"Gibe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lucky), and an assortment of charity circulars, money-lenders' circulars, and bucket-shop lures. His mother's great sprawling letter had pleased him better than any save one. The exception was his stepfather's. Edwin Clayhanger, duly passing on to the next generation the benevolent Midland gibe which ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... actor once smilingly told me "I was a crank about my American public." I took his little gibe in good part; for while he knew foreign audiences, he certainly did not know American ones as well as I, who have faced them from ocean to ocean, from British Columbia to Florida. Two characteristics they ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... your worship had passed out of the wood and we were alone, he tied me up again to the same oak and gave me a fresh flogging, that left me like a flayed Saint Bartholomew; and every stroke he gave me he followed up with some jest or gibe about having made a fool of your worship, and but for the pain I was suffering I should have laughed at the things he said. In short he left me in such a condition that I have been until now in a hospital getting cured of the injuries which that rascally clown ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... saying yesterday—" and Duke repeated a bit of gossip that had a gibe at the Lorrigans for its point. "He got it over to Hitchcocks. It come from the Douglases. I guess Mary Hope don't want nothing of us—except what she can get out of us. We been a good thing, all ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... it, And moved away, and left me, statue-like, In act to render thanks. I, that whole day, Saw her no more, altho' I linger'd there Till every daisy slept, and Love's white star Beam'd thro' the thicken'd cedar in the dusk. So home we went, and all the livelong way With solemn gibe did Eustace banter me. "Now," said he, "will you climb the top of Art; You cannot fail but work in hues to dim The Titianic Flora. Will you match My Juliet? you, not you,—the Master, Love, A more ideal ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... purty fix, now ain't it?" thought the victim of her embrace, casting a wary eye up and down the Lane, lest any mate should see and gibe at him, and call him a "softy." Besides, for Glory to become sentimental—if this was sentiment—was as novel as for him to be generous. So, to relieve the situation, the newsboy put these two new things together and wrenched himself free, saying, ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... of quick life crops out In watchful mutual mockery. Gibe and flout In low asides flow freely. Oh, bland elysium for the brave and fair, Whose pleasures are the snigger and the stare, Chill snub, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... Marie. She could telephone Marie. But Marie could not very well come just now, she knew; and then, too, there was Cyril to be taken into consideration. How Cyril would gibe at the wife who had to call in all the neighbors just because her husband was bringing home a friend to dinner! How he would—Well, he shouldn't! He should not have ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... that hoose," Brodie burst out, ignoring the baker's gibe. "Dod, there's a chance, sirs. I wonder it never ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... "is it you who fling such a taunt to shame your own kin? If there is aught of impropriety in what this man Sir John has done, is it not our affair with him in place of a silly gibe at Dorothy?" ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... something queer about her," declared Mr. Blackmore. "I do know how to handle a boat despite my friend's gibe, and there was no reason why she should have upset like that. That Ford ought to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the Vanir applauded Thor as he stepped out of old AEgir's hall. But Loki, mischievous Loki, threw a gibe after him. "Do not let the hammer out of your hands this time, bride of Thrym," ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... dialectic in the household. Nothing could be more destructive of the gracious composure and mental harmony, of which household life ought to be, but perhaps seldom is, the great organ and instrument. Still less are we pleading for the freethinker's right at every hour of day or night to mock, sneer, and gibe at the sincere beliefs and conscientiously performed rites of those, whether men or women, whether strangers or kinsfolk, from whose religion he disagrees. 'It is not ancient impressions only,' said Pascal, 'which are capable of abusing us. The charm of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... and mocking tone of these letters, the constant comparison between the two peoples, with many a gibe at the English, but always turning to their advantage, the preference given to the philosophical system of Newton over that of Descartes, lastly the attacks upon religion concealed beneath the cloak of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... archbishop; "let not the gibe and jest go round; there be matters of graver import that should occupy us this night. To-morrow, let the elements be propitious, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... calls not to me, "Here, but for fate, were thou and she—" Its gibe for once is checked. To-night Silence is queen in grief's despite, And even the longing of my soul Is silent 'neath ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... you say so," said my uncle. "One has to come into the country to hear honest loyalty, for a sneer and a gibe are more the fashions in town. The King is grateful to me for the interest which I have ever shown in his son. He likes to think that the Prince has a man of ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... experience. It goes no further in the absence of proof that the sons-in-law kept the pledge imposed upon them as suitors, or that in keeping it, they did not cause their respective wives to wish themselves dead, and out of the way of gibe and grudge, every time the prescribed tax was doled out ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Pao-y was in Tai y's apartments relating about the rat-elves, when Pao-ch'ai entered unannounced, and began to gibe Pao-y, with trenchant irony: how that on the fifteenth of the first moon, he had shown ignorance of the allusion to the green wax; and the three of them then indulged in that room in mutual poignant ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... reached for his pipe, but he did not fill it: only sat holding it, passing his thumb back and forth over the bowl. He was determining to be temperate, to be fair. Dick could not forget he was old, but he must force himself not to gibe at Dick ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... that have stayed at thy knees, Mother, go call them in— We that were bred overseas wait and would speak with our kin. Not in the dark do we fight—haggle and flout and gibe; Selling our love for a price, loaning our hearts for a bribe. Gifts have we only to-day—Love without promise or fee— Hear, for thy children speak, from the uttermost parts ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... passage is interesting as a sidelight on the joint family system. It concludes by advising the girl, if she cannot detach her husband from his family, to poison him and return as a widow. This last counsel is a gibe at the custom which the caste have of taking large sums of money for a widow on her second marriage. As such a woman is usually adult, and able at once to perform the duties of a wife and to work in the fields, she is highly valued, and her price ranges from Rs. 25 to Rs. 1000. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... go to the Opera, his general faculty of enjoyment was unimpaired, and, as always, he loved a gibe at the clergy. On the 30th of November 1841, Samuel Wilberforce wrote to a friend about George Augustus Selwyn,[140] ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... this gibe, but before he could set his retort in order Tom had turned to Wilson, and was saying, with placid indifference of manner ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the speaker to her husband. But Frederick had again put on his mask of apathetic indifference and answered his wife's gibe only by a shrug of his shoulders. Noting her brother's scowling face, she ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... that they might look for trouble with him, as he seemed ein wilder Kamerad. They were mistaken, and Goethe was to prove one of Stilling's warmest friends. Stilling himself relates how, when one at the table directed a gibe at him, it was Goethe who rebuked the railer. When Stilling was in despair at the news of the illness of his betrothed, it was to Goethe he flew for comfort, and he found him a friend in need. At a later date Goethe published Stilling's Autobiography ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... English, French, and Gascon fine And Angevine; Clinks with neighbor and with guest, Empties casks with gibe and jest— The year's for rest! God sends to men the joy of earth Who broach good ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... advantage inadvertently given him. The noise of the conflict filled the court house and drowned the uproar on Broadway. Nightly and each morning the daily press gave columns to the proceedings. Every time the judge coughed the important fact was given due prominence. And every gibe of counsel carried behind it its insignia of recognition—"[Laughter]" It was one of those first great battles in which the professional value of compressed air as an explosive force and small pica type as projectiles was demonstrated. It was a combat ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... began his famous American address on Numbers by quoting Dr. Johnson's saying, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." We must admit that to certain forms of it the gibe is pertinent. But in its essence, patriotism is that most useful of human possessions, an emotion that turns a duty into a joy. It is necessary for men, however burdensome they may find the obligation, to be loyal to the interests of the State of which they are members. But ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... nor their verse had anything in common with the living language and the genius of the people. Their prose was an artificial language, the language of a polite chronicle with the best, that of a vulgar feuilletonist with the worst. Their poetry justified Goethe's gibe: ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... The Yankee gibe and sneer, Till Yankee insolence and pride Know neither shame nor fear; But ready now with shot and steel Their brazen front to mar, We hoist aloft the Bonnie Blue Flag ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... black trousers;—he held in his hand five shillings which had been thrust into his hand when the prison gates had opened to him that morning. He had taken the money and swaggered out with a parting gibe at the constable who closed ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... is open spoken, and no respecter of persons; and a woman may forgive an injury, but never a scornful gibe. It is this that has brought both France and Russia on him. Madame Pompadour, who is all powerful, hates Frederick for having made disrespectful remarks concerning her. The Empress of Russia detests him, for the same reason. She of Austria has a ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... say, "is life; we have seen and see, And with a living pleasure we describe; And fits of sprightly malice do but bribe The languid mind into activity. Sound sense, and love itself, and mirth and glee, Are foster'd by the comment and the gibe." 20 Even be it so: yet still among your tribe, Our daily world's true Worldlings, rank not me! Children are blest, and powerful; their world lies More justly balanced; partly at their feet, And part far from them:—sweetest melodies Are those that are by distance made more sweet; Whose mind ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... into the dark indifferently, as if the heresies which the old man hurled at him were some old worn-out song. Seeing, however, that the schoolmaster's flush of enthusiasm seemed on the point of dying out, he roused himself to gibe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... beyond his control; we all liked him. But now, since Butler's arrival, I believe I am as frantic in secret as the others are openly. I know that war sanctions many hard things, and that both sides practice them; but now we are so completely lost in Louisiana, is it fair to gibe and taunt us with our humiliation? I could stand anything save the cowardly ridicule and triumph of their papers. Honestly, I believe if all vile abusive papers on both sides were suppressed, and some of the fire-eating editors who make a living by lying were soundly cowhided or had their ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... the children of the century of Voltaire. Condorcet, the youngest of the intimates and disciples of Voltaire, of D'Alembert, of Turgot, was the first to sound bitter warning that Robespierre was at heart a priest. The suggestion was more than a gibe. Robespierre had the typic sacerdotal temperament, its sense of personal importance, its thin unction, its private leanings to the stake and the cord; and he had one of those deplorable natures that seem as if they had never in their lives ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... surroundings into account, and allowed nothing for his originality of character. One of these critics heard at Washington that Mr. Lincoln, in speaking at different times of some move or thing, said "it had petered out;" that some other one's plan "wouldn't gibe;" and being asked if the War and the cause of the Union were not a great ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... you one. You won't let me convert you, I know; you always used to gibe and jeer at my ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... stroll up, and from a couple of paces away would stand, legs wide apart and hands clasped behind his back, surveying the results of his devilry with the greatest self-satisfaction. As the prisoner groaned and moaned he would fling coarse joke, badinage, and gibe at the helpless wretch, and when the latter struggled and writhed in order to seek some relief, though in vain, he would laugh uproariously, urge the unhappy man to kick more energetically, and then shriek with delight as his advice was apparently taken to heart ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... And in the dusk, as they sauntered over the old bridge, she flung out gibe after gibe at her lover. Her cheeks grew hotter and hotter; it was like tearing her own flesh. The shame of it! The rapture of it! It hurt her so that the tears stood in her eyes; so she did it again, and yet again. "I don't pretend to live ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... humor; the free baron had ordered every one searched. They would have robbed and stripped me, despite the color of my coat, only fortunately, instead of a fool's staff, I had a good blade of the duke's. For a moment it was cut and thrust—not jest and gibe; the suddenness of the attack surprised them, and before they could digest the humor of it the fool had ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... no opportunity to elaborate for Nellie's benefit his opinions concerning the handy-man's utter worthlessness. At length this good Samaritan paused from his labors, and regaling himself with a fresh chew of tobacco and a parting gibe at Joe, set briskly ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... time that evening, and, feeling wonderfully well satisfied with the way in which he had played his cards generally, could not resist another gibe at the crestfallen mate. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... him, I conceive, was the fear of being ridiculous. The position of a poor tutor aspiring to the favours of the heiress destined for his master invites the unkind gibe. And Harry could not be sure that Alison herself was free from the desire to make him a figure of scorn. Such a suspicion might disconcert the most ardent of lovers. Harry Boyce, whatever his abilities in the profession, was not that yet. But ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... morning paper, and he knew in advance that it was not going to be one of his worst efforts. He knew almost exactly where the punctuations of laughter and applause would burst in, he knew that nimble fingers in the Press Gallery would be taking down each gibe and argument as he flung it at the impassive Minister confronting him, and that the fair lady of his desire would be able to judge what manner of young man this was who spent his afternoon in her garden, lazily chaffing himself and ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... criminal cases at the Old Bailey shortly after his return. He had commenced his charge to the jury in a case of forgery, and was, after his wont, thundering dead against the prisoner, with many a hard aggravation and cynical gibe, when suddenly all died away in silence, and, instead of looking at the jury, the eloquent Judge was gaping at some person in the ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... raising her eyes for a moment. "There was a time, Everard, before that terrible tragedy—the last time you stayed at Dunratter—when I didn't gibe." ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... redress for this affront from any but the highest personage in the state. Faliero, brooding over his own imagined wrongs, disclaimed that title, and gladly seized occasion to descant on his personal insignificance. "What wouldst thou have me do for thee?" was his answer: "Think upon the shameful gibe which hath been written concerning me, and think on the manner in which they have punished that ribald Michele Steno, who wrote it; and see how the Council of XL respect our person!" Upon this, the admiral returned—"My Lord Duke, if you would wish to make ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... in my several meetings with the man who penned that message I leave to adjudge if it be the letter of a madman bent upon self-destruction by strange means, or the gibe of a preternaturally clever scientist and the most elusive being ever born ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... crowd, whom he kicked with his foot, calling forth a yell of pain and curses. This he regarded with a supreme contemptuous calm which stupefied me. Nor did any of the passers-by show the slightest inclination to take the part of the sufferers. They laughed, or shouted out a gibe, or what was still more wonderful, went on with a complete unaffected indifference, as if all this was natural. I tried to disengage my arm in horror and dismay, but he held me fast with a pressure that hurt me. 'That's the question,' he said. 'What have we to do with it? Your fictitious ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... father's shirt-sleeves?" It was a scornful gibe from Bessie in the hammock. "I don't notice any of the rest of the men around here sitting out ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... Mediterranean from the hills of Asia, and hailed with rapture the boundary of their toils. I did not weep, but I knelt down and with a full heart thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in safety to the place where I hoped, notwithstanding my adversary's gibe, to meet ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... walked on, prostitutes in their gay attire accosted them from the doorways in which they lurked, but looking into Leandro's grim countenance and Manuel's poverty-stricken features the girls let them walk on, following them with a gibe at ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... such a mood is the manner in which, while Mr. Hardy opposes himself to Christianity, he cannot forget it. He cannot "cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart." It troubles and vexes him. It haunts him. And his work both gains and suffers. He flings gibe after gibe at "God," but across his anger falls the shadow of the Cross. How should it not be so? "All may be permitted," but one must not add a feather's weight to the wheel that ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... to rest him a bench beside the door,— 'Tis now the poor man's station, as 'twas in days of yore; The courtiers all laughed loudly, with many a gibe and jest, And with the finger pointed to him in bear-skin dressed. The stranger's eyes flashed lightning which made his anger felt, And quick a young man seizing with one hand, by the belt, Both up and down he turned him; then ceased ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... animals had refused to obey their mistress, and the duchess expressed the suspicion that she had not intended to call them off; for, though she had carelessly apologised, she asked, as if the words were a gibe, if there was anything more delightful than to curb a refractory steed. She had an answer ready for Cordula, however, and retorted that the disobedience of her dogs proved that, if she understood how to obtain ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... buried, but who had come back, in favour with the king, to avenge him and herself at once on their common enemies. She wondered whether Lord Lovat's cool assurance would give way at such a moment—she almost feared not—almost shrank already from the idea of some wounding gibe—frowned and clenched her hands while fancying what it would be, and then smiled at the thought of how she would smile, and bow an eternal farewell to the dying man, reminding him of her old promise to sit at a window ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... and he stands mute. The judge declares the dreadful penalty, and he stands mute. Oh, my father, my poor father! I tell ye my father will not mind anything. The Governor and the justices may command him as they will, the afflicted may clamor and gibe as they will, and I may pray to him, but he will not mind, he will stand mute. I tell ye there be not power enough in the colony to make him speak. Ye know not my father. He will ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... strange conditions or in an emergency, and in domestic hygiene they are inferior, and yet they are so competent to push the national military, industrial, and commercial ball along as men, that one wonders whether Bagehot's gibe at certain well-to-do classes of the Saxons, that "they spend half their time washing their whole persons," may not have a ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... cast including the author, were greatly depressed when the curtain went down with the auditorium already nearly empty. Glover undoubtedly had his bad quarter-of-an-hour that night, but the next morning he regained his usual equipoise, and cast off his chagrin with a characteristic gibe, at his own expense. A sympathetic friend ventured to ask if the fiasco was caused, perhaps, by too much blood ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... thou canst bear the averted face, The gibe, or treacherous embrace, Of those who ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... self-destruction, she had written to her husband: "Forgive me, respectable man, for disposing of a life that I had consecrated to thee." In quoting this I mean to make no too-easy effect with the word "respectable," grown grotesque by the tedious gibe of our own ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... and if Madame de Grammont was the culprit, it is a sad confirmation of the old gibe, "Skittish in youth, prudish in age." It can only be pleaded in extenuation that some youth which was not skittish, such as Sarah Marlborough's, matured or turned into something worse than "devotion." And Elizabeth ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... 930. 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... her loved one's "worrying," and all realized that there might be something seriously amiss in this protracted, unexplained absence. However, and to a certain degree, the child was allowed to be independent, and she was liable to reappear at any moment and to gibe at their "foolish fear" for her. But to summon her, at once, was the surest way of comforting Mrs. Trent, and Samson went out again to distribute the assembled ranchmen into searching ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... they were. But for all that they are vigorous and profitable yet. Their author's unfailing capacity for saying things worth heeding and remembering is proved in every one of them. It is not easy to open either of Mr. Kebbel's volumes without lighting upon something—a string of epigrams, a polished gibe, a burst of rhetoric, an effective collocation of words—that proclaims the artist. In this connection the perorations are especially instructive, even if you consider them simply as arrangements of sonorous and suggestive words: as oratorical impressions carefully ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... steady eyes met the gibe unfaltering. "I know it's a chance that doesn't come every day, and I know you mean well by him. I shan't put any hindrance in ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... sentence is apparently a gibe or jeer, addressed by the defenders of Cakhay to Gagavitz after his attack on ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... heartless transgressors? Priests though they were, and therefore bound by their office to help any poor creature that was struggling with a wounded conscience, they had nothing better to say to him than this scornful gibe, 'What is that to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... easily bear "the guilt of conscience." "Thy Muse is but a hagler, and wears clothes upon best be trust (a humorous Deckerian phrase)—thou'rt great in somebody's books for this!" Did it become Jonson to gibe at the histrionic tribe, who is himself accused of "treading the stage, as if he were treading mortar."[394] He once put up—"a supplication to be a poor journeyman player, and hadst been still so, but that thou couldst not set a good face ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... was not worth answering: indeed, I knew it was not meant for an answer; it was a palpable gibe. I held my tongue, but now I knew I should get no information out of this soft-voiced ruffian until it suited him to give it. Our fate was still a mystery—if we were beaten in the struggle that was imminent, and I could ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... swung himself into his saddle, and Christopher laughed merrily at his poor gibe and mounted in ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... had in his College, or how their minds were developed in the highest sense, so long as they came out well in the Schools List. He was alleged, that is, to take a tradesman's view of learning. These kinds of gibe I naturally found soothing, for I was able to imagine myself as a scholar, though not as a winner of a First. Incidentally, also, though I did not acknowledge it to myself, I think I was a little hurt by the Master's want ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... meditation Of the philosophic scribe, From the poet's inspiration, For the cynic's polished gibe, We invoke narcotic nurses In their jargon from afar, I indite these modest verses On a ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Lizzie went her way; Knew not was it night or day; Sprang up the bank, tore through the furze, Threaded copse and dingle, And heard her penny jingle Bouncing in her purse,— Its bounce was music to her ear. She ran and ran As if she feared some goblin man Dogged her with gibe or curse Or something worse: But not one goblin skurried after, Nor was she pricked by fear; The kind heart made her windy-paced That urged her home quite out of breath ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... grew darker. He took up the argument again, more pugnaciously than ever. It was the strangest attempt ever made to gibe and flout a wandering sheep back into the fold. Robert's resentment was roused at last. The squire's temper seemed to him totally inexplicable, his arguments contradictory, the conversation useless and irritating. He got up to take ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... jeer and gibe if you saw a man sinking in the waves time after time in spite o' rafts and life-preservers thrown out to him ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... at home, the sick, tall, yellow Duchess Was left with the infant in her clutches, 90 She being the daughter of God knows who: And now was the time to revisit her tribe. Abroad and afar they went, the two, And let our people rail and gibe At the empty hall and extinguished fire, 95 As loud as we liked, but ever in vain, Till after long years we had our desire, And back came the Duke ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... colleague "Summer shall be green," in illusion perhaps to Wingfield's unending platitudes, or to his limitless belief in the Emperor's integrity and wisdom.[220] Wingfield opened Pace's letters and discovered the gibe, which he parried by avowing that he had never known the time when summer was not green.[221] On another occasion he forged Pace's signature, with a view of obtaining funds for Maximilian;[222] and he had the hardihood to protest against Pace's appointment as Henry's secretary. At ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... all assembled in the salon as usual after dinner when M. Vergniaud was announced. The little princess was radiant. She had never been merrier in a school-girl frolic or more ready with gibe and jest and laughter. She sang her best songs, putting her whole soul into them—"Si tu savais comme je l'aime." Rene Vergniaud was so dazed that he came near bidding farewell to his senses for ever. He evidently ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... gibe at the physical sciences. To sneer at them were just as foolish as to sneer at religion. What we could do on this expedition in a "scientific" way we did laboriously and zealously. We would never have thought of attempting the ascent of the mountain without bringing back whatever little ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... centre some five or six inches. It was now unmistakably the outline of a small but perfect human figure, with extended arms and legs. One or two of us turned pale. There was a feeling of general uneasiness, until the editor broke the silence by a gibe, that, poor as it was, was received with spontaneous enthusiasm. Then the chant suddenly ceased. Wang arose, and with a quick, dexterous movement, stripped both shawl and silk away, and discovered, sleeping peacefully upon my handkerchief, a tiny ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... contemporary, the Indian Poet Amir Khusru, puts in the mouth of his king Kaikobad a contemptuous gibe at the Mongols with their cotton-quilted dresses. (Elliot, III. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Bigot, passionately. "Why do you utter his name, Varin, to sour our wine? I hope one day to pull down the Dog, as well as the whole kennel of the insolent Bourgeois." Then, as was his wont, concealing his feelings under a mocking gibe, "Varin," said he, "they say that it is your marrow bone the Golden Dog is ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... country life with manual labour as an equally necessary part of a completely healthy and rounded human existence, and in this experiment he practised what he preached. The experiment caused no little stir in Oxford, and even the London newspapers had their gibe at the "Amateur Navvies of Oxford"; to walk over to Hinksey and laugh at the diggers ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... much less so to the south of the Border, and I present it to my English readers, as a worthy representative, in these latter days, of those ludicrous songs of our country in the olden time which are so admirably suited to show, notwithstanding the gibe of Goldsmith, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... the gibe with tightened lips. He made no attempt to reply to it. "The only thing left," he said quietly, "is for you to see her and hear what she has to say. She is waiting in ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... gibe at, Sybrandt?" remonstrated Catherine more mildly. "Is not our Kate afflicted? and is she not the most content of us all, and singeth like a merle at times between her pains? But I am as bad as thou; prithee read on, lass, and stop our ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... When men may reap and sow? Ah, God! back to the cold earth's breast! The sages chuckle o'er their jest! Must they, to give a people rest, Their dainty wit forego? The tyrants sit in a stately hall; They gibe at a wretched people's fall; The tyrants forget how fresh is the pall Over their dead and ours. Look how the senators ape the clown, And don the motley and hide the gown, But yonder a fast rising frown ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... ended, the great square of St. Mark began to lose a portion of its gaiety. The cafes were now occupied by parties who had the means, and were in the humor, to put their indulgences to more substantial proof than the passing gibe or idle laugh; while those who were reluctantly compelled to turn their thoughts from the levities of the moment to the cares of the morrow, were departing in crowds to humble roofs and hard pillows. There remained one of the latter class, however, who continued to occupy a spot near ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... weapon that could be forged out of slander and falsehood was used against him by "Liberals", who employed their Christianity as an electioneering dodge to injure a man whose sturdy Radicalism they feared. Over and over again Mr. Bradlaugh was told that he was an "impossible candidate", and gibe and sneer and scoff were flung at the man who had neither ancestors nor wealth to recommend him, who fought his battle with his brain and his tongue, and whose election expenses were paid by hundreds ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... that "the pilgrims did find no answer to the riddle, and the Clerk of Oxenford thought that the Prioress had been deceived in the matter thereof; whereupon the lady was sore vexed, though the gentle knight did flout and gibe at the poor clerk because of his lack of understanding over other of the riddles, which did fill him with shame and make merry ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... me a lover of the picturesque. In heart and soul I am an artist, I dabble in colours, I dream of lights and shades and glorious effects; but the power of working out my ideas is denied me. If I try to paint a tree my friends gibe at me. I am a poor literary hack; but I give you my word, my dear old Philistine, that I would willingly change places with you." Anna smiled, she was accustomed to this sort of talk; but to her surprise Verity, who had just rejoined ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... him ridiculous and tragic, and so touching all at once that the gibe ended in a sob. It was not the stinging effervescence of the gingerade that made her choke and brought the smarting tears to her eyes. It was envy of that other girl. And then she noticed, under his left eye, a tiny scar, and she knew how he came by it, and remembered what she owed him, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the Loire and Paris I asked myself what honour was, and what good it could do me when I lay rotting and forgotten; if I were not a fool following a Jack o' Lanthorn; and whether, of all the men in the world, the relentless man to whom I was returning would not be the first to gibe at my folly? ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... Antony in Shakespeare's tragedy. Finally she flings a torch into the pyre, and rides her war-horse into the flames. The hall of the Gibichungs catches fire, as most halls would were a cremation attempted in the middle of the floor (I permit myself this gibe purposely to emphasize the excessive artificiality of the scene); but the Rhine overflows its banks to allow the three Rhine maidens to take the ring from Siegfried's finger, incidentally extinguishing the conflagration as it does so. Hagen attempts ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... usual Nemesis. The Italian hubris expressed itself in the familiar Greek distinction between barbarian and home-born; and the many nations from beyond the Alps found themselves united in a common bond which they were not eager to share. We have seen the kind of gibe with which Agricola's eloquence was greeted at Pavia. The more such insults are deserved, the more they sting. We may be sure that in many cases they were not forgotten. Celtis returning from Italy to ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... served their purpose have in many cases lost their meaning; the duties our ancestors performed have lost their usefulness; the old bottles will not hold the new wine which our generation serves to us. And this is one reason why so many people rate and gibe at what they call the "muddle-headed British public; "because it cannot change its ideas so quickly as it is forced to change ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... days chide him for not having made better use of his opportunities,—when, Do what he will, he cannot avert the Black Storm,—when Ruin seems impending, and Catastrophe is on the cards,—when he is Down, in a word, and the despiteful are getting ready to gibe at him in his Misfortune, and to administer unto him the last Kick. These times of Trial and Bitter Travail ofttimes strike one who has just attained Middle age,—the Halfway-House of Life; and then, 'tis the merest chance in the world whether he will be enabled to pick himself ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... normally is at its loveliest and fullest, brimming over with young life, the streets crowded with caps and gowns, the river and towing-path alive with the "flannelled fools," who have indeed flung back Rudyard Kipling's gibe—if it ever applied to them—with interest. For they had all disappeared. They were in the trenches, landing at Suvla, garrisoning Egypt, pushing up to Baghdad. The colleges contained a few forlorn remnants—under age, or medically unfit. The river, on a glorious May day, ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... threatened their sovereignty, their very existence. On more than one occasion, in foreign courts, the representatives of the Netherlands had been exposed to the taunt that the Republic was after all not an independent power, but a British province. The gibe had always been repelled in a manner becoming the envoys of a proud commonwealth; yet it was sufficiently galling that English garrisons should continue to hold Dutch towns; one of them among the most valuable seaports of the Republic,—the other the very cradle of its independence, the seizure ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... who followed Archias, began to gibe at his cowardice on seeing this movement. Archias went in, renewed his persuasions, and begged him to rise, as there was no doubt that he would be well treated. Demosthenes sat in silence until he felt in his veins the working of the poison he had sucked ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... occupied, with their lids all in place, and one of them yet empty and open. In the act of mounting the steps the condemned craned his head sidewise, and at the sight of those coffins stretching along six in a row on the gravelled courtyard, he made a cheap and sorry gibe. But when he stood beneath the cross-arm to be pinioned, his legs played him traitor. Those craven knees of his gave way under him, so that trusties had to hold the weakening ruffian upright while the executioner snugged ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... porch, a jocund crowd, They rush, with heart-born laughter loud; And still the merry mimesters call, With jest and gibe, "Laugh, losels all!" ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... was making progress with them. The hated gibe "white slave" was less frequently heard. Sam, passionately bent on making good in the community, weighed every shade of the men's manner toward him, like a lover ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... "The gibe is unworthy of you," said the other, lifting the hat which had been drawn down closely over his brow; ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... turned away with a scornful laugh and a gibe; but the arrow had hit its mark. But, indeed, what Thomas Bradly said was true. Broken hearts and dislocated families had been set to rights in that room. There would appointments be kept by wretched used-up sots, who would never have been ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... force of that Stentorian sound, Rose Belcour, dressed, and soon the lobby found. About the door a throng of varlets stood, A grinning and ill-favoured brotherhood, That scoff and gibe at every wight that wears Linen less black, or better coat than theirs. For these, young Belcour was too fair a mark; 'Make way,' cries one, 'he's going to the Park: His horses wait; he's going for a ride.' 'Fool, 'tis his tilbury,' another cried; 'D'ye ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... their whey cheeses cut The maids of Denmark rings for anchors, And this gibe annoyance gave the King. Now see I maidens many in the morn Reach the King's ships in fetters heavy: Fewer ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... strangest things I ever heard of,' he complained. 'It almost seems as if it was a talent that I didn't possess.' He went once more minutely through his proofs. 'A clerk would simply gibe at them,' said he. 'Well, there's nothing else ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... beneficiaries; and, in the case before us, the brethren being so comfortably provided for, the Master is likely to be at least as comfortable as all the twelve together. Yet I ought not, even in a distant land, to fling an idle gibe against a gentleman of whom I really know nothing, except that the people under his charge bear all possible tokens of being tended and cared for as sedulously as if each of them sat by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter bustling round the hearth to make ready his porridge and his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... injured pride, but because he was thinking hard for something to say. Eleanor mistook his silence for an assumption of tolerant superiority, and her anger prompted her to a further gibe. ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... young men watch him so that they may learn how to fish in deep and rough water, such as ours." These remarks were of course duly made public, and caused much indignation, neither the minister nor his flock liking the gibe about the deep, rough water; also the insinuation that anything about fishing was to be learnt from the new white man was annoying ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... kill any other man. He thrives on it, if I'm any judge. I believe a hiss is music to his ears and a curse is a hushaby, lullaby song. Put him out of business? Why say, doesn't nearly every editorial writer in the country jump on him every day, and don't all the paragraphers gibe at him, and don't all the cartoonists lampoon him, and don't all of us who write news from down here in Washington give him the worst of it in our despatches?... And what's the result? Mallard takes on flesh and every red-mouthed agitator in the country and every mushy-brained ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the grass in Heaven's Meadow, They tore the flowers about, And flung them on the earth beyond the paling, With gibe, and jeer, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... His little exclamations, his assurance of sympathy, his terror of the commonplace—surely one knows them well? His tolerance of any impertinence, lest he should be thought to have misunderstood a jest, is a great distinction. But Congreve's gibe in the dedication at the critics, who failed 'to distinguish betwixt the character of a Witwoud and a Truewit,' is hardly fair: as Dryden said of Etherege's Sir Fopling, he is 'a fool so nicely writ, The ladies might mistake him for a wit.' ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... of Domremy, In thine innocence only strong, Thou seest not the treason before thee, The gibe and the curse of the throng,— The furnace-pile in the market That licks out its flames to take thee;— For He who loves thee in heaven On earth will not ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave |
