanderbilt made his money, or of how anybody else is to make his. He does, indeed, conclude his remarks by advocating some scheme; but it has nothing in the world ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... their manners. Juvenal scornfully remarks, that the Stoics only differed from the Cynics "by a tunic," which the Stoics wore and the Cynics discarded. Seneca never indeed adopted the practices of Cynicism, but he often speaks admiringly of the arch-Cynic Diogenes, and repeatedly refers to the Cynic Demetrius, as a man deserving of the very highest esteem. "I take with me everywhere," writes he to Lucilius, "that best of men, Demetrius; and, leaving those who wear purple robes, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... before contemplated it. She seemed to be at a play, all personal interests forgotten for the moment, looking at the world of which she was no longer a part with a lively, critical curiosity, without regrets but without cynicism. The world did not seem to her bad—only man's higher instincts had little part in it. Such, at least, was what she thought, so long as people praised her for her courage, so long as the houses in which another Jacqueline de Nailles had been once so brilliant, received her with affection ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... no reply. The man's cynicism was sufficiently brutal to make it impossible to reply without heat. And Steve had no desire to quarrel with his chief lieutenant. Besides, he was deeply attached to the rascal. So they swung up the last sharp incline ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... hours, and he had skipped two luncheons, the requirements of neighborliness and of courtesy had not imposed more than a dozen words of speech upon them. This was very satisfactory to Alan. He was not talkative or communicative of his own free will. There was a certain cynicism back of his love of silence. He was a good listener and a first-rate analyst. Some people, he knew, were born to talk; and others, to trim the balance, were burdened with the necessity of holding their tongues. For him ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... grew older, and less and less pleasing to the eye, the men showed more and more clearly how they had deceived themselves in thinking it was her brains that had made them like her. As Henrietta, with mournful cynicism, put it: "Men the world over care little about women beyond their physical charm. To realize it, look at us American women, who can do nothing toward furthering men's ambitions. We've only our physical charms to offer; we fall when we lose them. And so our old women and our homely women, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... makes perhaps less difference than he had expected. And so her death is not only an affliction, but one more disillusion; and he redoubles in bitterness. The speech that follows, given with tragic cynicism in every word, is a dirge, not so much for her as for himself. From that time forth there is nothing human left in him, only "the fiend of Scotland," Macduff's "hell-hound," whom, with a stern glee, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... might seem the stranger because he was so wholly untouched by cynicism; but here we light upon a curious paradox—the fact that the more "worldly" the writer, the better can he (as a general rule and other things being equal) display this type. It may be that such a writer can regard it analytically, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... about, not only from village to village, but from county to county; perhaps works for a time as a navvy on some distant railway, and thus associates with a different class of men, and picks up a sort of coarse cynicism. He does not care to marry and settle and tie himself down to a routine of labour—he despises home pleasures, preferring to spend his entire earnings upon himself. The roaming habits of the rising generation of labourers is an important consideration, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of insinuating that a proper use of her charms might accomplish much in certain quarters, but there was something so calmly virginal and pure about the girl as she sat there in her half-sacred costume that instinct conquered cynicism and he refrained. Unattached and unchaperoned as she was, or appeared to be, the girl commanded respect even in Paris. Instead of answering at once ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... felt his pack of sorrows considerably lightening. His first, last, only disappointment in love had subsided into a gentle and not disagreeable melancholy. His trial, and the dreadful notoriety which his name had acquired, had imparted to his mild nature a gentle tinge of cynicism, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... commercialized newspapers and magazines for our distorted views of human life and for the cynicism that it is the momentary fashion to affect, but that is always disfiguring to the mind that harbors it. Certainly we can get no such views and no such cynicism from our own experience or from personal knowledge of the men and women who surround us. ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... that he could call up a response to his own spirit from the soul of the instrument. The lad beside him also sang well, perhaps because he was young and sentiment was strong within him, but sturdy labor under the open heaven seems inimical to the development of hypercritical cynicism, and the men who at home would probably have applauded that song with an indulgent smile listened with kindling eyes and then made the long room ring with their bravos. Here, far away from the land that bred them, they were Britons still, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... is brimful of all that is genial, frank, lenient, and good-hearted. What we know of the man, who loved his friends and was loved by them, and who in all his critical and personal sketches showed himself a kindly, courteous, and considerate gentleman, inclines us to repel this charge of cynicism. We will not brand him as a mere satirist, and a cruel mocker ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... to divine her tastes and her habits, asking her whether she went to the theatre, and if she ever went at night to the coffee-house with her husband. And Therese was beginning to think he was more interesting than the others, with his apparent ignorance of her world and his superb cynicism. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... human Fielding you will find him not in the novels, where his real kindliness is too often veiled by a mock cynicism, but in his "Diary of his Voyage to Lisbon." He knew that his health was irretrievably ruined and that his years were numbered. Those are the days when one sees a man as he is, when he has no longer a motive for affectation or pretence in ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... next? Not a moment, I felt, must be lost, if I wished to save his life; and, with a feeling of grim cynicism, I asked myself whether I did. For I was in a dilemma. On the one hand, if I saved him, it cleared you from what might devolve into a charge of murder; on the other hand, if I let him die, Myra would be free, and ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... like yourself, from Oskaloosa and Richmond and Santa Barbara and Quincy. Few are native-born New Yorkers, and scarcely any of them go around with their noses in the air in an "upstage Eastern manner." Most of them are graduates of the newspaper school, and remnants of newspaper cynicism occasionally appear in their outspoken philosophy. But be not deceived by this, for even in the newspaper office the half-baked cub who is getting his first glimpses of woman's frailties and man's weak will is the ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... philosopher found his cynicism melting away like an iceberg in the Gulf-stream. An hour before he would have told you that a woman's flattery could have no effect on an intellectual man; now he felt a tremor of pleasure, an indescribable something, as he shortened his steps ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... group feels secure, or that it is slowly, even unconsciously, merging into a wider grouping. Theological liberality affords a case in point. In the earlier days of sectarian struggle tolerance was a danger both to group loyalty and to the militant spirit. Cynicism for other reasons is also a menace. It means loss of faith in the collective ego, in the traditions, shibboleths, symbols, and destiny of the group. Fighting groups cannot be tolerant; nor can they harbor cynics. Tolerance and cynicism are at once causes and results of group ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... new-made friends of the artistic set used to tell him, "If you could only write down your stories—what humor, what action!" Mark Heath, with the information of a room mate, the judging eye of a half-disillusionized friend and the cynicism of a young journalist, was first to perceive that a stenographer concealed to transcribe his talk would get only ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... elders, this difficulty has been turned with the aid of pious lies. Thus, when a young lady has angelic features, eats nothing to speak of, plays all day long on the piano, and sings ravishingly in church, it requires a rough infidelity falsely called cynicism, to believe that she may be a little devil after all. Yet so it is: she may be a talebearer, a liar, and a thief; she may have a taste for brandy, and no heart. My compliments to George Eliot for her Rosamond Vincy; the ugly work of satire she has transmuted to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... broke into vociferous laughter; and he muttered "Ecod!" an innumerable number of times, voicing, thereby, the gamut of human emotions and the degrees thereof, from lowest melancholy to a crafty sort of cynicism and thence to the height of smug elation. And, presently, when he had peered down the path to the stage, where the twins were forking the fish, he approached, stepping mysteriously, his gigantic forefinger raised in ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... statuette; but he did not expect the statuette to pay him. It is my impression that no cake of soap can be found anywhere in the cartoons which the Pope ordered of Raphael. And no one who knows the small-minded cynicism of our plutocracy, its secrecy, its gambling spirit, its contempt of conscience, can doubt that the artist-advertiser will often be assisting enterprises over which he will have no moral control, and of which he could feel no ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... imagined; and as for Ingeborg, I fancy she thought he alluded merely to the conquest of myself, and was only pained by the fear I might resent so ludicrous a suggestion. Having thrown the shadow of his cynicism over our innocent relation, Axel turned away highly pleased with himself, rudely neglecting to ask Ingeborg for a dance. I felt like giving him 'Hail Columbia,' ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... our practice. Now at first sight this might be fairly taken as a proof of an evil nature, but when we come to consider the great antiquity of the individual it becomes doubtful if it was anything more than the natural cynicism which arises from age and bitter experience, and the possession of extraordinary powers of observation. It is a well known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the question, the older we grow the more cynical and ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... account Eugene had rendered of the same subject. She remarked a singular composure of countenance, voice, and even position, which seemed idiosyncratic, and was directly opposed to the stern rigidity and cynicism of her guardian. She shrank from the calm, steadfast gaze of his eyes, which looked into hers with a deep yet gentle scrutiny, and resolved ere the close of the evening to sound him concerning some of the philosophic phases of the age. Had he ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... between them, the descendant of all the Conti had turned out to be very different from what the financier's wife had expected, and it was not easy to understand her. Sometimes the girl talked like a woman of the world, and sometimes like a child. Her character seemed to be a compound of cynicism and simplicity, indifference and daring, gentleness, hardness and pride, all wonderfully amalgamated under a perfectly self-possessed manner, and pervaded by the most undeniable charm. It was no wonder that the poor Baroness was as puzzled as a hen that has hatched ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... had failed to respond to this invitation merely because it was a little queer and imaginative—she, whose birthright it was to nourish imagination! Better to have accepted, to have tired themselves a little by the journey, than coldly to reply, "Might I come some other day?" Her cynicism left her. There would be no other day. This shadowy woman would never ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... quenched the eagerness of her prime, the mercenary principle I had so suffered from. She had grown weary and detached, and since she affected me as more impressed with the evil of the world than with the good, this was a gain; in other words her accretion of indifference, if not of cynicism, showed a softer surface than that of her old ambitions. Furthermore I had to recognise that her devotion to her daughter was a kind of religion; she had done the ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... one could discover, her character changed. She had known Bobby during many years and had always laughed at him for a solemn, rather-priggish young man—then she fell in love with him and, to his own wild and delirious surprise, married him. The companions of her earlier girlhood missed her cynicism and complained that brilliance had given way to commonplace but you could not find, in the whole of London, a ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... been taken to his studio. By no means a perspicuous man, and to be approached perhaps charily; yet Rainham, as his acquaintance progressed, found himself from time to time brought up with a certain surprise, as he discovered, under all his savage cynicism, his overweening devotion to a depressing theory, a very real vein of refinement, of delicate mundane sensibility, revealed perhaps in a chance phrase or diffidence, or more often in some curiously ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... pathos that are mingled in his pages. Thackeray is a satirist, with a keen eye to detect the weaknesses of humanity, but with a deep well of sympathy, veiled, however, and sedulously guarded from sentimentalism, by a tone of banter and a semblance of cynicism. Measured by their popularity with the cultivated class, the novels of Mrs. Lewes (George Eliot) stand next in rank to the productions last referred to. In some of her tales, the artistic motive ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... stood in the streets of New York, as I have stood in the streets of London, and longed with an intense nostalgia for one hour of Paris, where, amid a deplorable decadence, intellectual honesty is widely discoverable, and where absolutely straight thinking and talking is not mistaken for cynicism. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... Mademoiselle de Guerchi how imminent was her danger. At first she had thought the commander's visit might be a snare laid to test her, but the coarseness of his expressions, the cynicism of his overtures in the presence of a third person, had convinced her she was wrong. No man could have imagined that the revolting method of seduction employed could meet with success, and if the commander had desired to convict her of perfidy ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to refer to the charge of cynicism that is levelled against Thackeray. The mistake is, as our critic points out, 'taking a vague word and applying it precisely.' It all depends upon what cynicism really means. 'If it means a war on comfort, then Thackeray was, to his eternal credit, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... is a sanctuary in spite of itself. It is unhealthy, there is vitiated air in it, but the irresistible phenomenon is none the less accomplished; all the holy generosities bloom livid in this cave. Cynicism and the secret despair of pity are driven back by ecstasy, the magnificences of kindness shine through infamy; this orphan creature feels herself to be wife, sister, mother; and this fraternity which has no family, and this maternity which has no children, and this adoration ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... by somebody saying he had heard from somebody who had been told by his Major, that 60,000 Germans had been killed in the last two days, Von Kluck had been killed by a lucky shell, and the Crown Prince had committed suicide. We were bringing the cynicism of youth to bear on the trustfulness of a mature mercenary when ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... provocation, I would praise those whose best title of honor is the kind of enemies they make. Better even an occasional nose dented by a fist, a broken bone, a rapier-scarred face, or even sometimes the sacrifice of the life of one of our best academic youth than stagnation, general cynicism and censoriousness, bodily and psychic cowardice, and moral corruption, if this indeed be, as it ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the Talmud and Midrash are less easily illustrated. Sometimes they enshrine a pun or a conceit, or depend for their aptness upon an assonance. In some of the Talmudic proverbs there is a spice of cynicism. But most of them show a genial ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... seemed about to come over Ireland. The Fenian conspiracy had been the death-knell of the triumphant cynicism and corruption that had reigned over the country in the years succeeding the treason of Crowe. The name of Mr. Butt, as the leader of a new movement, was beginning to be spoken of. An agitation had been started which demanded a radical settlement of the land question. Demonstrations ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... precisian, they say, disapproved of Danton's lax and heedless courses. Danton said to him one day:—'What do I care? Public opinion is a strumpet, and posterity a piece of nonsense.' How should the puritanical lawyer endure such cynicism as this? And Danton delighted in inflicting these coarse shocks. Again, Danton had given various gross names of contempt to Saint Just. Was Robespierre not to feel insults offered to the ablest and most devoted of his lieutenants? ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... reflected a moment and concluded that Uncle Ben was probably right. Rupert Filgee, who was a handsome boy of fourteen, was also a strongly original character whose youthful cynicism and blunt, honest temper had always attracted him. He was a fair scholar, with a possibility of being a better one, and the proposed arrangement with Uncle Ben would not interfere with the discipline of school hours and might help them both. Nevertheless he ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... a sigh that was part relief and all approval, "it is you who speak the truth, and your elders have fallen victims to the cynicism of a crassly material age. Love is immortal when it is really love and one is the right sort of person. There is the love—known to how few, alas! and a passion of which I regret to find your mother incapable—that endures unchanged until the end ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... found it. It's only just lately that I've realized why. I read a book called The Valley of Dry Bones. Do you know it? But of course you do. It is by Dene Strange. I hate the man—if it is a man. And I hate his work—the bitter cynicism of it, the merciless exposure of humanity at its lowest and meanest. I don't know what his ideals are—if he has any. I think he is probably very wicked, but detestably—oh, damnably—clever. I burnt the book I hated it so. But I felt—afterwards—as ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... the signs of nature, I have learnt the language of her illegitimate sister—artificiality; and the fibbing of eyes, the contempt of nose-tips, the indignation of back hair, the laughter of clothes, the cynicism of footsteps, and the various emotions lying in walking-stick twirls, hat-liftings, the elevation of parasols, the carriage of umbrellas, become as A B C ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Though an easy cynicism about women's availability and about the body's insistently animal functions predominates, there is enough variety in The Merry-Thought to provide something of a picture of eighteenth-century society were any future anthropologist to come upon this volume as the ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... a slightly built man, just beyond the vague line of "young," glanced up with his dark, somewhat sombre and yet softly cynical eyes at the face of his companion who was driving. This companion was unmistakably young, and there was not a trace of cynicism in his grey-blue eyes which looked out upon the rain and mist with pleasant cheerfulness. He was neither particularly fair nor dark; but there was a touch of brighter colour than usual in his short, crisp hair; and no woman ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... This is what the snoopopath loves—no rage, no blustering—calmness, cynicism. He walked over towards the mantelpiece and laid his hat upon it. He set his ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... presented is The question with me is The substance of all this is The time is not far distant when The time is short. The truth of this has not been Then, finally, Then, I repeat, There are many people nowadays who There are people who tell you that There is a cynicism which There is a word which I wish to say There is another reason why There is another sense in which. There is much force in There is no danger of our overrating the There is no evidence that There is no good reason why There is no mistaking the fact There is no other intelligible answer ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... of tremendous promises to make and to keep! But for the moment cynicism had fallen away from Sir Jacques's heart, and somehow he felt sure that, at any rate in this case, those tremendous ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Louis was still at 'The Willows.' His cynicism had come to have a strangely wistful ring. John Randolph's visits were frequent and they held long conversations together, these men, the one who had seized every opportunity and made the most of it, the other who had let his golden chances slip through his fingers one by one; ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... metallically for an instant, but immediately the humorous cynicism came into them again. "I don't think you mean all of that," he ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... passed since Carlisle Heth had formulated the careering importance, even the nobility, of marrying high above her. Aspiration, not your ditchwater cynicism, was the mainspring of her real being, as her mother well knew; and this supreme fulfilment had long glittered ahead as the ultimate crown, not of triumph only, but of happiness consummate. A little too long, perhaps: waiting princesses grow discontented. Vague dissatisfactions ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison |
