"Flout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hartford, with a soul as far away from bric-a-brac as ever the soul of man was. He went home by an early train, and he lost no time in writing back to the three divine personalities which he had so involuntarily seemed to flout. They all wrote back to him, making it as light for him as they could. I have heard that Emerson was a good deal mystified, and in his sublime forgetfulness asked, Who was this gentleman who appeared to think he had offered him some sort of annoyance! But I am not sure that this ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... colour of waggon on the Marsh—a plain low-sided trough of deep sea-blue. The name was always painted in white on a small black wooden square attached to the side. Thomas Godden's waggons had been no departure from this rule. It was left to his daughter to flout tradition, and by some obscure process of local reasoning, bring discredit to her dead father by painting her waggons yellow instead of blue. The evil went deeper than mere colour. Joanna was a travelled woman, having once been to the Isle of Wight, and it ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... "I'd marry 'most any girl you wanted me to. But if Columbine were to flout me as she used to—why, I'd buck sure enough.... Dad, are you sure she knows nothing, suspects nothing of where you—you ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... belonging at that time to the pope and being governed by a vice-legate, was considered as foreign territory. There he found his daughter, Madame d'Urban, who did all she could to induce him to stay with her; but to do so would have been to flout Louis XIV's orders too publicly, and the marquis was afraid to remain so much in evidence lest evil should befall him; he accordingly retired to the little village of l'Isle, built in a charming spot near the fountain of Vaucluse; there he was lost sight of; none ever heard ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... though I was then but a lad, that she would never give over fretting herself at the thought that I was to be lord of all the broad acres and wide moors of Beechcot, and that Jasper would be but a landless man. And so, though she never dare flout or oppress me in any way, for fear of Sir Thurstan's displeasure, she, without being openly unfavorable, wasted no love on me, and no doubt often wished me ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... petty cry, Of lips that lie and flout, I saw the slow sun dim and die And the slim dusk slip out . . . Life held ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... name hath reach'd thee long ere now, I trow; Whom thou hast met in deadly fight full oft, When France and Spain join'd in the battle field. Beyond the Pyrenean boundary That guards thy land, are forty thousand men: Their unfurl'd pennons flout fair France's sun, And wanton in the breezes of her sky: Impatient halt they there; their foaming steeds, Pawing the huge and rock-built barrier, That bars their further course—they wait for thee: For thee whom France hath injur'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... indeed is our foe far to seek; on all sides they surround our walls. Are we going to meet them? Why linger? Will thy bravery ever be in that windy tongue and those timorous feet of thine? . . . My conqueror? Shall any justly flout me as conquered, who sees Tiber swoln fuller with Ilian blood, and all the house and people of Evander laid low, and the Arcadians stripped of their armour? Not such did Bitias and huge Pandarus prove me, and the thousand ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... and doom hast struck. On this anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, let us remember and vow never to forget that when it becomes general or popular among us, as it has become common, to flout at the Declaration and its principles; whenever the nation commits itself to courses which for the sake of consistency and respectability invite and compel its disparagement; when our politics does not match our poetry ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... man may be with fools, And nerve them but to flout him more; And Mischief oft may bring thee peace, When Mildness works not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... she knows their tongues are venal, sold to flatter wealth and power, And to crouch with serpent homage in the dust at Fortune's shrine, Ready to revile and slander if calamity should lower, And to flout as base, deceitful, what they late had ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... more than once, but with no different result, and upon the same lines. Mrs. Willoughby received his attacks with a patient humility, and rushed out to catch him a flout as he was retiring. Finally, however, she shifted her position, and became the aggressor. She suggested that Fielding was really in love with Clarice, and trying to gain favour with her by bringing an ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... "there is something in your attitude which I admit puzzles me. I ask you in all honor, I ask you on the hilt of that sword which I know you will never disgrace, why did you thus flout the Lady Catharine Knollys? Why did you scorn her and take up with this woman ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... longing for violence of sentiment and sudden changes of emotion, found herself condemned to a dull, level life. Desborough would talk to her about poetry, but their tastes did not agree. He would even tease her with futile metaphysical talk until she scarcely knew whether to laugh or to flout him. ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... all day long With never a house to bind us; And we'd only flout in a merry song The world we ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... the promise of the King... It is the King's authority they flout... They arrogate to themselves the whole sovereignty in Brittany. The King has dissolved them... These insolent nobles defying their ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... thrilling lays, And ceaseless chime of song (that never cloys, Altho' the winds be redolent of praise.) Wakes not in man that stupor of amaze, Bird, beast, and plant, in universal choir, Pay to Almighty in a thousand ways, That sterner reason's votaries would flout, Giving their tardy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... possessed the Vote— Are things on which the swains all dote. Fearing to flout or slight. She dances, having now her way, No bygone Easter holiday E'er ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various
... the responsibility of her success. Who does? My dear Charmian, who wrote the successful novel of last year, do you not already repent your rash act? If you do not write a better novel this year, will not the public flout you and jeer you for a pretender? Did the public overpraise you at first? Its mistaken partiality becomes now your presumption. Last year the press said you were the rival of Hawthorne. This year it is, "that Miss Charmian who set ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of course. Against every kind of authority, but particularly against bishops. He's always got his knife into them, and I dare say he's glad of the chance of flouting them. High Church parsons are, aren't they? I expect if you were a bit higher you'd flout them too. And if you were a bit lower, the C.G.'d take you as a padre. You're just the wrong height, old ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... strength, and march unto him straight: Let him perceive how ill we brook his treason. And what offence it is to flout his friends. ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... fierce and bright, Youth's rosy blush or Passion's pearly bite? You hardly know perhaps; but Chloe knows, And pours you out the necessary dose, Meticulously measuring to scale, The cup of Circe or the Holy Grail— An actress she at home in every role, Can flout or flatter, bully or cajole, And on occasion by a stretch of art Can even speak the language of the heart, Can lisp and sigh and make confused replies, With baby lips and complicated eyes, Indifferently apt to weep or wink, Primly pursue, provocatively shrink, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... such a kind heart that she can't bear to see any one suffer without trying to help and comfort them," said the specious Jeanne. "Now I am of quite a different mind—nothing I would like better than to flout a sentimental suitor; fine words would not gain any favour with ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... leaving us to-morrow. They go back to Rotterdam, where they expect to find Starr's aunt, and, they hope, a skipper for the motor-boat. Cousin Helen asked if I could recommend a suitable man; but even if I knew one, I should not make it easier for her to flout the wishes of ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... people could, if it would, escape its distinctive name, and, since Greece and Judea, no name has the same worth and honor among men. We Americans may flout England a hundred times. We may oppose her opinions with reason, we may think her views unsound, her policy unwise; but from what country would the most American of Americans prefer to have derived the characteristic impulse of American development and civilization rather than ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... that she had no other recourse, and advised her to see her husband. She said that it was hopeless and she expressed a bitter opinion of the law. It seemed harsher than the Church, especially harsh to those who did not flout its authority. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... reputed to be men of considerable learning, and as they had fallen from a different position, they were looked up to with a certain amount of respect. Some were disposed to sneer at and flout them, but they were on the whole well liked amongst their neighbours. They were very quiet people, and never spoke one word of the matters which came to their knowledge through the letters they were from time to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... stream his accents flow, TOM, BOB, and BILLY dare not flout him; He argued high, he argued low, He also argued round ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... eerily, They wheel about and whirl, They jeer at me, they fleer at me, They flout me as they swirl! As whirling fast or swaying slow, Reeling, wheeling, to and fro, Around, around the corpse they go, They chill me with their chants! These be neither men nor mists— Hearken to ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... of which the title is a sufficient clue to its purpose, permits a boy to refuse to go to school, and, as a young man, to flout his father's advice in regard to matrimony, only to bring him to the bottom rung of miserable drudgery and servitude under a scolding wife. Of some interest is the lad's report of a schoolboy's life, voicing, as it possibly does, a needed criticism ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... if any one here her birth doe disdaine, Her father is ready, with might and with maine, To prove shee is come of noble degree— Therefore, ever flout att prettye Bessee. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... her head. "Memphis is the lure of all Egypt, and he who hath been transplanted to her would flout the favor of the gods, did he make homesick moan for his ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Amongst the reeds the tremblers fled: Till one more bold advanc'd his head, And saw the monarch of the flood Lying half smothered in the mud. He calls the croaking race around: "A wooden king!" the banks resound. Fear once remov'd they swim about him, And gibe and jeer and mock and flout him; And messengers to Jove depute, Effectively to grant their suit. A hungry stork he sent them then, Who soon had swallow'd half the fen. Their woes scarce daring to reveal, To Mercury by night they steal, And beg him to entreat of Jove The direful tyrant to remove. 'No,' says the God, 'they chose ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... cultivated grand passions for actors, authors, musicians, and even for professors. Sometimes she played to select audiences with all her old ravishing skill, but this happened more and more rarely, until at last she utterly declined, and even went so far as to flout H.S.H. the Duke of KALBSKOPF, who had been specially ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... privileges and abolishes all the noisesomeness of death. Alive, he nourishes, comforts, consoles, corrects us. Dead, all that is mortal he transforms into ethereal and vital gases. Obey him, and he blesses; flout him, and you perish. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the illustrations thus far given have caught that fluctuating trilling movement of the voice which most musicians interviewed on the subject declare to be impossible of representation, while some flout the assertion that it represents a change of pitch. One is reminded by this of a remark made by ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... silence between the two men. Granice, with a throbbing heart, watched Denver refill his pipe. The editor, at any rate, did not sneer and flout him. After all, journalism gave a deeper insight than the law into the fantastic possibilities of life, prepared one better to allow for the incalculableness ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky And fan our people cold. Norway himself, with terrible numbers, Assisted by that most disloyal traitor The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict; Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof, Confronted him with self-comparisons, Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... flower, that thou shalt find More fragrant roses there; I see thy withering head reclined With envy and despair! One common fate we both must prove; You die with envy, I with love.' 30 'Spare your comparisons,' replied An angry rose, who grew beside. 'Of all mankind, you should not flout us; What can a poet do without us! In every love-song roses bloom; We lend you colour and perfume. Does it to Chloe's charms conduce, To found her praise on our abuse? Must we, to flatter her, be made To wither, envy, pine and ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... me first who was the father of Lagus." This was a jeer at the obscure birth of the king, and all his courtiers were indignant at it as an unpardonable liberty; but Ptolemy said, "If it is not kingly to take a flout, neither is it kingly to give one." And Alexander was more savage than usual in his behaviour to Callisthenes and Clitus. So Porus, when he was taken captive, begged Alexander to use him as a king. And on his inquiring, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... wife, why dost thou flout? Now is now, and then was then: Seek now all the world throughout, Thou ken'st not clowns from gentlemen. They are clad in black, green, yellow, or gray, So far above their own degree: Once in my life I'll do as they, For I'll have a new cloak ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... in the streets may presently be driven to rioting and the throwing of bombs. Unless, indeed, the insurrection of the outsiders takes a still graver form, and the Press, which has ceased entirely to be a Party Press in Great Britain, helps some adventurous Prime Minister to flout and set aside the lower House altogether. There is neither much moral nor much physical force behind the House of Commons at ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... now, during the last three days, since the tale of my misfortune with the cocks has got wind, almost everybody has left off coming to the house, and the few who does, merely comes to insult and flout me. It was only last night that fellow, Hunter, called me an old fool in my own kitchen here. He wouldn't have called me a fool a fortnight ago; 'twas I called him fool then, and last night he called me old fool; what do you think of that? the man that beat Tom of Hopton, to be called, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of the Regency Bill as if the dearest wish of his heart were to flout the King's wishes and to wound his feelings. The King wished, lest he should again be stricken with illness while the heir-apparent was still an infant, to be given the right to name a regent by will. Grenville and Grenville's colleagues, who were now as jealous of the authority of Bute as any ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... endeavoured to liquidate the claim in the Continental currency, now depreciated through the desperation of the American cause to a point that made it scarcely worth the paper on which its pseudo-value was stamped. The squire, however, with many a jeer and flout at each would-be payer for his folly in having taken the money, and his still greater foolishness in expecting to pay rent on leaseholds with it, declined to accept it. His refusal of each tender, which indeed had been expected, was usually followed by a ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... courage, then, to front that law (From which your sophists draw Their only right to flout one human creed) That nothing can proceed— Not even thought, not even love—from less Than its own nothingness? The law is yours! But dare you waive your pride, And kneel where you denied? The law is yours! Dare you re-kindle, then, One faith ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... them on, And their own prowess. Crashed together these Like thunderclouds outlightening, thrilling the air. With shattering trumpet-challenge, when the blasts Are locked in frenzied wrestle, with mad breath Rending the clouds, when Zeus is wroth with men Who travail with iniquity, and flout His law. So grappled they, as spear with spear Clashed, shield with shield, and man ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... supplies myself, and then retired. But such their confidence; their talk so loud And free, I could not help but hear some words That raised suspicion; then I listened close And heard, 'mid gibe and jest, the enterprise That was to flout us; make the Loyalist A cringing slave to sneering rebels; make The British lion gnash his teeth with rage;— The Yankee, hand-on-hip, guffawing loud The while. At once, my British blood was up, Nor had I borne their hated presence more, But for the deeper cause. My ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... the heat of the long summer days, until in the frost the farmers cutting the stalks and stacking them evenly about in the semblance of long departed tepees, leave no dangling blades to sigh through, nor tassels to flout. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... forward from the town to flout us with an address of welcome in which he used not our incognitos ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... With a flout at his dreams, and his cowardice, and his good-for-nothingness, the dame hurried to serve her customers. Jeremiah heard her loud voice addressing them, and their hoarse tones answering. She came out again for two pints to draw some beer, and commanded him to follow her and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... deputies, Arch- Bishops, and there together range Sous-lieutenants and cent-gardes (strange Way these soldier-chaps make change), Mixed with black-eyed Polish dames, With unpronounceable awful names; Laces tremble and ribbons flout, Coachmen wrangle and gendarmes shout— Bless us! what is the row about? Ah! here comes Rosy's new turnout! Smart! You bet your life 'twas that! Nifty! (short for magnificat). Mulberry panels,—heraldic spread,— Ebony wheels picked out with ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... means to be kind," concluded Lilac, "and it's a shame to flout him as they do, so ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... for a man to assert his own independence, and to show his bride at the outset on whose feet the highest-heeled boots would be, but quite another to flout the customs of the countryside ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... was dumfoundered by this obstinacy. It was unheard of—absolutely without parallel in his domestic annals—that one of his children should actually flout him! yes! actually flout him with ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... to flout their messengers yesterday," said William Douglas, his boyish heart misgiving him at dispraise of others; "perhaps they meant me well. But I am naturally quick and easily fretted, and the men annoyed me with their parchments ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... dinners, and their vulgar obsequiousness at table. They swill more than they should and would like to swill more than they do, they spoil the wine with unwelcome and untimely disquisitions, and they cannot carry their liquor. The ordinary people who are present naturally flout them, and are revolted by the philosophy which ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... availed, for wings could not outstrip fear. The one went under, and the other, flying, turned his breast upward. Not otherwise the wild duck on a sudden dives when the falcon comes close, and he returns up vexed and baffled. Calcabrina, enraged at the flout, kept flying behind him, desirous that the sinner should escape, that he might have a scuffle; and when the barrator had disappeared he turned his talons upon his companion, and grappled with him above the ditch. But the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... the minstrel frowned dislike: 'I have against you somewhat, Wessex men! In laughter spasms ye reel, or shout applause, Music surceased. Like rocks your fathers sat; In every song they knew some mystery lay, Mystery of man or nature. Greater God Is none than Thor, whom, witless, thus ye flout. That giant knew his greatness, and, at morn, While vexed at failure through the gates he passed, Addressed him reverent: 'Lift thy head, great Thor! Disguised thou cam'st; not less we knew thee well: Brave battle fought'st thou, seeming still ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... sold them to the Yarmouth herring-mongers "for ready gold, so that it amounteth to a great sum of money, which money doth never come again into England." "We are daily scorned," he says, "by these Hollanders, for being so negligent of our Profit, and careless of our Fishing; and they do daily flout us that be the poor Fishermen of England, to our Faces at Sea, calling to us, and saying, 'Ya English, ya sall or oud scoue dragien;' which, in English, is this, 'You English, we will make you glad ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... marvel-bloom to be worn on head! * Though a stranger among you fro' home I fled: Make use of wine in my company * And flout at Time who in languish sped. E'en so cloth camphor my hue attest, * O my lords, as I stand in my present stead. So gar me your gladness when dawneth day, * And to highmost seat in your homes be I led: And quaff your cups in all jollity, * And cheer ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... cheap!" said Tim, red in his fury. "You'll flout me and mock me and throw my offers for your good in ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... you lost to the good cause of your country, and to the altars of her gods; for who can love his country, and deny the gods who made and preserve it? But then who am I to condemn? When I see the gods to hurl thunderbolts upon those who flout them, it will be time enough for us mortals to assume the robes of judgment. I will hope that farther thought will reclaim you ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... make a sound or lift a finger against her life, never more would he contradict her or flout her; never more would he come peeping through that papered panel between his room and hers, never more could hateful and humiliating demands be made upon her as his right; no more strange distresses ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... rest, for if you give her breath, she'l scorn and flout you, seem how she will, this is the way to win her, ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... count her teardrops as they fall; I flout my daytime fears; I mumble thanks to God for all These gibes and happy jeers. But, when the warning dawn awakes, Begins my wandering; With stealthy strokes through tangled brakes, A ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... not the dreamy rush Of the rain: Touch not the marring doubt Words bring, to the certainty Of its soft refrain, But let the flying fringes flout Their gouts against the pane, And the gurgling throat of the water-spout ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... "Ye flout me! Ye who will have for a husband, one whom thou canst not name!" She laughed derisively. That hurt Elsa very much because it was true. Ortrud had remained with her through the night, and had continued to say so many things which had aroused her curiosity ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... get from her, And though she covered be with dirt Yet will she never comb her hair, And at the merest word will she 155 Be vanquished of laughter utterly. She sweeps and lets the sweepings lie, She eats and will never wash the dishes, Her uncle beats her hourly, So laxly doth she flout his wishes. 160 Madanela's the apple of my eye. And there is no more to be said But tell Meigengra presently To reckon on ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... that was the reason why Jeff Sullivan couldn't come it round Ruth tho' he was silkier than a milkweed-pod, and jest about as patient as a spider in his hole a watchin' to get his grip on a fly. Ruth wouldn't argue with him, and she wouldn't flout him; but she jest shut herself up in herself, and kept a lookout on him; but she told your Aunt Lois jest ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... enough to be her father, and loose enough to find her premature airs and graces a fine joke indeed. She ruled them all with her temper and her shrewish will. She would have her way in all things, or there should be no sport with her, and she would sing no songs for them, but would flout them bitterly, and sit in a great chair with her black brows drawn down, and her whole small ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... smiling mournfully. "They say that the works of the Pharaohs here on the Nile flout Time. The inexorable destroyer is less willing to permit this from the Queen of Egypt. These are grey hairs, and they came from this head, however eagerly you may deny it. Whose save my own are these lines around ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... time a grimy sweep Was creeping down the street, When Quartern Loaf, the biker's boy, Below he chanced to meet: "Sweep!" sneered the baker: and the sweep Gave Puff a sooty flout; But Puff-crumb did not deal in soot, So turned his face about; Nor did he care to soundly drub The imp of dirty flues: "Go change your clothes!" said he, "and then "I'll thrash you when you choose! "It will not do for ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight. For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild but to flout the ruins gray: When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress alternately Seem framed ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... human will should be able to lift itself in opposition to the Sovereign Will! But stranger and more mysterious and tragic still is it that we should choose to exercise that power and find pleasure, and fancy that we shall ever find advantage, in refusing to listen to His entreaties and choosing to flout ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the old man, raising protesting hands up toward the very distant, quite invisible sky. "How could I, a humble priest of the Lord, range myself with those who would flout and ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... only material and external, but psychological not only touching what others might do or what might happen to them, but raising also speculation as to what he might do, or what might happen to him at his own hands; for example, how far he would flout authority, defy the usual, and deny the accepted. The love of rebellion, of making foolish the wisdom of the wise, of hampering the orderly and inexorable treatment of people just as, according to the best modern lights, they ought to be treated, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... simply great, 35 That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout and ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Munitions but of the War Office. The Munitions Ministry in due course did splendid work. Chancellor of the Exchequer become lord-paramount of a great spending Department of State, its chief was on velvet. "Copper" turned footpad, he knew the ropes, he could flout the Treasury—and he did. But it is a pity that unwarrantable claims should have been put forward on behalf of the department in not irresponsible quarters at a time when they could not be denied, claims which have tended to bring the department as a whole into undeserved disrepute ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... And the circle—they will square it Some fine day; Then the little pigs they're teaching For to fly; And the niggers they'll be bleaching Bye and bye! Each newly joined aspirant To the clan Must repudiate the tyrant Known as Man; They mock at him and flout him, For they do not care about him, And they're "going to do without him" If ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... to those who misname themselves "evangelical" and flout their new-found liberty: Have you put down the tyranny of the Pope and obtained liberty in Christ through the Anabaptists and other fanatics? Or have you obtained your freedom from us who preach faith in Christ ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... spite of our brood of special magazines for the literati and the advanced, which Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer praises so warmly, we are not so well provided with the distributive machinery for a national culture as to flout a recognized agency with a gesture and a sneer. But the family magazine has undeniably lost its vigorous appeal, and must be reinvigorated. The malady is due to no slackening of literary virility in the country; indeed ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... if any one here her birth doe disdaine, Her father is ready, with might and with maine, To proove shee is come of noble degree: Therfore never flout att prettye Bessee." ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... of play designs That spring at once from schoolroom's form. Instead of all this angry storm, Another might have thanked you well For saving prey from that grim cell, That hollowed den 'neath journals great, Where editors who poets flout With their demoniac laughter shout. And I have scolded you! What fate For charming dwarfs who never meant To anger Hercules! And I Have frightened you!—My chair I sent Back to the wall, and then let fly A shower of words the envious ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... renown, However the wits may flout— As wide almost as this blessed town" (But he winced as if with gout). "I paid 'em like sin For to put me in, But it's O, and O, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... offer sacrifice; Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high; Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies;[64] The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory! The Foe, the Victim, and the fond Ally That fights for all, but ever fights in vain,[65] Are met—as if at home they could not die— To feed the crow on ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... not too late," she cried. "I will show you. I will prove to you that my love has grown, that it is greater to me than my class and all that is dearest to me. All that is dearest to the bourgeoisie I will flout. I am no longer afraid of life. I will leave my father and mother, and let my name become a by-word with my friends. I will come to you here and now, in free love if you will, and I will be proud and glad to be with you. If I have been a traitor to love, I will now, for love's sake, be a traitor ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... quiet port and its brooding solitude with religious veneration. Then he recalled the miraculous stories with which his mother used to lull him to sleep—the great miracle wrought upon these waters by a servant of God to flout the hardened sinners. Saint Raymond of Penafort, a virtuous and austere monk, became indignant with King Jaime of Majorca who was basely enamored of a certain lady, Dona Berenguela, and who remained deaf to holy counsels. The friar determined to abandon this recalcitrant, but the king sought ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... little knows what dirty clo'es May kiver up a poet; What fires may burn an' flout an' skurn, An' no wan ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... have pressed it openly and been repulsed," she replied in a low voice. "But if he could have carried me to some far fortress, how should I flout him there, that is, if I still lived? There, with no price to pay in gold or lands or power, he would have been my master, and I should have been his slave till such time as he wearied of me. That is the fate from which you have saved me, Prince, or rather from death, ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... in which my friend Bagster finds himself is a very common one. It is no longer true that the good die young; they become prematurely middle-aged. In these days conscience doth make neurasthenics of us all. Now it will not do to flout conscience, and by shutting our eyes to the urgencies and complexities of life purchase for ourselves a selfish calm. Neither do we like the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... flout the Almighty in that wicked manner! If you would only be baptized and take refuge in prayer, as every Christian should, you would find peace for ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... whom it is most important to capitalize are those who have the most money to spend. Such a press is bound to respect the point of view of the buying public. It is for this buying public that newspapers are edited and published, for without that support the newspaper cannot live. A newspaper can flout an advertiser, it can attack a powerful banking or traction interest, but if it alienates the buying public, it loses the one ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Let Mynheer Vanderschoffeldt flout, And swear and rave for sour krout; Nay kick his frow with solemn phiz, To make her feel how goot it ish. Yet after he has gorg'd his maw With puttermilks and goot olt slaw, Let him remember times are such, The French have Holland, not ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... officers dispersed. "Now will I confess, Wilder, a secret pleasure in the belief that yonder audacious fool carries the boasted commission of the German who wears the Crown of Britain. Should he prove more than man may dare attempt, I will flout him; though prudence shall check any further attempts; and, should he prove an equal, would it not gladden your eyes to see St. George come ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the politics of the age—he hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even of doubtful military capacity: he speaks of Walpole as a contemptible boor, and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen's latter days, which was to have ended in bringing back the Pretender. Again, I read Marlborough's life by a copious archdeacon, who has the command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called the best information; and I get ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man flout, The wisest Kings have all some folly; Nor let his piety any doubt; Charles, like a Sov'reign, wise and holy, Makes young men judges of the bench, And bishops, those that ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... "What does a man who loves as I do, care for the conventions of the sham world you and I have left so far behind. I adore you. And you flout me." ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... but shall then Reverberate thy wail, when thou hast found With what a hymeneal thou wast borne Home, but to no fair haven, on the gale! Aye, and a flood of ills thou guessest not Shall set thyself and children in one line. Flout then both Creon and my words, for none Of mortals shall be striken ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... were a peece of gentlemanlike knauery. I must goe to Pedringano and tell him his pardon is in this boxe! Nay, I would haue sworne it, had I not seene the contrary. I cannot choose but smile to thinke how the villain wil flout the gallowes, scorne the audience, and descant on the hangman, and all presuming of his pardon from hence. Wilt not be an odde iest, for me to stand and grace euery iest he makes, pointing my figner at this boxe, as who [should] say: "Mock on, heers thy warrant!" Ist ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... wavering, no concession made by the family.... The boy must be made into what he ought to be—but how? And he must have his lesson for this day's scene. He must be shown that he could not, with impunity, outrage the Family Tradition and flout ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... eyes of a slave, and that the queen had in three ways shown the behaviour of a bondmaid. Thus he reviled with insulting invective not so much the feast as its givers. And presently his companions, taunting him with his old defect of wits, began to flout him with many saucy jeers, because he blamed and cavilled at seemly and worthy things, and because he attacked thus ignobly an illustrious king and a lady of so refined a behaviour, bespattering with the shamefullest abuse those who merited ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... have the laws of privacy," said Farrow simply. "Which neither side can afford to flout overtly. Furthermore, since neither side really knew where you were, they've been busily prowling one another's camps and locking up the prowlers from one another's camps, and playing spy and counterspy and counter-counterspy, and generally piling it up pyramid-wise," she finished with a chuckle. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... personality were to me as a continual and glorious adventure. To flirt with her would be a confession on my part of a kind of superiority that I could never feel; a suggestion of the ridiculous assumption that I could afford to dally with and in certain circumstances flout her. I could sooner have dallied with and flouted a supreme work of art. Wherefore when she challenged me with her daring "Why?" I met her eyes with a look that if it in any way represented what I was feeling, must have expressed a grave ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... of course," he said, after a pause. "Human nature is weak, engagingly weak, Guildea. And you're inclined to flout it. I could understand a certain class of lady—the lion-hunting, the intellectual lady, seeking you. Your reputation, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... to flout me?— Was he not my betrothed, that noble Irish knight? For his sword a blessing I sought; for me only he fought. When he was murdered no honor fell. In that heartfelt misery my vow was framed; if ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... extempore. He were as good have let me had the best part, for I'll be revenged on him to the uttermost, in this person of Will Summer, which I have put on to play the prologue, and mean not to put it off till the play be done. I'll sit as a chorus, and flout the actors and him at the end of every scene. I know they will not interrupt me, for fear of marring of all; but look to your cues, my masters, for I intend to play the knave in cue, and put you besides all your parts, if you take not ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... slave; drink!" cried Cleopatra, half rising from her seat and flashing a fierce look on his white face. "By Serapis! so surely as I yet shall sit in the Capitol at Rome, if thou dost thus flout the Lord Antony, I'll have thee scourged to the bones, and the red wine poured upon thy open wounds to heal them! Ah! at length thou drinkest! Why, what is it, good Eudosius? art sick? Surely, then, this wine must be as the water of jealousy of those Jews, that has power to slay ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... he, "if this isn't a little the all-firedest muss a feller ever got into, Josh ain't no judge. Of course the papers have nothing to do but flout it all over the country. For myself I don't care a copper, but 'twill be mighty mortifyin' to you, though I think you desarve some mortifyin', for how in thunder a chap of your sense ever come to be made such a precious fool of is ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... be Simplicity, for thou showest thy folly. I have a parsonage, but what? of St Nihil; and Nihil is nothing: Then, where is the church, or any bells for to ring? Thou understandest her not: she was set for to flout. I thought, coining in their names, I should go without. 'Tis easy to see that Lucre loves not Love and Conscience; But God, I trust, will one day yield ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... and jeer at the outlandish sounds of Greek and Latin and German, till they have learned to read and love the great authors who have written in those languages, so WESLEY, and SOUTHEY, and even HALLAM himself, jest and flout and call names at Jacob Behmen, because they have not taken the trouble to learn his language, to master his mind, and to drink in his spirit. At the same time, and after all that has been said about Behmen's barbarous style, Bishop Martensen tells us how the readers of SCHELLING were ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... I not flout reason? What Christian but knows well enough that reason is the staff that breaks in our hands and wounds us? Much of our most vital experience has no part nor lot with reason. A thousand things happen in the soul's history which reason ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... flout the air, Harsh granite rocks, so rudely bare, Wise Vulcan's art and mine shall own To piles of shapeliest beauty grown. The steam that snorts vain strength away Shall serve the workman's curious sway, Like a wise child; as clouds that sail White-winged before the summer gale, The smoking chariot ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... without an oath—no Yordas ever used an oath except in playful moments—"fool! what fear you? There hangs my respected father's chain. Ah, he was something like a man! Had I ever dared to flout him so, he would have ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... spare— Of me and fragrancy and fair!" A Maiden-blush, which heard him, said, With face unwontedly flushed red. "Tell me, for what committed wrong Am I the metaphor of song? I would you could write rhymes without me, Nor in your ecstacies so flout me. In every ditty must we bloom? Can't you find elsewhere some perfume? Oh! does it add to Chloe's sweetness To visit and compare my meetness? And, to enhance her face, must mine Be made to wither, peak, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... new confidence and consecration, which would make our defense impregnable, our triumph assured. Then we should have little or no disorganization of our economic, industrial, and commercial systems at home, no staggering war debts, no swollen fortunes to flout the sacrifices of our soldiers, no excuse for sedition, no pitiable slackerism, no outrage of treason. Envy and jealousy would have no soil for their menacing development, and revolution would be without the passion ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... think this performance sufficiently binding, and binding no doubt it was from a moral point of view, so long as there was reasonably good behaviour on either side, or so long as neither Silius nor Marcia's father was prepared wantonly to flout general opinion or to offend a whole connection by simply changing his mind. On the other hand, there was no legal compulsion whatever to carry out the contract. The Roman world knew nothing of actions for breach of promise. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... lad, a pupil at the old Grammar-School, where he used the desk at which his father had sat before him. Whatever fault of boyhood showed itself in Harry Morton, he knew not the common temptation to be ashamed of his mother, or to flout her love. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... son Meredith wrote: "Look for the truth in everything, and follow it, and you will then be living justly before God. Let nothing flout your sense of a Supreme Being, and be certain that your understanding wavers whenever you chance to doubt that He leads to good. We grow to good as surely as the plant grows to the light. Do not lose the habit of praying to the unseen Divinity. ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... jury duty. You shirk fatherhood, and all its happy and sacred obligations! You deny posterity! You strike a blow at it! You flout it! You menace the future of this Republic! Your inertia is a crime against the people! Instead of pro bono publico your motto is pro bono tempo—for a good time! And, dog Latin or not, it's the truth, and ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... thou jeer and flout me in the teeth? Think'st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... the chief part of her composition that all other considerations gave way before it. Her heart thrilled with a sickly sentiment at all times. To her men were the gods of the universe, and, as such, must be propitiated, at least in theory. In practice it might be necessary to flout them, to tease them, even to snub them—on rare occasions. But this would only come after intimacy had been established. After that her attitude would be governed by circumstances, and even then her snubs, her floutings, her teasing, would only be done as a further lure, a ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... be clearer," said he imperturbably. "This lad is your betrothed. He is at heart a good lad, an honourable and honest lad—at times haply over-honest and over-honourable; but let that be. To please a whim, a caprice, you set yourself to flout him, as is the way of your sex when you behold a man your utter slave. From this—being all unversed in the obliquity of woman—he conceives, poor boy, that he no longer finds favour in your eyes, and to win back ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... become ill through you. Being less logical in our conduct than the Chinese, we, as a people, pay little or no heed to the instructions of the public doctors whom we employ. We grind down their appropriations; we flout the wise and by no means over-rigorous regulations which they succeed in getting established, usually against the stupid opposition of unprogressive legislatures; we permit—nay, we influence our private physicians to disobey the laws in our interest, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... them interestingly alive. But it does not follow that they did not live when they are supposed to have lived, or do the things attributed to them. Their architecture was ephemeral, and bears no witness to them; they built no pyramids to flout time; they raised no monument but a people, a culture, an ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... ale, and antic ring Well tiptoed to the tabor string, And many a buss below the holly, And flout at sable melancholy— So, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... flout, scoff. 'You must learn to mock; to frump your own father on occason.' Ironically used in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the Musicians were either Black Negroes or Cophtic Christians, and they used me with Decent Civility; nor did the Master of the Musicians—otherwise a most cruel Moor—go out of his way to flout, much less smite me with his Rattan. If he had dared but to lay one Stripe upon me, I would have sprang upon the Wretch and dashed out his Brains with my Cymbals, even if I had been put upon the Pale for ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... town-folk, and what he would show them was what a big man he was. For, like most scorners of the world's opinion, Gourlay was its slave, and showed his subjection to the popular estimate by his anxiety to flout it. He was not great enough for the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... flout him," says Monica, indignantly. "But what am I to do? am I to make Aunt Priscilla wretched, then, because of him, and break her ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown |
