"Sneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in vain to page 312 of "Household Words" for the sneer to which you call my attention. Nor have I, I assure you, the least idea where else it is to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... kicking anyone who is down. It was very quickly realized at Briarcroft that Gipsy was in ill favour at headquarters; and though most of the girls were sorry for her, with a certain number her changed fortunes undoubtedly lessened her popularity. Maude Helm never lost an opportunity of a sneer or a slight, and could sometimes raise a laugh at Gipsy's expense among the more thoughtless section of the Form. Gipsy generally responded with spirit, but the gibes ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... happened incidentally to observe, that education was requisite to promote the interests of religion. But Miss Mally, on that occasion, jocularly maintained, that education had only a tendency to promote the sale of books. This, Mr. Dalgliesh thought, was a sneer at himself, he having some time before unfortunately published a short tract, entitled, "The moral union of our temporal and eternal interests considered, with respect to the establishment of parochial seminaries," ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... with glowing pride, casting a sneer on the king's hospitality, "In the days of yore, Sunna, whenever visitors came to see him, immediately presented them with women, and, secondly, with food; for he was very particular in looking after ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... courage to stand up boldly for those whom the fashionable world would sneer at. She was not ashamed to recognize a plainly-dressed acquaintance in the most public thoroughfare, nor did she ever make an excuse to be pre-occupied when approached by ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... men) that I ever saw? Yea, verily, this have I done for the express edification of yourself and the rest of your curious tribe, to be rewarded, probably, by the impertinent remark, "What! does that little goose Dame Shirley think that I care about such things?" But, madam, in spite of your sneer, I shall ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... because he is so fond of me," the other said, with the same grinning sneer. "He loves me like a brother; you know he does, captain. No?—He don't?—Well, perhaps he don't; and if you ask me no questions, perhaps I'll tell you no lies, Captain Strong—put that in your pipe and smoke it, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Favonius, with half a sneer, "you think your forces inadequate. The two legions at Luceria are just detached from Caesar. Perhaps ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... any signs of life—an occasional meteor flash that told of her olden spirit—of her deathless race. Degraded and apathetic as this nation of Helots was, it is not strange that political philosophy, at all times too Sadducean in its principles, should ask, with a sneer, "Could these dry bones live?" The fulness of time has come, and with one gallant sunward bound the "old land" comes forth into the political day to teach these lessons, that Right must always conquer Might in the end—that ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the Cuban with a trifle of bewilderment. But at last his face began to grow dark with belligerency, his mouth curved in that wide sneer with which he would confront an angel of darkness. He arose suddenly in his seat and came towards the little Cuban. He was going to be ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... served; and told him, that when any one changed his dish, that his plate, knife and fork, were changed also, and that they were as perfectly bright and clean as the day they came from the silver-smith's shop. After a little pause, and a significant sneer,—Pray Sir, (said he) and do you not change your napkins also? I was piqued a little, and told him we did not, but that indeed I had made a little mistake, which I would rectify, which was, that though ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... your tune, is it?' he said with a sneer. 'Well, now, my dear brother Silas, I want my children. They have got a little half-brother at home—for I have married again, Silas—who is anxious to have them to play with, so if you will be so good as to hand them over, I'll take them ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... Americans who to-day are toiling on the farms and in the workshops of the country and who demand from the laws they obey nothing but equity and justice. It was easier, and more pleasant to those who heard him, to wrong these men with a sneer than to answer them with an argument. He might possibly have done well to relinquish this task to one who sat near him, his ex-Secretary of the Treasury, who had himself, in 1878, discovered something that he thought a crime ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... echoed Leach with a sneer; "I've had no 'special order' for ten years at least! My employers trust me to do what I think best, and I've every right to act accordingly. The trees will begin to rot in another eighteen months or so,—just now they're in good condition and will fetch a fair price. You stick to ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... opinions of TO-MORROW in words just as hard, although their opinions of to-morrow may contradict their opinions of to-day.' They are fearless of personal consequences. As free men, they will think, as free men they will speak, and as such they will act, regardless of the jibe and sneer of those who accuse them of change, of inconsistency, of being mutable and unstable of purpose. The point to the march of improvement, the advance in the actualities of life, and ask, 'When every thing else is on the move, shall we stand still? Shall the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our constitution; we stand buffet among friend and enemies; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, and so circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us. It is not even its own reward, except ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that physicians mend or end us, Secundum artem: but although we sneer In health—when ill, we call them to attend us, Without the ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... She had striven to rid herself of every sign of the prairie to which she belonged. She was dressed with consummate care. Every jealous feeling of the woman in her had cried out for her rights, and those rights were that her successful rival should be unable to sneer at or ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... that,' said Mrs. Willoughby, with a sneer at the folly of the creature. 'He seems to look upon Mallinson and himself as the two figures which tell the weather in a Swiss clock. When one comes out of his box the other goes in. I catch your trick, you see,' and her face ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... vilipendency^, vilification, contumely, affront, dishonor, insult, indignity, outrage, discourtesy &c 895; practical joking; scurrility, scoffing, sibilance, hissing, sibilation; irrision^; derision; mockery; irony &c (ridicule) 856; sarcasm. hiss, hoot, boo, gibe, flout, jeer, scoff, gleek^, taunt, sneer, quip, fling, wipe, slap in the face. V. hold in disrespect &c (despise) 930; misprize, disregard, slight, trifle with, set at naught, pass by, push aside, overlook, turn one's back upon, laugh in one's sleeve; be disrespectful &c adj., be discourteous &c 895; treat with disrespect &c n.; set ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... shame, or drop her prayer-book on the floor; the latter will most likely thump the same with the imperative tip of his boot. How horridly stupid one seems after being aroused! The woman eyes you with the most piquant, self-justifying sneer possible; while all her little IMMACULATES, if she have any, look at you like so many hissing young turkey cocks; and as for the man—bless his holiness!—he'd frown you ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... his head from his settee, and in a tone of complacent derision, 'wondered what Jimmy Madison would say now.' 'Sir,' said Mr. Irving, glad of an escape to his swelling indignation, 'do you seize on such a disaster only for a sneer? Let me tell you, sir, it is not now a question about Jimmy Madison or Jimmy Armstrong.[] The pride and honor of the nation are wounded; the country is insulted and disgraced by this barbarous success, and every loyal citizen should feel ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... death upon him as soon as he marries again, and breaks faith with you."—"To this hour he is a widower," said Undine, "and loves and mourns me truly."—"Ah, but he will be bridegroom soon," said Kuehleborn with a sneer; "wait a couple of days only; and the marriage blessing will have been given, and you must go up and put the criminal to death."—"I cannot!" answered the smiling Undine. "I have had the fountain sealed up, against myself and ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... won't. I am comfortable here also, and shall be more so as the husband of the Inkosazana. This is a very pretty kraal, and it is quite big enough for two," he added with an amorous sneer. ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... hundred doubloons had in reality been shipped in St. Thomas. Of course, their production was imperiously demanded; but Brulot swore they had been landed, with his supercargo, in the neighboring Rio Nunez. I was near crediting the story, when a slight sneer I perceived flickering over the steward's face, put me on the qui vive to request an inspection of the log-book, which, unfortunately for my captor, did not record the disembarkation of the cash. This demonstrated Brulot's falsehood, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... much more likely to be a true index of character. A man may clench his teeth firmly or smile disdainfully or sneer, or do a hundred things which will be reflected in his mouth rather than in his nose or chin. It is through the mouth and eyes that all emotions are expressed, and in the mouth and eyes therefore that one would expect the marks of such emotions to be left. ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... think Jason Sparr will think so, too, when he hears the story. It's a frame-up, just to clear yourselves and your cronies," added Nat, with a sneer. ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... This Canonico, whose sneer at the undecided faith of Salvator roused all the bile of the tolerant and charitable Baldovini, was the near neighbor of Salvator, a frequenter of his hospitable house, and one of whom the credulous Salvator ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Cavendish, sneer as you like. But I tell you that's love that I've been describing. That's all. It's love. It's the realest, purest, finest thing that can happen to a man. And I know what I'm talking about. ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals, and have no hope of rising in their own esteem but by lowering their neighbors. The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... stick, his cold sneer upon his thin lip, Lord Lilburne limped, step by step, with the pair, though a little apart from them, glancing from moment to moment at the face of Philip Beaufort, where he had hoped to read a grief that ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... externals of religion, we believe that in many points the heart has been more exercised also. Take, as an example, the practice of family prayer. Many excellent and pious households of the former generation would not venture upon the observance, I am afraid, because they were in dread of the sneer. There was a foolish application of the terms "Methodist" "saints," "over-righteous," where the practice was observed. It was to take up a rather decided position in the neighbourhood; and I can testify, that ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... mathematics, it seems to me he might have shaken the popular faith in the multiplication-table. The wonders transacting in his church being noised abroad, the town was soon crowded with curious strangers, mostly laymen, but several clergymen, some anxious to believe, others ready to sneer, but all resolute to see. As might have been expected, the nature of the excitement alarmed the wiser pastors of the vicinity for the cause of Orthodoxy. They saw that several of the asserted miracles were simply ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... However, let the reader sneer as he will at my predicament, there was something sublime in the scene around me. The smallness of the craft magnified the greatness of the waves. I literally enjoyed the interesting situation which ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Really, I had expected quite a different evening, after your invitation. You can't blame me for misunderstanding your motive in asking me to come here when you expected to be utterly alone." His laugh was a sneer. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... made to him. The answer was given with a good deal of heat: "I have never done such a thing in my life, and I am not going to begin now!" Nor had he any use for bitter speech even in cold blood. "One thing," he said in a letter, "I will now correct; a sneer—intentionally or consciously— is a thing that, so far as my memory serves, I am as innocent of as a little babe." Yet he could be sarcastic, as the following memorandum shows: "Cardinal Cullen once said to me, after ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... had been especially irritated by Mr. Ely's behaviour to her; she felt sure that he was not in the least struck with her beauty, that he quizzed her conversation, and that he spoke of her with a sneer. A woman always knows where she is utterly powerless, and shuns a coldly satirical eye as she would shun a Gorgon. And she was especially eager for clerical notice and friendship, not merely because that is quite ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... vindicated for themselves in the hour of combat. The most brilliant, unscrupulous and daring historian of France degraded the niggard praise he accorded them by making it the medium of a false and contemptible sneer. "The Irish soldier," says Voltaire, "fights bravely everywhere ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... the products of the germs of animals and of the seeds of plants which have lost their way, as it were, in the bowels of the earth, and have achieved only an imperfect and abortive development? It is easy to sneer at our ancestors for being disposed to reject the first in favour of one or other of the last two hypotheses; but it is much more profitable to try to discover why they, who were really not one whit less sensible persons than our excellent selves, should have been led ...
— The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology - Essay #2 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... The sneer returned to Sara's voice. "You ask Jim if he ever heard of locking the barn too late? Tell him to bring on his ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... whole Passage is a manifest Burlesque on the Invocations with which the Ancients began their Poems. Not very different is that Sneer at the ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... Squire's lady was driving through the village on a visit* to Tammas's slobbering grandson—it was shortly after Billy Thornton's advent into the world—that little M'Adam, standing in the door of the Sylvester Arms, with a twig in his mouth and a sneer fading from his lips, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... of triumphant glee in her manner, an open and mocking sneer, which dismayed him. He was sure that he had erred in telling her his secret; yet he reflected that he could hardly have done otherwise, and that she surely would not dare to refuse to give up a legal ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... something between a sneer and a laugh, "I'm obliged for your frankness. You're after my ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... getting me into trouble!" thought the stranger, trying in vain to smooth down the corners of the offending organ, which in spite of him would curve with what Hagar called a sneer, and from which there finally broke a merry laugh, sadly at variance with the suffering expression of ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... talked with me in a friendly way about my plans. Both Hope and I were under him in algebra and Latin. I well remember my first error in his class. I had misconstrued a Latin sentence. He looked at me, a smile and a sneer crowding each other for possession of his face. In a loud, jeering tone ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... sir, uttered with the half-hidden sneer which always accompanies its expression from the ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... of Church practices both with noble indignation and well-aimed mockery, a proud irony to which he was not fully entitled preponderates in his condemnation of scholastic theology which he could not quite understand. It was easy always to talk with a sneer of the conservative divines of his ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... I should say,' rejoined the man with a sneer. 'See here, my friend,' and he rapped Cargrim on the breast with a shapely hand, 'if you interfere in what does not concern you, there will be trouble. I saw Dr Pendle on private business, and as such it has nothing to do with you. Hold your tongue, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... curious facts, and I have them here in my manuscript. The world cannot sneer at me, for records have been kept almost since the day away back in the seventeenth century when Prince Rupert landed with his first shipload of gentlemen adventurers. They intermarried with our splendid Crees—those first wanderers from the best families of Europe. They ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... the torments of hell in Venetian dungeons ever suffered more from the torture of the boot than Birotteau did, standing there in his ordinary clothes. He felt a sneer in every word. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... silent moan begins and ends, No world's laugh or world's taunt, no pity of friends Or sneer of foes, with this ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... reporter's gallery of the House all the evening, and he had come away laden with his article. "It was certainly better that we should remain up, than that the whole town should be disappointed," said Sir Marmaduke, with something of a sneer. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Lanyard—the poet, you know—will be there; I am curious to see him. Father remembers him a 'scrubby starveling'—to use his phrase—a reviewer of novels for some literary paper. He has just married Lady Emily Quell—you heard of it? How paltry it is for people to laugh and sneer whenever a poor man marries a rich woman. I know nothing of him except from his poetry, but that convinces me that he is above ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... or superior to his own. He possessed about the average of bull-dog courage and more than the average of physical strength, but observing that Joe was gifted with still more of both these qualities, he lowered the handspike, and with a sneer replied— ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... care whether it is common amongst servants or uncommon," spoke Lord Hartledon rather hotly, as though he would resent the covert sneer. "It is Anne Ashton's; and I love the name for her sake. But I think it a pretty name; and should, if she did not bear it; prettier than ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... does Evelyn devote himself to the task of stripping the borrowed feathers from this fine jackdaw. After inaugurating his work by quoting the Horatian sneer, "Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?" he at once plunges in medias res, and not mincing his language, says:—"This impudent vagabond is a native of Wallachia, born of Christian parents ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... Downing College at Cambridge.(502) The grounds of any expectation which Lord Holland may have entertained from Sir Jacob Downing have not reached us; but it is right to say, that Mr. Walpole had quarrelled with Lord Holland, and was glad on any occasion, just or otherwise, to sneer at him.-C. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... aspect is due north—a grave disadvantage. Upon that side, from the house-wall to the fence, I have forty-five feet, on the east fifty feet, on the south sixty feet, on the west a mere ruelle. Almost every one who works out these figures will laugh, and the remainder sneer. Here's a garden to write about! That area might do for a tennis-court or for a general meeting of Mr. Frederic Harrison's persuasion. You might kennel a pack of hounds there, or beat a carpet, or assemble those members of the cultured class ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... dismissing with hasty contempt their thoughts upon any subject so important; will make you inclined to listen to their opinion with affection, if not with reverence; and save, perhaps, the preacher from a sneer when he declares that the doctrine of those old Saxon men is, in his belief, not only the most Scriptural, but the most rational and scientific explanation of the grounds of all ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... beneath her, am I not?" said Wyvis, with a sneer. And then he once more spoke eagerly. "I am beneath her: I am as the dust under her feet. Don't you think I know that? I'll tell you what, Janetta, when I first saw her and spoke to her—here, in this room, if you remember—I thought that she was like ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... whose scepticism on obscure points in history rather surpasses that of Sir G. C. Lewis, dismisses with a sneer the subject of the Berserker madness, observing that "the unanimous testimony of the Norse historians is worth as much and as little as the convictions of Glanvil and Hale on the reality of witchcraft." I ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... resistance from Vienna, there was nothing left for a government that had spent millions in war preparation but to declare war. The affair had that surface appearance, which was noisily proclaimed by Germany to the world. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg's sneer concerning the "voice of the piazza having prevailed" revealed not merely pique, but also a complete misunderstanding, a Teutonic misapprehension of the underlying motives that led to an inevitable step. No one who witnessed, as I did at close range, the swift unfolding of the drama ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... venture a remark in favour of the prisoner, or in compliment to him; but no matter —the absence of abuse was a sufficient homage in itself. A late comer who was not posted as to the present circumstances, and who delivered a sneer at the 'impostor,' and was in the act of following it with a dead cat, was promptly knocked down and kicked out, without any words, and then the deep quiet resumed sway ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... With thy faint sneer for him who wins thee bread And him who clothes thee, and for him who toils Day-long and night-long dark in the earth ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... book again. As we close it, the club-room is before us, and the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall, thin form of Langton; the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick; Gibbon tapping his snuff-box and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... see you are laughing at female friendships, and, generally speaking, there is foundation for the general sneer. I will own, for my part, I have every female weakness, and in excess. I am vain, I am curious, I am jealous, and I am envious; but I adore Theodora. I reconcile my feelings toward her and my disposition in this way. It is not friendship—it is worship. And indeed there ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... it's sunthin surprisin' that he should have one of the bags the old man kept his money in, in his state-room," said the officer, with a sneer. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... Ortega with a sneer, "he feared you might have learned the truth, and reloaded the gun. I had no way ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... Harriet's lack of emotion, not himself. Hogg is not given to saying kind things when Harriet is his subject. He may have said them the time that he tried to tempt her to soil her honor, but after that he mentions her usually with a sneer. "Among those who were about her" was one witness well equipped to silence all tongues, abolish all doubts, set our minds at rest; one witness, not called, and not callable, whose evidence, if we could but get it, would outweigh the oaths of whole battalions of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you include George William Reynolds?" inquired Gouger, with a sneer. "Neither of them wrote until they were depraved by contract with humanity. If we could get a young man of true literary talent to see life and write of it as he went along, what might we not secure? But I have no more time to ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... came you and your fellow-sufferers to be adrift in that boat?" demanded Renouf, unceremoniously cutting short my expression of thanks. I could not help thinking that there was more than the suspicion of a mocking sneer in the tone in which he uttered the words "you and your fellow-sufferers". Moreover there was a distinct air of discourtesy in his manner of interrupting me, and a suggestion of antagonism in his flashing eyes that put me on my guard; so, curbing a very decided ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... sharply. There was a covert sneer in her last words that angered him, and he was half inclined to refuse the whole thing, but somehow there was something in this strange new type of girl that fascinated him. Now that she had the university, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... money," said Alice, disdaining to answer the sneer. "Though it were only with my money, even ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... country, my son," said Boniface Newt. "What men want, and women too, is money. What is this city of New York? A combination of men and machines for making money. Every body respects a rich man. They may laugh at him behind his back. They may sneer at his ignorance and awkwardness, and all that sort of thing, but they respect his money. Now there's old Jacob Van Boozenberg. I say to you in strict confidence, my son, that there was never a greater fool than that man. He absolutely knows nothing at all. When he dies he will be no more missed ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... his gas-mask with a sneer: "He's pushin' the yellow stuff at us, Heinie," he said; and to me: "You get yours all right. I don't know what it is, but you get it, same as me an' Heinie an' Duck. I don't know what it is," he repeated impatiently; "maybe ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... the demagogues of the labor lodges, the practical workers of the working-girls' clubs, and the humanitarian agnostics like Dr. Leigh, who were literally giving their lives without the least expectation of reward. Even the refined ethical-culture groups had no sneer for Father Damon. The little chapel of St. Anselm was well known. It was always open. It was plain, but its plainness was not the barrenness of a non-conformist chapel. There were two confessionals; a great bronze lamp attached to one of the pillars scarcely dispelled the obscurity, but ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the wicked Godrich in his palace heard of Havelok in the kitchen. "Now truly this is the best man in England," he said, with a sneer. And thinking to bring shame on Goldboru, and wed her with a kitchen knave, he sent ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... in his shirt sleeves stood a little to one side watching the excitement in the street. As Drew came up the man glanced at the scout, surveying his shabbiness, and his mouth took on the harsh line of a sneer. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... Voltaire, and written in ridicule of the famous maxim of Leibnitz, "All for the best in the best of all possible worlds"; it is a sweeping satire, and "religion, political government, national manners, human weakness, ambition, love, loyalty, all come in for a sneer." ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... his modern crown, his stern, destructive law prevails; he's tearing all our idols down, disproving all our fav'rite tales. Is there a legend you hold dear, some legend of the long ago? King Skeptic hears it with a sneer, and digs up history to show that things of that sort never chanced, and never could, and never will. "We have," he says, "so much advanced, that fairy tales don't fill the bill. No faked-up tales of knightly acts, no Robin Hood romance for me; the only things worth while are Facts, Statistics, ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... Bullet-head at these scandalous insinuations, I shall not attempt to describe. On the eel-skinning principle, however, he did not seem to be so much incensed at the attack upon his integrity as one might have imagined. It was the sneer at his style that drove him to desperation. What!—he Touch-and-go Bullet-head!—not able to write a word without an O in it! He would soon let the jackanapes see that he was mistaken. Yes! he would let him see how much he was mistaken, the puppy! He, Touch-and-go Bullet-head, of Frogpondium, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Valorsay interrupted him with a contemptuous sneer. "Didn't you just tell me that we were living in an age when no one has any money except those who are in business? The richest of my friends have only enough for themselves, even if they have enough. The time of old stockings, stuffed full of ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... turn to the left. Must he go back the way he had come? Or could he cut across country to it? It was humiliating that he could not even follow a small river without losing the stream and himself. He could vision the cold sneer of Charlton when he failed to appear at the night rendezvous. Even his friends would ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... or simpers, will presently become familiar and grow into habit. A year will with certainty accomplish it. Your physiognomy has naturally much of benevolence, and it will cost you some labour (which you may well spare) to eradicate it. Avoid, for ever avoid, a smile or sneer of contempt; never even mimic them. A frown of sullenness or discontent is but one degree less hateful. You seem to require these things of me, or I should have thought them unnecessary. I see, with pleasure I see, that you have ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... experience in life has been a hardening process tending in the direction of a crystallized selfishness the rules of etiquette are regarded with contempt and alluded to with a sneer. No more disheartening problem faces the social reformer than the question how to overcome the bitter hostility to refined manners which marks the ignorant "lower classes." On the other hand, there is no more hopeful sign of progress in civilization than the gradual softening of these hard ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... Millreagh and Pickie openly sneer at Ballyards, and Greenry affects to be unaware of it, but the pride of Ballyards remains unaltered, incapable of being diminished, incapable even of being increased ... for pride cannot go to greater lengths than the pride of Ballyards has already gone ... ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... increasing by myriads again Till even in numbers old Europe may wane. How shall a son of the England they fought Fail to declare the full pride of his thought, Stand with the scoffers who, year after year, Bring the Republic their half-hidden sneer? Now, as in beauty she stands at our side, Who shall withhold the full gift of his pride? Not the great England who knows that her son, Washington, fought her, and Liberty won. England, whose names like the stars in their station, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... what to say of General Bud'e; except that his person is tall and showy, and his manners and appearance are fashionable. But he has a sneer in his smile that looks sarcastic, and a distance in his manner that ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... meditated with an irrelevance strange even to himself—and that reference to her surely was not needed! Yes, there was a smudge of smoke rising behind Twin-face; people should be more careful whore they dropped matches in an unseasonably hot spring like this—and Harrigan's sneer for the boy who had come, wonder-eyed, out of the wilderness and looked upon the picture-thing in kilted velvet which she had been was certainly squandered viciousness now. Past and present they ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... firmly set jaw. His voice as he spoke was low and soft; but at the end, with the concluding words, "I am innocent!" it flashed into strong masculinity. His eyes, shaded with long girlish black lashes, by chance met mine. "I am innocent." His curving sensuous lips drew down into a grim sneer.... ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... to his knees, but he could not make him pray. And Kedzie fell back from him. She was afraid to pose as a saint worthy of genuflection. Connery re-entered the conflict with a sneer: ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... he became hideous in my eyes. A bleached skull grinning over a tall collar could not have seemed more repulsive than the pink, healthy features of that young man with his single eye-glass and his sneer. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the above prayer, Mazin turning humbly towards his accursed betrayer, said in a supplicating tone, "What hast thou done, my father? didst thou not promise me enjoyment and pleasure?" The magician, after striking him, with a scowling and malignant sneer, exclaimed, "Thou dog! son of a dog! my pleasure is in thy destruction. Nine and thirty such ill-devoted wretches as thyself have I already sacrificed, and thou shalt make the fortieth victim to my enjoyment, unless thou wilt abjure thy faith, and become, like me, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... repeated Mac, with a sneer. "He is only worth a lovely wife and six children, with half a million to back them. And he only weighs two hundred pounds, with I forget how many inches of fat over the brisket. Poor, indeed! 'Tis pity you and I have not experienced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Giordano that decorated its ceilings. Afterwards, he fixed his attention on a building with red walls and a stone portal, which pretentiously obstructed the space in the foreground, at the edge of the green slope. Bah! The Academy! And the artist's sneer included in the same loathing the Academy of Language and the other Academies—painting, literature, every manifestation of human thought, dried, smoked, and swathed, with the immortality of a mummy, in the bandages of tradition, rules, and respect ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... compliments and questions had never elicited from the prudent Susie more than the safe statement that the handsome stranger was a friend of Aunt Abbie's, whom she had met at Jacksonville. They could not laugh at her: they could not sneer at gay deceivers and lovelorn damsels when she went to the sewing-circle. The bitterness of her tears was greatly sweetened by the consideration that in any case no one could pity her. She took such consolation from this thought that she faced her mother unflinchingly at ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... if you please." Julia chose a tulip, and Lizzie a rose. Kate was silent, and her father asked her—"Well Kate what shall I paint for you?" She hesitated, but finally said, "I would prefer a portrait of myself." "Very well Kate," said her father, but at the same time a sneer might have been seen on his curled lip. A few evenings after, when there was a large party in the parlor—the father gave each of the girls their Albums. Every one was pleased except Kate, who burst into tears, and tossing the book on the floor, left the room. The Album was picked ...
— The Girl's Cabinet of Instructive and Moral Stories • Uncle Philip
... says Our Missis with her spitefullest sneer, "give you a completer pictur of that despicable nation (after what I have related), than assuring you that they wouldn't bear our constitutional ways and noble independence at Mugby Junction for a single month, and that they would turn us ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... insult, indignity, outrage, discourtesy &c. 895; practical joking; scurrility, scoffing, sibilance, hissing, sibilation; irrision[obs3]; derision; mockery; irony &c. (ridicule) 856; sarcasm. hiss, hoot, boo, gibe, flout, jeer, scoff, gleek|, taunt, sneer, quip, fling, wipe, slap in the face. V. hold in disrespect &c. (despise) 930; misprize, disregard, slight, trifle with, set at naught, pass by, push aside, overlook, turn one's back upon, laugh in one's sleeve; be disrespectful ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... be d—d careful how you say it," was the reply, with a sneer that would have stung an abject slave into a longing for revenge, and that grated on Mr. Billings's nerves in a way that made him clinch his fists and involuntarily grit his teeth. Could it be that O'Grady detected it? One quick, wistful, half-appealing glance flashed from the Irishman's eyes ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... vagrant feet desire to tread With measur'd step and anxious care, The precincts pure of Portman square; While wit with elegance combin'd, And polish'd manners there you'll find; The taste correct—and fertile mind: Remember vigilance lurks near, And silence with unnotic'd sneer, Who watches but to tell again Your foibles with to-morrow's pen; Till titt'ring malice smiles to see Your ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... force against the bank, and of course its back was broken. Even in its death throes it recognised its master's voice, and turned round and licked his hand. We were all collected round, and let who will sneer, there were few dry eyes as we saw this last mute tribute of affection from ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... o' cauld parritch," replied Andrew, with a most supercilious sneer,—"gude aneueh for dogs, begging your honour's pardon—Ay! I might nae doubt hae heard the curate linking awa at it in his white sark yonder, and the musicians playing on whistles, mair like a penny-wedding ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Carlos, Myra, beg him to keep your secret, beg him to assert that the so-called marriage was a farce and a mockery," she announced suddenly, after a long pause. "He is a chivalrous gentleman, and I know he will lie if necessary, to save your honour.... Why do you sneer, child? ... Don't you realise that everything depends on Don Carlos, and ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... with a triumphant sneer. He turned to Tommy, who was standing near with half a dozen men who had just come out from breakfast. "Here you, Tommy, get a couple of teams ready and all the buffalo robes you need and be ready to start in an ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... treats of the exist- [1] ence of God, His essence, relations, and attributes. A sneer at metaphysics is a scoff at Deity; at His goodness, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... pausing to weigh his chances of staying alive he passed a man and a woman who relished Mike's company enough to make them eager to act ugly for a daily handout. They did not look up at Joe as he passed but the man's lips curled in a sneer and the woman whispered something that appeared to fan the flames of ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... a laughing devil in his sneer That woke emotions of both hate and fear; And where his scowl of fierceness darkly fell, Hope, withering, fled and mercy ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... Baudelaire hurried the course of the disease.[1] No longer is it the grand barbaric face of Gautier; now it is the clean shaven face of the mock priest, the slow, cold eyes and the sharp, cunning sneer of the cynical libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness of temptation. "Les Fleurs du Mal!" beautiful flowers, beautiful in sublime decay. What a great record is yours, and were Hell a reality how many souls would ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore |
