"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... receive the benefit of fresh air. Here he remains some twenty minutes, stretched upon two benches, and eyed sharply by the vote-cribber, who paces in a circle round him, regarding him with a half suspicious leer, and twice or thrice pausing to fan his face with the drab felt hat ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... win? Which of the gifts men prize? What can I have or hold of the bounteous boon I crave— I, with the coarse stubbed hands, the dull and narrow eyes, The low-browed leer of the brutal, base-born slave? What can I know of Love? I, with my ape-like face, Frighting the tender trust of the timorous, shrinking maid, Who, drawn by my deep soul's spell, half-yields to the soul's embrace ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... for, but the cunning rogue ducked his head just in time to escape punishment. The long lash passed over his body, and cracked like the report of a pistol; and while the officer was drawing back his arm for another attempt, the impudent, dirty face of the rogue was raised, and a leer of contemptuous ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... principal thoroughfare. The upper windows were much wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer. To-night nothing was visible but the outline of ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... the fugitive Jock Drones, whose mother feared for him. No other usefulness of purpose remained in his reach. If he stood up, now, before any congregation, the imps of Satan, the patrons of moonshiners, would leer up at him in his pulpit, reminding him that he, too, ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... letting fall some remark that jarred harshly with his romantic ideas of women,—something that seemed to insult the memories of a beloved mother and sister gone to the spirit-world. But he had never liked him less than at this moment; for the sly wink of his eye, and the expressive leer that accompanied his coarse words, were very disagreeable things to be associated with that charming vision of the circling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... sudden I became aware that St. Auban stood opposite to me, hand on hip, surveying me with a malicious leer. As our eyes met—"So, master meddler," quoth he mockingly, "you crow less lustily ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... reading aloud to about sixteen women prisoners, who were engaged in needle-work. They all rose on my entrance, curtsied respectfully, and then resumed their seats and employment. Instead of a scowl, leer, or ill-suppressed laugh, I observed upon their countenances an air of self-respect and gravity, a sort of consciousness of their improved character, and the altered position in which they are placed. I afterwards visited ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... at Richmond a smiling leer, one which had proved very successful at more than one metropolitan bar, where he had paved the way for its success with gifts of flowers and a cheap ring or two; but it was utterly lost here, ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... from the Captain, John, with a shameless leer, advanced, and stood passively upon the grating, while the bare-headed old quarter-master, with grey hair streaming in the wind, bound his feet to the cross-bars, and, stretching out his arms over his head, secured them to the hammock-nettings above. He then retreated ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the naval crew called his fellows, and they approached their white prisoners with ropes—vegetable vines. And with the leer of a devil, the officer leaned down and flung Barry over ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... log; but all night through his outraged brain has avenged itself by calling up crowds of hideous dreams. The blood-vessels of the eye are charged with bilious particles, and these intruding specks give rise to fearful, exaggerated images of things that never yet were seen on sea or land. Grim faces leer at the dreamer and make mock of him; frightful animals pass in procession before him; and hosts of incoherent words are jabbered in his ear by unholy voices. He wakes, limp, exhausted, trembling, nauseated, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... bouncing at this time. Nothing shocked her, nothing upset her. She was always ready with her hard, nurse's laugh and her nurse's quips. No one was better than she at double-entendres. No one could better give the nurse's leer. She had it all in a fortnight. And never once did she feel anything but exhilarated and in full swing. It seemed to her she had not a moment's time to brood or reflect about things—she was too much in the swing. Every moment, in the swing, living, or active in full swing. When she got into ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... perpetually on his countenance; he leaned his chin on a long, skinny hand, with nails of extraordinary length; and as he inclined his head to one side, and looked keenly out from beneath his ragged gray eyebrows, there was a strange, wild slyness in his leer, quite repulsive ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... conversation that I gathered, was night-watchman in the yards. He had one red-rimmed eye. The other was sightless but had a half-closed leer that seemed to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... head the fumes of the wine were rising once more, had already forgotten his son's advice and was eyeing a champagne-bottle with a tender leer as it stood, still nearly full, by the side of his plate. He dared not touch it for fear of being lectured again, and he was wondering by what device or trick he could possess himself of it without ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... acquainted with the mountains" turned up—as villainous-looking a person as I have ever set eyes on. He was sullen and furtive. I judged him at sight to be half Hindu, half Tibetan. He had a dark complexion, between brown and tawny; narrow slant eyes, very small and beady-black, with a cunning leer in their oblique corners; a flat nose much broadened at the wings; a cruel, thick, sensuous mouth, and high cheek-bones; the whole surmounted by a comprehensive scowl and an abundant crop of lank black hair, tied up in a knot ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... saved your life; but remember, I've not said I won't shoot him or your father, if chance throws them in my way," he added, looking back over his shoulder with a malicious leer, as he left the arbor, then disappearing from sight among the ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... Roman spoke loudly and stood waiting. Those others had heard the challenge and were now coming near. Antipater stood silent, glaring, as had the leopard, with an evil leer at his foe, and thinking no doubt of the warning of Augustus. The stiff, straight hairs in his mustache quivered as he turned slowly, watchfully, towards the others, who were now standing near. Since his funeral should ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... open, poor devil air, that was irresistible. It is true he did at first appear slightly confused; buttoned up his waistcoat a little higher and tucked in a stray frill of linen. But he recollected himself in an instant; gave a half swagger, half leer, as he stepped forth to receive us; drew a three-legged stool for Mr. Buckthorne; pointed me to a lumbering old damask chair that looked like a dethroned monarch in exile, and bade us welcome to ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... everybody and everything, especially the eider-down quilt, which rises in slow billows in front of my eyes and threatens to engulf me. When in a paroxysm of fury I suddenly cast it on the floor, it lies there still billowing, and seems to leer at me. There is something fat and sinister and German about that eiderdown. I never noticed it before. Two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... seemed to be laughing all the time—a fact that was afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson served his soda-water. In one hand he held an envelope and in the ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... of human vileness—but this that he was experiencing now stunned him. Was it possible that these were people of his own kind? Had a madness of some sort driven all human instincts from them? He saw Thompson's red eyes fastened upon him, and he turned his face to escape their questioning, stupid leer. The bearded man was turning out the can of beans he had won from Scotty. Beyond the bearded man the door creaked, and Roscoe heard the wail of the storm. It came to him now as a friendly sort ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... for deep draughts and long; the fair American spills her coffee and looks an exclamation; the Bishop pays for his daughter's tea, drops the change in the one chink which the buffet boards disclose, and thinks one; the travelled person, disdaining haste, smiles on all with a pitying leer; the foolish man, who has forgotten something, makes public his conviction that he will lose his train. The adamantine official alone is at his ease, and, as the minutes go, the knell of the train-loser sounds the deeper, the horrid jargon is ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... be to me, my lord, for having enabled him to establish the right," says Sampson, with a leer on ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all, he was continually dropping innuendoes, seemingly innocent enough, yet with a world of subtile meaning at their back, respecting Maggie. The leer and wink with which, when David came home from Kenmuir at nights, he would ask the simple question, "And was she kind, David—eh, eh?" made the boy's blood boil ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... in both hands, ready for instant action. John did the same, and with an ugly leer the Indian paused. His action had attracted attention, however, and at this critical juncture Capt. Pipe discovered the presence of the visitors, and called angrily to Buffalo ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... don't know much about lightin' a fire. Lemme show you. Let the White hunter learn the Injun somethin' about the woods," said he with a leer. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... praise, assent with civil leer, And, without seeming, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... written in bold but feminine characters, was without a signature; and when Fox had retired, with a cunning leer upon his sharp features, and Bruin was left alone to meditate upon the singularity of the adventure, that great beast lost himself in conjectures as to the writer, and figured to his imagination a creature very different, no ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... always know what they are doing," said the sham Belgian, with a cunning leer. "What would you have? A family, the father of which is a brigadier-general at the front; the eldest son also a captain at the front; and the young boy on the point of joining the Army. They were just the very people likely to talk, to ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... father, with a holy leer, Saw he might well be spared, and soon withdrew: This forced my servant to a quick retreat, For fear to be discovered.—Guess ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... followed by Loveday, leaving Aurelia standing in the middle of the hall, the old hag gazing on her with a malignant leer. "Ho! ho'! So that's the way! He has begun that work early, has he? What's your name, my lass? Oh, you need give yourself airs! I cry you mercy," and she ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... might find me employing, again solely for decorative purposes, the prints of Japan, the landscapes of the modern impressionists, the rugs of the East, or the blankets of the Arizona desert. Free me, then, from the reproach implied in that covert leer at my Early Sienese." Yes, we must, I think, exclude from the ranks of the true zealots all who in any plausible fashion utilise the objects of art they buy. Excess, the craving to possess what he apparently does not need, is the mark of your true collector. Now ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... sinner," he said, "like Jonah warned the sinners in Nineveh. I'm exhortin' him about the fall. Adam fell in the Garden of Eden." Then the leer came back into his face. "Ever hear of the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... To glory some advance a lying claim, Thieves of renown, and pilferers of fame: Their front supplies what their ambition lacks; They know a thousand lords, behind their backs. Cottil is apt to wink upon a peer, When turn'd away, with a familiar leer; And Harvey's eyes, unmercifully keen, Have murder'd fops, by whom she ne'er was seen. Niger adopts stray libels; wisely prone To covet shame still greater than his own. Bathyllus, in the winter of threescore, Belies ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... her for a moment. He became suddenly conscious of the fact that Colonel Grand was staring at him across the intervening space. Turning, he met the combined gaze of the three persons who formed the little group. There was a comprehensive leer on the face of ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... a leer and drove them before him back to the table. There was more scratching in his register. The two uncouth witnesses scrawled something for their names and ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... fleshless pate, Cursed with a ghastly grin to eyes unrubbed With love's magnetic ointment, seems to mine To smile an amiable smile like his Whose amiable smile I—I alone Am able to distinguish from his leer! See how the gathering coyotes flit Through the lit spaces, or with burning eyes Star the black shadows with a steadfast gaze! About my feet the poddy toads at play, Bulbously comfortable, try to hop, And tumble clumsily with all their warts; While pranking lizards, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... figure from an overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each other and jest ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... young man," said the jockey, or whatever he was, turning to me with an arch leer, "I suppose I may consider myself as the purchaser of this here animal, for the use and behoof of this young gentleman," making a sign with his head towards the tall young man by his side. "By no means," said I; "I am utterly unacquainted with either of you, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... me a curious leer. "No offence, you know, guv'nor," he said, "but I should wish for some evidence as to that afore I part with a vallyable dawg ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... and your Catelans? Do we, when the week's work of your humbler people is done, see the laughter in dancing eyes in the Rue Mouffetard or, in the revel of your Saturday night, do we see only the belladonna'd leer of the drabs in the Place Pigalle? Do we hear the romance of your concertinas setting thousands of hobnailed boots a-clatter with Terpsichore in the Boulevard de la Chapelle, in Polonceau and Myrrha, or do we hear only your union orchestra soughing through Mascagni in the Cafe ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... herself from her chair, and made towards him. Unhappily for her chance of reconciliation, she had that day quaffed more copiously of the bowl than usual; and the signs of intoxication visible in her uncertain gait, her meaningless eye, her vacant leer, her ruby cheek, all inspired Paul with feelings which at the moment converted resentment into something very much like aversion. He sprang from ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... face had worn an indescribable glow of feeling, which seemed to have come upon her from a higher and better world, and she had looked far more beautiful than now when she was fully dressed, and when her women crowded round leer—Zoe having laid aside the Plato—with loud ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sworn enemy to Napoleon, a fanatic partisan of the Bourbons; he is one of our men. I looked, at him. At every fresh epithet of the Minister the Abbe bowed his head down to his plate with a smile of cheerfulness and self-complacency, and with a sort of leer. I never saw a more ignoble countenance. Fouche explained to me, on leaving the breakfast table, in what manner all these valets of literature were men of his, and while I acknowledged to myself that the system might ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... judge in the council-chamber with a defiant leer on his face. If he went down into the depths he would drag with him the fairest treasure he had coveted in all his years of lust ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... might probably alter our estimates of a good many now well reputed people. It is perhaps enough to say that his letters contain many good traits as well as some bad ones; that his unlucky portrait, with its combination of leer and sneer, is probably responsible for much; and that the parts which, as we shall see further, he chose to play, of extravagant humorist and extravagant sentimentalist, not only almost necessitate attitudes which may easily become offensive in the playing, but are very likely, in practice, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... and Hawden looked at me with such a leer of triumph that my fingers tingled to smack his cars. Turning to my grandmother, I said ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... at the pictures in an uncomfortable manner. He spoke only once and that was about the mottled lady reaching over her shoulder and smiling. "Grinitch," says he with a knowing leer. But Vernabelle only says, yes, it was painted ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the door and a group of excited men burst into the room. They were shouting with laughter at a joke which made her blush, and one dragged a companion in by the arm. Another, breaking off from rude horse-play, came towards her with a drunken leer. She shrank from his hot face and wine-laden breath as she drew back, wondering how she could reach her father, who stood in the doorway trying to restrain his guests. Then a young man sprang forward, with disgust and anger in his brown face, and she felt that she was safe. He looked clean ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... companions, who were too proud to be protected by a woman. "Dahabo," however, relieved their anxiety by informing us that the Gerad had sent his eldest son Sherwa, as escort. This princess was a gipsy-looking dame, coarsely dressed, about thirty years old, with a gay leer, a jaunty demeanour, and the reputation of being "fast;" she showed little shame-facedness when I saluted her, and received with noisy joy the appropriate present of a new and handsome Tobe. About 4 P.M. returned our second messenger, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... continue to do so quite independently of him. But Peace would listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the picture. At times he had threatened her with a revolver. On one occasion when he was more ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... use no harsher term, are the result. Towards the close of the day, everything is in confusion—the door-bell is never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences of their friends, and stagger into the wrong house. Some fall early in the day, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... however, was Mac's leer, which, in a public hall, would have brought down the house, and which I feel unable ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... sprang to his feet; but the business was over in two twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forth with no daintiness upon the untidy, coloured cloth of the centre-table. He poured out a cup and took it to her. She received it with a coaxing leer in her eyes, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... a gentleman tries to be friendly, I meets him half-way. But that fellow," and he shook a remonstrating finger at the door of the lodging-house, "thinks himself better'n other people. And mind you," with a leer, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... my foaming flagon There crawls on countless legs A lazy grinning dragon That wallows in the dregs; Of old I saw him nightly Look up with friendly leer, As if to hint politely, "I share ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... and caress her, or do anything in the world but stand by and see Josiah fussing and accompanying her to the stairs and on to her room. She hardly said the word good-night to him, and her very lips were white. Wensleydown's face, as he stood with Mildred, drove him mad with its mocking leer, and if he had heard their conversation there might ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... peculiar harshness had crept into the other's voice. He glanced sharply at the old man's face. For the first time he noticed something sinister—yes, evil—in the leathery countenance; a stealthiness in the hard smile that seemed to transform it at once into a pronounced leer. Like a flash there darted into the American's active brain a conviction that there could be no common relationship between this flinty old man and the delicate, refined girl he had seen in the shop. Now he recalled the fact that her dark eyes had a look of sadness and ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... indebted to Dr. Alphonse Mingana for this information. But the philological question is discussed in a learned memoir by the late Professor P. J. Veth, "De Leer der Signatuur," Internationales Archiv fuer Ethnographie, Leiden, Bd. VII, 1894, pp. 75 and 105, and especially the appendix, p. 199 et seq., "De Mandragora, Naschrift op het tweede Hoofdstuk der Verhandeling over ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: the Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. "Ah, master," says the gipsy, "that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing—" The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the money with her ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... look out of the corners of one's eyes, to leer, to look askance. The cull cutty-eyed at us; the fellow ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... traditions, have sought and are seeking milder means of mitigating our bodily ills. All honor to them. They have driven away the old doctor of our childhood, whose most pleasant smile resembled the amiable leer that a cannibal might be supposed to bestow upon a plump missionary. The old curmudgeon, with his huge bottles of mixtures and his immense boulders—I beg pardon, I should say, boluses of nastiness—has vanished like a surly ghost at the approach of daylight, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... we'll blow him up between us. There's my fist on it. See you soon," and, with a lurching step and a leer over his shoulder, he ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... said, "with you to wend, My brethren all in-fere: My purpose was to have dined to-day At Blyth or Doncaster." Forth then went that gentle Knight, With a careful cheer; The tears out of his eyen ran, And fell down by his leer. They brought him unto the lodge door: When ROBIN 'gan him see, Full courteously did off his hood, And set him on his knee. "Welcome, Sir Knight!" then said ROBIN, "Welcome thou art to me; I have abide you fasting, Sir, All these hours three!" Then answered ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted the strength ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... assumed an actual corporeal shape. In the uncertain light shed by the lantern, I seemed to see the face of this embodied curse with an ever-changing mockery of expression; at one moment wearing the features of my father; at another those of Tom Wynne; at another the leer of the old woman I had ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... and Noll paused by the door, while Tip, with a confident leer on his face, strode ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... said the obese Turk with a graceful wave of the hand in my direction, "and not you, who has robbed my home of its treasure, unless," he added, and I shall always remember the hideous leer of that pulpy-nosed and small-pox pitted face, "unless Monsieur has relieved you ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... start, and said nothing. Skinner bowed low with a mixture of his old cringing way, and a certain sly triumphant leer, so that his body seemed to say one thing, and his face the opposite. Mr. Hardie eyed him, and saw that his coat was rusty, and his hat napless: then Mr. Hardie smelt a beggar, and prepared to parry all attempts upon ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and then threatened us with the rod. We did not think she would make use of it. Mary grew impertinent, and one afternoon turned sulky over her lessons, and set our teacher at defiance. Miss Evelyn, who had been growing more and more angry, had her rise from her seat. She obeyed with an impudent leer. Seizing her by the arm, Miss Evelyn dragged the struggling girl to the horse. My sister was strong and fought hard, using both teeth and nails, but it was to no purpose. The anger of our governess was fully roused, and raising her in her arms, she carried her forcibly to the ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... his acquaintance, and overlook men of merit in distress; and the little silly, pretty Phillida, or Foolida, to stare at the strange creatures round her. It is this temper which constitutes the supercilious eye, the reserved look, the distant bowe, the scornful leer, the affected astonishment, the loud whisper, ending in a laugh directed full in the teeth of another. Hence spring, in short, those numberless offences given too frequently, in public and private ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the tobacco over his tongue, and his eyes twinkled with a sort of leer, which indicated that the fellow was not without some humour. He submitted patiently to the rebuke, however, making no remonstrance against ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better away, a latent corruption,—a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours,—but not all. The foul satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon." Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I will then let my reader go to the volume and ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... converse, and live with ease: Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne. View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame, or to commend, A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend; Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging, that ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... leave of the group that accompanies them. In the meantime, the coachman has a world of small commissions to execute. Sometimes he delivers a hare or pheasant; sometimes jerks a small parcel or newspaper to the door of a public-house; and sometimes, with knowing leer and words of sly import, hands to some half-blushing, half-laughing housemaid an odd-shaped billet-doux from some rustic admirer. As the coach rattles through the village, every one runs to the window, and you have glances on every side of fresh country faces, and blooming giggling girls. ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... keep a store in the bush, ef you be a smart man,' observed Zack, with a leer, after a few minutes' devotion to the contents of his tin plate. By this adjective 'smart' is to be understood 'sharp, overreaching'—in fact, a cleverness verging upon safe dishonesty. 'I guess it's the high road to bein' worth some punkins, ef a feller ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... fellow, with a sly leer, "arter that theer kidnappin'—an' me 'avin' laid out Sir Jarsper Trent, in Wych Street, accordin' to your orders, my lord, the Prince give me word to 'clear out'—cut an' run for it, till it blow'd over; an' I thought, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... him with an appraising leer. "Don't have to say so," he drawled, "if you ain't, what have you-alls got them dinky little canoes for, an' if you were after 'gators you'd be packing big rifles 'stead of them fancy guns. You ain't got no ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... drew back for another blow at the exposed face. The Major, faint with the terror of his helplessness and the crushing weight of the quivering masses of muscle about him, would have fallen but for their dread support. His consciousness fast deserting him, fascinated, he watched the monstrous leer as the head drew farther back, poised. He felt the agonizing pressure as the great muscles steeled for the blow, and in the moment before his senses departed, heard two crashing shots that sounded ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... will wish to interrupt you," returned the soldier, with a waggish leer of his eye; "but, should they be so disposed, I have no power to stop them, if they be of the prisoner's friends. I have my orders, and must mind them, whether the Englishman goes to heaven, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Deputy, with a shrewd leer of recognition, and smoking an imaginary pipe, with his head very much on one side and his eyes very much out of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... and the name stuck. When they were at odds, as they usually were, they shouted "Barney Bluebeard!" after him, and ran away and hid in trembling delight as he shook his key-ring at them, and showed his teeth with the evil leer which he reserved specially for them. It was reported in the alley that he was a woman-hater; hence the name. Certain it is that he never would let one of the detested sex cross the threshold of his attic room on any ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... not be more safe with thy confessor. Diamine! I am not a man to gad about among the water-sellers, with a secret at the top of my voice; but thou didst leer aside when I winked at thee dancing among the masquers on the quay. Is it ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Leporello to hold the ladder. Tom Tufthunt was quite happy to act as friend to the elderly viscount, and to carve the fowl, and to make the salad at supper. When Pen and his young lady met the viscount's party, that noble peer only gave Arthur a passing leer of recognition as his lordship's eyes passed from Pen's face under the bonnet of Pen's companion. But Tom Tufthunt wagged his head very good-naturedly at Mr. Arthur, and said, "How are you, old boy?" and looked extremely knowing at the god-father ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... A contemptuous leer was on his thick-lipped face as he looked at Miki. He turned, and to the group of dark-faced Indians and breeds about him he said something that ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... stranger, twirled in his hand a perfectly round old hat without any vestige of a brim, and resting himself now on one leg and now on the other and changing them constantly, stood in the doorway, looking into the parlour with the most extraordinary leer I ever beheld. I entertained a grateful feeling towards the boy from that minute, for I felt that he was the comedy of the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... tenement, and, naturally enough then, was beginning his investigation with the ground floor room. And yet, why then had the Wolf, deliberately in that case, sent his pack off on a false scent? In the mirror he could see that huge jaw outthrust, the black eyes narrowed, an ugly leer on the working face—and a revolver in the Wolf's hand that held a bead ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... oracle. After two hours' dodging and maneuvering the fox came out at the very end of Bellman's Coppice, with nothing near him but Richard Bassett. Pug gave him the white of his eye in an ugly leer, and headed straight as a crow for ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... suggested with a leer. "Here is an address. Send a messenger boy whenever you like. Every one thinks ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... doctor," sayth she, with an unpleasant leer, "that hath given that at first. In time he gets his hand in; and I've had a plenty o' practice—thanks to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... goes out under this regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather late at night with a curious tendency to say the same thing twice and ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the performance. Another painting showed a poor wretch being knouted to death in the market-place of a Russian town, and yet another showed a young and beautiful woman in a prison cell with her face distorted by the horrible leer of madness, and her little white hands clawing nervously at her long ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... reality his long ears were stretched for sounds coming through the little door. Having satisfied himself that the Deaves' were good for several minutes in there, he came towards Evan with an ingratiating leer. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... with less brain, and her character is a study in practical psychology. Somerville, the villain of the piece, who unites the disposition of Domitian to the manners of Chesterfield, is the pitiless master of this female slave. The coquettish Mrs. Van Leer is a prominent personage of the story; and her shallow malice and pretty deviltries are most effectively represented. She is not only a flirt in outward actions, but a flirt in soul, and her perfection in impertinence almost rises to genius. All these characters betray patient meditation, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... pondered. "No, sir," he replied, allowing himself a prideful leer; "if I do say it as shouldn't, I'm ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... paralyzed his senses. He had looked into her bloodshot eyes, noted the hard lines drawn around the corners of her mouth, the coarse, painted lips, dry hair, and sunken cheeks. He had heard her harsh laugh and caught the glint of her drunken leer. A cold shiver swept through him. It was as if he had stepped on a flat stone covering a grave which had tilted beneath his feet, revealing a corpse but a few months buried. Had he been anywhere else he would have sunk to the floor—not to pray, ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... thy fere, * O shining like full moon when clearest clear! All beauty dost embrace, all eloquence; * Brighter than aught within our worldly sphere: Content am I my torturer thou be: * Haply shalt alms me with one lovely leer! Happy her death who dieth for thy love! * No good in her who ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... a preface to what is to come," said Robert Lefroy, with an impudent leer upon his face. "The questions, no doubt, are disagreeable enough. She ain't your wife no more than she's mine. You've no business with her; and that you knew when you took her away from St. Louis. You may, or you mayn't, have been fooled by some ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... I sat (and miserably enough) staring down at my jewelled buttons that seemed to leer up at me like so many small, malevolent eyes, upon the air rose a distant stir that grew and grew to sound of voices with the creak and rumble ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... shouted, When I saw his hateful leer; 'Tell me what this means, Jim Johnson. Where is Billy? Ain't he here?' He was standing on the doorstep, And the light that shone within Seemed to twist his wrinkled features In a sort of wonder-grin. 'Well! well! Nancy! sure's I'm ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... among the prodigious quantity of such relics, collected from all parts of the island, in the Royal Museum at Cagliari, a statuette of this idol, supposed to have been a household god. Its features are appalling: great goggle eyes leer fiercely from their hollow sockets; the broad nostrils seem ready to sniff the fumes of the horrid sacrifice; a wide gaping mouth grins with rabid fury at the supposed victim; dark plumes spring from the forehead, like horns, and expanded wings from each shoulder and knee. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... woman," she answered, with a devilish leer. "You hate me, and you are afraid of me without any reason. If not, tell me, good sir, why you were so frightened the first time ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... Abschied nahm, als ich Abschied nahm, Waren Kisten und Kasten schwer; 10 Als ich wieder kam, als ich wieder kam, War alles leer." ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... story without getting sight of the madman. Finally he reached the roof. It was waving like swells on a lake before a breeze. He caught sight of the Mad Musician standing on the street wall, thirty stories from the street, a leer on his devilish ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... will lead you into a chamber; and suppose there be a bed in it, as, ifack, I know not, but you'll forgive me if there be—away, away, you naughty hildings; get you together, get you together. Ah you wags, do you leer indeed at one another! do the neyes twinkle at him! get you together, get you together. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... avenging himself for his incapacity on those whose competency makes him sensible of his incompetence; he denounces them as Moderates, and, at last, succeeds in having a warrant of arrest issued against his four chief clerks; on the morning of Thermidor 9, with a wicked leer, he himself carries the news to one of them, M. Miot. Unfortunately for him, after Thermidor, he is turned out and M. Miot is put in his place. With diplomatic politeness, the latter calls on his predecessor and "expresses to him the usual compliments." Buchot, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... people pay To see him in his panoply appear; To see him pad his paunch with dainty cheer, Puff his perfecto, swill champagne, and sway Just like a gentleman, yet all in play, Then bow himself off stage with brutish leer. ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... sprawled back in his chair, a cunning leer on his vicious face, a gleam of triumph, greed, in the beady, ratlike eyes that never wavered from the other. Burton, moisture oozing from his forehead, stood there, hesitant, staring back at old Isaac, half in a fascinated ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... glowing, girlish face came as a revelation to the three sports. She had been hidden behind so much glass and leather that the transformation was startling. The horsy gentlemen uttered murmurs of surprise and gratification. One of them sidled up to her with a leer. ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... port: it was as useless for the local pilot to look grave and recall dire happenings to Captains who had elected to effect their repairs in the outer harbour—just here, at Port William. Old Jock's square jaw was set firm, his eyes were narrowed to a crafty leer; he looked on everyone with unconcealed suspicion and distrust. He was a shipmaster of the old school, 'looking after his Owners' interest.' He had put in 'in distress' to effect repairs.... He was being called upon ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... face of Love should turn out to be nothing but a mask hiding the gross and brutal leer of Lust, what then? She saw that other man's dreadful face, painted in hot and living colours upon the darkness. She writhed as if to tear her lips from the savage, furious mouth. She shuddered and grew cold there in the sultry heat. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... her hypersensitive nerves could almost have called his smile a leer; but she looked at the man's broad face, whose lines told of no resources of thought, no great natural capacity for heroism, and yet were furrowed by the sharpness of this persecution. The face would have been fat had it not been half-starved. It was pale now ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Spaulding walked through his outer office. He stopped at the desk where the pretty brunette WAC sergeant was typing industriously, leaned across the desk, and gave her his best leer. "How about a date tonight, music lover?" he asked, "'Das Rheingold' is playing tonight. A night at the opera would ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... progression, until the individual stood revealed. He was a stoutly-built sea-faring man, dressed in a pea jacket and blue trousers and holding his tarpaulin hat in his hand. With a rough scrape and a most unpleasant leer he advanced towards the merchant, a tattoed and hairy hand outstretched in sign ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering;—and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, to join ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... will the United States consent to go without its share of the swag. It is delicious. The biggest and proudest government on earth turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and robbing the infant all alone by itself! Dear sir, this is not any more respectable than for a father to collect ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it takes a clever beast like Crawley to show you beauty in anything so absolutely repulsive as that woman's face. Look at it! He's got hold of something. He's caught the lurking fascination, the—the leer of life." ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... earnestly, thinking of nothing but the human life that hung in the balance, I failed to observe the presence of the most disagreeable of the female nurses, who was standing, with "arms akimbo," looking on, until, with an insulting leer, she remarked, "It seems to me ye're taking great liberties for an honest woman." Paralyzed with surprise and indignation, I knew not how to act. Just then the surgeon in charge of the ward, who ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... it does now, of an overdoing of the outward demonstrations of modesty; a 'leer' was once a look with nothing amiss in it (Piers Plowman). 'Daft' was modest or retiring; 'orgies' were religious ceremonies; the Blessed Virgin speaks of herself in an early poem as 'God's wench.' In 'crafty' and 'cunning' no crooked wisdom was implied, but ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... leer of the gipsy's eye made him think of the lying magpie. So he left her, and hastened on, and, behold! there stood before him the village maypole, bedecked with roses and ribbons, and a living garland of youths and fair ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... was going to shut the door, when the drunken old man turned round once more, and inquired with a cunning leer, "So you expect some one, my child? Whom do you expect, little Itzig? Is it ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... things, Most terrible to see. Around, around, they waltzed and wound; Some wheeled in smirking pairs: With the mincing step of demirep Some sidled up the stairs: And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer, Each ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... quarters till sometimes Stella's cheeks blanched and she expected murder to be done. Twice the Chickamin came back from Roaring Springs with whisky aboard, and a protracted debauch ensued. Once a drunken logger shouldered his way into the kitchen to leer unpleasantly at Stella, and, himself inflamed by liquor and the affront, Charlie Benton beat the man until his face was a mass of bloody bruises. That was only one of a dozen brutal incidents. All the routine discipline of the woods ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... black as sloes? See here a shocking awkward creature, That speaks a fool in every feature.' 'The woman's blind,' the mother cries; 'I see wit sparkle in his eyes.' 20 'Lord! madam, what a squinting leer; No doubt the fairy hath been here.' Just as she spoke, a pigmy sprite Pops through the key-hole, swift as light; Perched on the cradle's top he stands, And thus her folly reprimands: 'Whence sprung the vain ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... near the architect hurried to the rendezvous, where he found the Devil waiting impatiently. But a leer soon spread over his visage, and he was evidently overjoyed at the prospect of wrecking a soul. He quickly produced a weird document, commanding his victim to affix his signature at a certain place. "But the beautiful plan," whispered the young man; "I must see it first; I must be assured ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... heel, with military precision. Then he chuckled Dolores under the chin with a leer, to have his hand indignantly pushed aside. As the girl glared at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes, he stalked into the taproom, ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... But after I had crossed I continued to hate that gap. I hated it as I drove back to the hotel, that afternoon, as I ate dinner that night, as I went to bed, and in my dreams I continued to cross it, and to see the river waiting for me, seeming to look up and leer and beckon. I woke up hating the gap in the bridge as much as ever; I hated it down into the State of Mississippi, and over into Georgia; and wherever I have gone since, I have continued to hate it. Of course there isn't any gap there now. It was covered long ago. Yet for me it still exists, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... heavens answered again and drowned her supplication. One man screamed—a shrill, high neigh like that of a hurt horse. Janice caught a momentary glimpse of the pallid face of Joe Bodley shrinking below the edge of the counter. There was no leer upon his fat face now; ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... were ready did Bucky utter a word. The terrific beating he had received had stunned him for a few minutes; but now he jumped to his feet, not waiting for the command from Walker, and strode up close to Billy. There was a vengeful leer on his bloody face and his eyes blazed almost white, but his voice was so low that Conway and Walker could only hear the murmur of it. His words were meant ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... cool, fragrant darkness of the inner court, but instead there arose before his mental eyes the vision of a petrified wooden cross beside a glassy pool, and mingled incongruously with it, the face of Starr Wiley, distorted as he had last seen it, with the bruised lips twisted into a mocking leer. Would the lightly expressed wish of Gentleman Geoff's Billie prove a presage of victory in the great game they two ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... cloud to cloud along her beat, Leering her battered and inveterate leer, She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, Her horrible old man, Mumbling old oaths and warming His villainous old bones with villainous talk— The secrets of their grisly housekeeping Since they went out upon the pad In the first twilight of self-conscious ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... is an insult; but I don't want to quarrel with him if I can help it, and therefore I softened it down. "You hear me say, Mr. Moss, that I'm an engaged young woman. Knowing that, you oughtn't to speak to me as you do." "Why, what do I say?" You should have seen his grin as he asked me; such a leer of triumph, as though he knew that he were getting the better of me. "Mr. Jones wouldn't approve if he were to see it." "But luckily he don't," said my admirer. Oh, if you knew how willingly I'd stand at a tub and wash your shirts, while the very touch of his gloves ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... aloud, 'Madame, Madame!' and he whistled through his fingers, and shouted, 'Madame, Madame,' and added, 'She's as deaf as a tombstone, or she'll hear that. Gi'e her my compliments, and say I said you're a beauty, Miss;' and with a laugh and a leer ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... industry." Her work was in the finishing room where a number of girls were crowded at machines and tables, filing, clipping, and packing bottles. Her task was to take the screw-neck bottles that came from the leer, and chip and file their jagged necks and shoulders until all the roughness was removed. It was dirty work, and dangerous for unskilled hands, and she found it difficult ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... eat escribir[20], to write estudiar, to study exportar, to export extranjero, foreigner ferreteria, ironware grande (pl. grandes), large hijo, son hija, daughter italiano, Italian jardinero, gardener leer, to read manana, morning, to-morrow manzana, apple maquina, machine mesa, table mi, my mucho (m.), much mucha (f.), much muy, very pera, pear pero, but pobre, poor ?que? what? que, that, who, which ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... some Spanish don to make him discover his treasure,—a detail given with a minuteness that made every rich old burgher present turn uncomfortably in his chair. All this would be told with infinite glee, as if he considered it an excellent joke, and then he would give such a tyrannical leer in the face of his next neighbor that the poor man would be fain to laugh out of sheer faint-heartedness. If anyone, however, pretended to contradict him in any of his stories, he was on fire in an instant. His very cocked hat assumed a momentary fierceness, and seemed ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Sybarite climbed back on his stool, while George sat down at his desk, lighted a Sweet Caporal (it was after three o'clock and both the partners were gone for the day) and with a leer watched the bookkeeper carefully slit the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... equal courtesy. The old critic Zabastes, squeezing his lean, bent body from out the throng, hobbled after Sah-luma at some little distance behind the harp-bearer, muttering to himself as he went, and bestowing many a side-leer and malicious grin on those among his acquaintance whom he here and there recognized. Theos noted his behavior with a vague sense of amusement,—the man took such evident delight in his own ill- humor, and seemed to be so thoroughly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Indian. When this visitor was about every one took extra care whilst bathing. I used to imitate the natives in not advancing far from the bank, and in keeping my eye fixed on that of the monster, which stares with a disgusting leer along the surface of the water; the body being submerged to the level of the eyes, and the top of the head, with part of the dorsal crest the only portions visible. When a little motion was perceived in the water behind the reptile's tail, bathers were obliged ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... so long with her eyes wide open, that at length Little Dorrit, to entice her from her box, rose and looked out of window. As she glanced down into the yard, she saw Pancks come in and leer up with the corner of his eye as he ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a led horse; ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... scythe in front of a Moorish palace; the hideous, hairy, red-eyed jacks-in-boxes; the flies in the Noah's arks, that "an't on that scale neither as compared with elephants;" the giant masks, having a certain furtive leer, "safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentlemen between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer vacation," were all of them like dreams of the Danish poet, coloured into a semblance of life by the grotesque humour of the English Novelist. But dear ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... full of clotting blood and broken teeth, lay open; the eye, close by whose lid the fatal wound had been inflicted, was not, as might have been expected, bathed in blood, but had started forth nearly from the socket, and gave to the face, by its fearful unlikeness to the other glazing orb, a leer more hideous and unearthly than fancy ever saw. The wig, with all its rich curls, had fallen with the hat to the floor, leaving the shorn head exposed, and in many places marked by the recent struggle; the rich lace cravat was drenched in blood, and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu |
