"Mockery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when we stood face to face, all my wretched life with him came back to me. I thought of my trust that he had betrayed; I thought of the cruel mockery of a marriage that he had practiced on me, when he knew that he had a wife living; I thought of the time when I had felt despair enough at his desertion of me to attempt my own life. When I recalled all this, and when the comparison between Midwinter and the mean, miserable ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... introduce many religious vagaries, which to most men were striking and, to many, were shocking. Under the banner of the "New Dispensation," he practised a varied liturgy and cultivated an unique ceremonial which seemed to be a close imitation, and almost a mockery, of some of the most sacred institutions of Christianity ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... were afraid of one another, and by the very cowardice of their distrust were prevented from banding at a time when they might have rioted at will. What aggravated these portents of a kingdom falling asunder, was the mockery of law and justice which the court attempted. Those who were accused of the King's death ruled the royal councils, and were greatest in the Queen's favour. The Earl of Bothwell dictated the very proceedings by which he was himself ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the creature thinks itself safe, but is sure to be found out sooner or later; nor is it easy to explain this mockery save by reflecting that everything must have its meat in due season, and that meat can only be found for such a multitude of mouths by giving everything as meat in due season to something else. This is like the Kilkenny cats, or robbing Peter to pay Paul; but it ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency has always been considered, amongst us, the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to and fro, and found no rest. Miss Wildmere's cold glance met her everywhere with the assurance that such a creature as she could never be anything to him, and, alas! his own words confirmed the verdict. Love that gives all demands all, and such pitiful affection as he now gave was only a mockery. The morning found her too weak to leave her room, and for the few following days she made illness her excuse for remaining in seclusion. As Graydon looked ruefully at her vacant chair the fourth evening ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... it," she replied, a faint smile in her dark eyes that had in it something of wistfulness, something of self-mockery. She looked directly at him and let him have it full in the face. "I ought to be ashamed of it, I suppose, but I'm not. I've thought of you—that way—lots of times. All girls do, when they meet ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... against despair and ruin, a sacred but frightful grief. O God! it is that grief, that sacred relic of my sorrow that has just crumbled in my hands! It is no longer my love, it is my despair that is insulted. Mockery! She mocks at me as I weep!" That appeared incredible to me. All the memories of the past clustered about my heart when I thought of it. I seemed to see, one after the other, the specters of our nights of love; they hung over a bottomless eternal abyss, black ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... woman. It was my perfect confidence in her truth and integrity that drew me to her. What her resources are, I know not; I fear they exist only in her own imagination; but if she should befriend me in this, mine extremity, may the holy angels guard and bless her. Alas! it is mockery for me ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... there was the bitter mockery of degradation. Every vestment of the priesthood was put upon the martyr; one by one they were torn from him with curses. The crown of his head, where the tonsure had been cut, was defaced; the anointed head and ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... appliances seemed on this occasion to be a mere mockery. The tourmaline was all ready, but up to one o'clock not a trace of the sun could be seen. Shortly after one o'clock, however, we noticed that the day was getting lighter; and, on looking to the north, whence the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... yourself here, haven't you, Mitch?" Nelsen remarked with a dash of mockery. "All the modern conveniences—in the middle of the forbidden wilds ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... and trembling at the couple across the room, and for an instant it seemed that he was stripped naked. For a fleeting moment the authority was gone from his face; gone too was the cruelty, the avarice, the sardonic mockery. For the briefest moment his cold gray eyes grew incredibly tender with a sudden ancient, long-forgotten longing, crying at ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... no more value for us than the fiddle of Paganini or the mask of Menischus! I think that in Carolo's painting of him, we can see the strength, that was the weakness, of le jeune Cupidon. His fingers are closed upon his cane as upon a sword. There is mockery in the inconstant eyes. And the lips, so used to close upon the wine-cup, in laughter so often parted, they do not seem immobile, even now. Sad that one so prodigally endowed as he was, with the three essentials of a dandy—physical distinction, a sense of beauty and wealth or, if you prefer ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... far as the soup-kitchen and mill at Berry Hill, inquiring into the state of the poor, or rather pretending to inquire. It was a pretence with them all, for at the present moment their minds were intent on other things. And then there was that terrible dinner, that mockery of a meal, at which the three ladies were constrained to appear, but at which they found it impossible to eat or to speak. Mr. Somers had been asked to join the party, so that the scene after dinner might be less painful; but even he felt that he could not talk as was his ordinary wont. Horrible ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Mrs. Westmore was leaving at once for an indefinite period, and that the Hanaford house was to be closed. Irony would have been the readiest caustic for the wound inflicted; but Amherst, for that very reason, disdained it. He would not taint his disappointment with mockery, but would leave it among ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... foot of the mountains, the fugitive herds were grazing; the cranes, flocking back to the pools, renewed the strange grace of their gambols; and the great kingfisher, whose laugh, half in mirth, half in mockery, leads the choir that welcome the morn—which in Europe is night—alighted bold on the roof of the cavern, whose floors were still white with the bones of races, extinct before—so helpless through instincts, so royal ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... with a sudden irritation, and the laugh at the end of his speech was not one of amusement, but rather of mockery. To Michael this mood was quite inexplicable, but, characteristically, he looked about in himself for ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... talk together, and I have likewise heard how she was arrayed, that she had coifed herself with the head-dress, and it suited her exceeding well." Kjartan answered, and coloured up, and it was easy to see he was angry with her for making a mockery of this. "Nothing of what you say, Hrefna, passed before my eyes, and there was no need for Gudrun to coif herself with the head-dress to look statelier than all other women." Thereat Hrefna dropped the talk. The men of Laugar bore this exceedingly ill, and thought it by much a greater ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... the imagination of the former, the roll of the carriage-wheels was the sound of pursuing horses; in every turn of the road her fevered fancy beheld the figure of Lord Alphingham: at one time glaring on her in reproachful bitterness, at another, in mockery, derision, satire; and when she closed her eyes, those visions still tormented, nor did they depart till she felt her mother's arm around her, her gentle voice pronounce ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... their faith. They have keen eyes for theological niceties, but wear orthodox blinders that shut out all disturbing facts. Cardinal Newman, for example, declared that dogma was the essential ingredient of his faith, and that religion as a mere sentiment is a dream and a mockery. But he was so afraid of "the all-corroding, all-dissolving skepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries" that he placed the safeguard of faith in "a right state of heart," and refused to trust his mind to think its way through to God. Martineau justly complained that "his ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... said amendment and act do not provide for such interference under the circumstances as above stated, then they are without meaning, force, or effect, and the whole scheme of colored enfranchisement is worse than mockery and little better than a crime. Possibly Congress may find it due to truth and justice to ascertain, by means of a committee, whether the alleged wrongs to colored citizens for political purposes are real or the reports thereof ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... might ask himself, in deed—for the Earl's words naturally led to such a mistaken question—"Who, then, am I? Who is it they would have me believe myself, that so proud a man should seek the alliance which he now scorns, as soon as he knows who I am?" But there seemed to him a sort of mockery in the very idea, which made him cast it from ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... believe thee," said Hendon, with a perplexing mixture of mockery and half-conviction in his tone; "but tarry thou here a moment whilst I run and ask his worship—for nathless, he being a man experienced in law, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that the distributed prospectuses had only brought seven subscribers, and that the scheme of printing the poems would have to be dropped entirely, unless he could advance fifteen pounds to meet the necessary expenses. To Clare, this information sounded like mockery. To ask him, while in absolute want of food, to raise fifteen pounds, appeared to him an insult—which probably it was not meant to be. Mr. Henson, the printer and bookseller, had very little knowledge ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... happened to me before, gentlemen, never. There's nothing against my character," and here he broke off, and ran as hard as he could go down the cave, and for once I saw the Amahagger laugh. As for the woman, however, she did not laugh. On the contrary, she seemed to bristle with fury, which the mockery of the other women about only served to intensify. She stood there literally snarling and shaking with indignation, and, seeing her, I wished Job's scruples had been at Jericho, forming a shrewd guess that his admirable behaviour had endangered our ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... long time, he prepared to descend. Without warning, a strange, wailing cry swept over the face of the world. Starting in awful mystery, it ended with such a note of low and sordid mockery that he could not doubt for a moment whence it originated. It was the voice ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... have been crassly unwise to leave the shores of South America, for once in Spain his title fell from him like a withered leaf; he became plain "Senor" and nothing beyond, for in Spain these colonial distinctions were a matter for jeers and mockery. What remained, therefore, for the poor local noble but to hasten back to the spot where his nobility held good! It was better to bask as a Marquis in the sunshine of the south than to be cold-shouldered as a plebeian in ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... frosty air. Stephen walked on, past the stores and warehouses, past the noisy crowded saloons, past the brilliant dance halls and the variety show tents. It was to him all a hideous, tawdry, glaring mockery of merriment; and on the other side of him was the sullen blackness of the frozen river. He walked on until he had outwalked the town front, outwalked the straggling tents, till he had left the noise, and light, and laughter behind ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... with Tudie at one end of the porch, heard them now at the other end of the porch as they were quoted with mockery by Arthur. Orson and Tudie forgot their own quarrel in the supernal rapture ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... good-humoredly, a subtle mockery in his eyes alone showing the imaginary character of the bet which ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... sequitur, ignotum per ignotius[Lat]. misjudgment &c. 481; false teaching &c. 538. sophism, solecism, paralogism[obs3]; quibble, quirk, elenchus[obs3], elench[obs3], fallacy, quodlibet, subterfuge, subtlety, quillet[obs3]; inconsistency, antilogy[obs3]; "a delusion, a mockery, and a snare" [Denman]; claptrap, cant, mere words; "lame and impotent conclusion" [Othello]. meshes of sophistry, cobwebs of sophistry; flaw in an argument; weak point, bad case. overrefinement[obs3]; hairsplitting ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... For a progress must be directed to attaining some definite type of life, the counterpart of a given natural endowment, and nothing can be called an improvement which does not contain an appreciable benefit. A victory would be a mockery that left us, for some new reason, as much impeded as before and as far ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... was inundated with assassins clamoring for blood, twenty-one of the Girondists were arrested and thrown into the dungeons of the Conciergerie. Imprisoned together, and fully conscious that their trial would be but a mockery, and that their doom was already sealed, they fortified one another with all the consolations which philosophy and the pride of magnanimity could administer. In those gloomy cells, beneath the level of the street, into whose deep and grated windows ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... blue, tremulous streamers of the aurora and the white radiance of the moon and stars, tinged the snow with a faint colour like a stormy sunset, and lighted up a splendid mirage in the north-west which startled us with its solemn mockery of familiar scenes. The wand of the Northern Enchanter touched the barren snowy steppe, and it suddenly became a blue tropical lake, upon whose distant shore rose the walls, domes, and slender minarets of a vast oriental city. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... dislike me personally, but I don't propose that that shall stand in my way. As for your treasures, their value has utterly changed for me. A week ago, I frankly confess that I would have sold my soul, if I thought I had one, for them. Now, without her, they would only make the world a golden mockery to me, for I tell you, Vilcaroya, that I, who have never loved living woman yet, love that beautiful shape of inanimate flesh as that old sculptor we have told you of loved his statue. Every hour that I have been alone ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... "did not differ formerly on this subject We considered it a mockery, a miserable mockery, to recognize this Louisiana organization as a State in the Union." He sneered fiercely, "Whence comes this new-born zeal of the Senator from Illinois? . . . Sir, it is the most miraculous conversion that has taken ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Lake's cavalcade arrived, too, in 1803, and found the blinded chief of the royal house of Timour and his magnificent successors, who built Delhi and Agra, seated beneath the tattered remnants of a little canopy, a mockery of royalty, with every external appearance of misery and helplessness And lastly, here, in May, 1857, the last representative of the great Moguls, a not unwilling tool in the hands of the East India Company's mutinous ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... heartless as thou art fair! mockery of Passion!' Walter cried, addressing Leonora; 'what evil spirit hath sent thee to torture me so? O Leonora * ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... master's farm and on the neighboring ones, attempt to drag him back into his old ways, chiefly with ridicule and mockery. At times his resolution fails him, but he masters himself again. Then a bad-hearted neighbor, who hates Uli's master, tries to lure him away from his new faith. He praises Uli to the skies, tells him he is not properly appreciated, and poisons his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... on Sylvia that, under his air of whimsical self-mockery he was talking to her seriously. She tried to adjust herself to this, to be sympathetic, earnest; though she was still smarting with the sense of having appeared to ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... go," he thought, "I have never heard him preach, though I know by report that he is popular. I was told once that he seems to be possessed by a very demon of mockery, and that it is this spirit which makes his attraction for the people; but I hope it is something more than that—I hope—" Here interrupting his ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... hope and fear, and I experienced all a young soldier's trepidation when going into his first battle. If she had not come: if she would not listen to me. The cold perspiration would start out on my brow at the very thought. What a mockery Thanksgiving Day would ever become if my hopes were disappointed. Even now I cannot recall that interminable ride without a faint awakening of the ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... so-called moral order in the universe, and they unhesitatingly declare that existence is an evil. They would have us therefore exchange our hopes for insight, and warn us that even this is very circumscribed at best. For not only is happiness a mockery, but knowledge is a will-o'-the-wisp. Mankind resembles the bricklayer and the hodman who help to raise an imposing edifice without any knowledge of the general plan. And yet the structure is the outcome of their labour. In like manner this mysterious world is the work of man—the mirror ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... spring this has been. The famous black spring commemorated by Gilbert White can hardly have been more thoroughly ungenial, more fatal to man or beast, to leaf and flower, than this most miserable season, this winter of long days, when the sun shines as if in mockery, giving little more heat than his cold sister the moon, and the bitter north-east produces at one and the same moment the incongruous annoyances of biting cold and suffocating dust Never was such a season. ...
— Honor O'callaghan • Mary Russell Mitford
... by, and Cleotos, arousing from his apathetic despair, felt more strongly that, if the lapse of love into mere friendship is a misfortune, the offer of friendship as a substitute for promised love is a mockery and an insult: his soul rebelled at being made a passive party to such a bargain; and he began himself to play the retaliatory part which a wronged nature naturally suggests to itself. Like Leta, he learned to hold out the limpid hand in careless greeting, or to mutter meaningless and cold compliments, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... opened it; the palm was full of gold. The light of the morning sun flashed on those coins as if in mockery. We both looked at them—and then at each other with ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Peyrolles the bravos rose and saluted him ceremoniously. If there was any hidden mockery, any latent contempt, any unconscious hate felt by the brave scoundrels for the cowardly scoundrel in their reverence, it was not evident to the new-comer, who took the greetings with offensive condescension, eying the bandits over the ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... we saw almost all regarded us kindly, though many of them had something of mockery in their looks. We now began to see a few of the French inhabitants. They are splendid. Willingly they give us all they can spare, and much that they cannot. Were it not for the fact that they are not allowed to give, and ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward
... could not keep up in the trail, and food was not plentiful, they deliberately left him to perish. They acted in a very cruel and heartless way. They cut down and stuck some poles in the snow, and then over the top they threw a few pieces of birch bark. This in mockery they called his tent. Then seating him on a piece of a log in it, where he was exposed to view from every side, they left him without any fire or blankets, and gave him only a small quantity of dried meat in a birch dish which ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... sort of mockery in this phantom guidance. She had been led to the very place where Jamie was to be found, only to be shown that he had no need of her at all. Every want of his was abundantly supplied; the fair lady had won his little heart; and the ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... a mockery round her hills; For the will of wills, Its flaccid ape, Weak as the final echo off a giant's bawl: Napoleon for disdain, His banner steeped in crape. Thereof the barrier of Alsace-Lorraine; The frozen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... want,—it wants the Bible! When a country is sunk down in superstition and ignorance and moral depravity, so that the people know not right from wrong, there is only one cure for her,—the Bible. Religion here is a mockery and a shame; such as, if it were better known, would make the heathen laugh in scorn. The priests are a curse to the land, not a blessing. Perhaps they are better in other lands,—I know not; but well I know they are, many of them, false and wicked here. No truth is taught ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... the tree in the forest was that it was not sound. It lacked inside strength. Even a slight tap of the ax proved that it was a sort of 'hollow mockery.' It was a good-looking tree on the outside, but its heart was not right. And isn't that exactly the case with a lot of good-looking, well-dressed people? Why, even a boy or a girl can be all wrong at the heart, though their faces and hands and clothes ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... found shelter in Prussia, and protection from the royal infidel who had been the friend of Voltaire. A schism between the crowned heads of Europe and infidel philosophers had taken place. Frederic, who had sympathized with their bitter mockery, at last perceived the tendency of their writings; that men who assailed obedience to divine laws would not long respect the institutions and governments which mankind had recognized. He perceived, too, the natural union of absolutism in the church with absolutism in the state, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... with the family arms, which they have also seen dimly emblazoned or sculptured about the castle; she eats; and, as a final piece of conviction, she tears her dress open and shows the scar on her breast. Then she drinks response to the toast they had in mockery proposed; she accepts graciously the advances of the amorous Sergy; she sings divinely, and she dances more divinely still. The whole scene is described supremely well, but the description of the dance is one of the very earliest ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Wilbur, and smiled, but so furtively that even the sharp eye of Red Pierre did not perceive the mockery. He went on: ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... restrictions! Vile profanation of oaths! Miserable mockery of legislation! If a bare majority of the voters in any one State may, on a real or supposed knowledge of the intent with which a law has been passed, declare themselves free from its operation—say here it gives too ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... a hope, a blessed hope, More precious and more bright Than all the joyless mockery The ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... have a drop of blood in my veins. He that comes to take them shall first serve me as the friar serves my flasks of canary: he shall drain me dry as hay. Am I not disparaged? Am I not outraged? Is not my daughter vilified, and made a mockery? A girl half-married? There was my butler brought home with a broken head. My butler, friar: there is that may move your sympathy. Friar, the earl-no-earl shall come no more ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... who stood in the doorway craning his neck like a startled animal, with his left hand in his pocket, and the right hand holding a hat with a greasy lining, the Marquise gave Rastignac a look wherein lay a germ of mockery. The good man's rather foolish appearance was so completely in harmony with his grotesque figure and scared looks, that Rastignac, catching sight of Bianchon's dejected expression of humiliation through his uncle, could ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... soul. With the rude irresoluteness of armed force, with the awkwardness of a vaguely understood purpose, the soldiers seized Him and dragged Him off—mistaking their irresoluteness for resistance, their fear for derision and mockery. Like a flock of frightened lambs, the disciples stood huddled together, not interfering, yet disturbing everybody, even themselves. Only a few of them resolved to walk and act separately. Jostled from all ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... has come upon it all. I loved you too well—too well for either mine or your own good. Yielding to the fondness of a mother's love, I indulged almost your every wish, until now, turbulent and self-willed, you spurn my best and holiest affections as a mockery, and I find, almost too late, that I have greatly erred. I speak this in no spirit of unkindness, David. I feel it to be my duty as a Christian—my duty as a mother, to talk with you as I am now ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... wine-cask, was beginning his promised narrative. A philosopher would have discerned something pathetic in the picture of the ragged rascal thus girdled about with blackguards of a baser sort, his lean body quivering, his eager face alive with emotions, mockery on his lips and sorrow in his eyes: to the sardonic king it afforded nothing more and nothing less than amusement. "You must know, dear Devils and ever-beautiful Blowens, that three days ago, when I was lying in the kennel, which is my humour, and staring at the sky, which is my recreation—I ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... convictions. I have only to say, and I appeal to any intelligent man for his opinion, that the manner in which the jury list was made out for these trials clearly shows that in this country political trials are a mere mockery." ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... the name of the actress corespondent has not been given to the press. It was good of Mr. McAllister to attempt that separation of wheat from chaff which at one time rendered his verdicts of such dread power among social aspirants; it may be the irony of mockery that to-day his family are conspicuous upon only two points. One relative goes clamorously into the divorce court while another wins celebration by the showy ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... and more beautiful than I can say, standing on the threshold, richly dressed, and smiling upon us. We were struck dumb with astonishment, and I knew not for a time whether the tiny form were a real human being, or a mere mockery of enchantment. But I soon perceived water dripping from her golden hair and rich garments, and that the pretty child had been lying in the water, and stood in ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... was a Greek who spoke a bastard French and acted as interpreter. King Louis' letter was read, and in that hall its devout phrases seemed a mockery. The royal gifts were produced, the tent-chapel with its woven pictures and the sacred utensils. The half-drunk captains fingered them curiously, but the eyes from ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... The mockery died in his throat, and he froze to a statue of fear. Beyond the headstone of Jonas Whipple, and toward the centre of the plot, a clump of syringa was plainly observed to sway with the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... acquaintances had left him to the society of broken men and the women who are anything but light. And these, and here perhaps the root of his bitterness lay, even these recognised him only as a victim for their mockery, a thing more poor than themselves, whereon they could satisfy the anger of their tortured souls. And his last misery lay in this: that he himself could find no day in his life to admire, no one past dream to cherish, no inmost corner of his heart to love. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... order public prayers and thanksgivings for the renewal of these pasquinades, this ridiculous mockery, can one be astonished, I say, at the state of religious ignorance and blindness of our peasantry? Such, with a few wretched prints representing Napoleon passing the Alps seated on an eagle; Poniatowsky and ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... naturally a good-tempered beast, had been most sadly tried through the day. He had been fed, indeed, out of mockery, as being the Christians' god; but he did not understand the shouts and caprices of the crowd, and he only waited for an opportunity to show that he by no means acquiesced in the proceedings of the day. And now the difficulty was to move ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the Lord died for can't afford to keep his birthday; it is the rich that he's going to cast into outer darkness, that keep it for their own ends, and it's a blasphemy and a mockery," proclaimed Nahum Beals. He was very excited that night, and would often spring to his feet and stride across the room. There was another man there that night, a cousin of Joseph Atkins, John Sargent by name. He had recently moved to Rowe, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... We are tired of the pretense that we have special privileges and the reality that we have none; of the fiction that we are queens, and the fact that we are subjects; of the symbolism which exalts our sex but is only a meaningless mockery. We demand that these shadows shall take substance. The coat of arms of the State of New York represents Liberty and Justice supporting a shield on which is seen the sun rising over the hills that guard the Hudson. How are justice ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... that was different, though what it was I do not recall. The only words that remained clear to me must, I thought, have come from the spirit of Chaka, or rather from Zikali or one of his myrmidons assuming that character. They were uttered in a deep full voice, spiced with mockery, and received by the wizard with "Sibonga," or titles of praise, which I who am versed in Zulu history and idiom knew had only been given to the great king, and indeed since his death had become unlawful, not to be used. The ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... tremendous longing to clasp her at once in his arms as his betrothed bride overwhelmed him; but her father's opposition to the union of his only child with a blind man must first be conquered, and the great agitation in his soul, as well as the tumult around him, seemed like a mockery of the quiet happiness which hovered before him when he thought of his marriage with Daphne. Not until everything was calmer would the time come to woo her. Until then both must be satisfied with knowing from each other's lips their mutual ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... direction for a large proportion of the workers in it. There are points where the arraignment of Alfred, in his "History of the Factory Movement," is still true.[16] He speaks of it as a "system which jested with civilization, laughed at humanity, and made a mockery of every law of physical and moral health and of the principles of natural and social order." The "Report of the New York Bureau of Labor for 1885" shows that the charge might still be righteously brought; and Mr. Bishop gives the same testimony in his reports for New Jersey. Evil is still part ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... absolutely useless. Then why are they there? It were better to lose them altogether, if it be true that crawling inside the oak has deprived the animal of the good legs with which it started. The influence of environment, so well-inspired in endowing the grub with ambulatory pads, becomes a mockery when it leaves it these ridiculous stumps. Can the structure, perchance, be obeying other rules than ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... was in this room that I sat at your feet for the last time when, with your hand on my head, you prayed that Heaven might shield me from every sorrow. Beloved mother, shield thy daughter against her own beating heart. Strengthen me against him, his ensnaring levity, his daring mockery." ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... if Susan had run something into her. She thought the old worn phrase 'no military significance' nothing short of ghastly mockery under the circumstances, and more terrible to endure than the voice of despair ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... replied, bitterly, "except that I shall get away from London as speedily as possible. I can't live down my disgrace here. I shall probably return to India. I have lost faith in human nature, Jimmie, and learned the mockery of friendship—no, by heavens, I shouldn't say that! I have found out what true friendship is. I can never forget what you did for me—how you worked ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... two-thirds of both Houses; but it has a right to demand that the President shall exercise his constitutional power and arrest it if his judgment is against it. If he surrender this power, or fail to exercise it in a case where he can not approve, it would make his formal approval a mere mockery, and would be itself a violation of the Constitution, and the dissenting State would become bound by a law which had not been passed according to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... of the little engine are maliciously exaggerated as the boat forges ahead. The silent green river has become vociferous with echoes, which snap and grunt, groan and hiss, in mockery of inevitable and earnest doings. Out at sea the merry moods of the boat and hasty and determined throbs of the engine are manifestations of something accomplished in the overcoming of distance. Here it is all mere idle fancy, while the echoes ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the matter up with Hume at once," went on the young man. "But I had no more success than my father. In the man's eyes, I had but replaced my father; I was another patient subject for his mockery, derision and abuse. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... "What mockery or malice have we here?" cries Herve Riel: 45 "Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues? Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell 'Twist ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... love is mockery and deceit. 'Tis like the mirage of the desert that appears A cool refreshing water, and allures The thirsty traveler, but flies anon And leaves him disappointed, wondering So fair a vision should so futile prove. A mother's love is like unto a ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... too, was tall, with a wide, dark beard curling over very pink and rather plump cheeks, and in his bright black eyes a sardonic sheen played as he loosely shook his host's hand. His expression was that of a man perpetually amused, as if anticipating a joke or recollecting a mockery. His voice was as languid as his limbs, but his words were precise and ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... one of the boys who had witnessed Sam's humiliation, not sympathetically, but in a tone of mockery. ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... Adela locked herself in as with the fear she should be overtaken or invaded, and during a sleepless feverish memorable night she took counsel of her uncompromising spirit. She saw things as they were, in all the indignity of life. The levity, the mockery, the infidelity, the ugliness, lay as plain as a map before her; it was a world of gross practical jokes, a world pour rire; but she cried about it all the same. The morning dawned early, or rather it seemed to her there had been no night, nothing ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... and deserted. The young women returned to their schools, and men who had counted upon getting work to support their families during the summer, and who had failed to do so, abandoned their claims and went east where settlement had produced a crop. Our song of emigration seemed but bitter mockery now. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the autumn morning on the lofty plateau, as she listened to the colored servants chaffing at their work, there came to her the true meaning of that perplexing phrase, which had sounded with the mockery of empty poetry on the lips of the district attorney,—"All men born free and equal." Yes! in the realm of their spirits, in their souls,—the inner, moving part of them, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... very sweet, your literary love-letter. Considerable style, as you would say, but too palpably artificial. If you want to deceive this woman, my dear sir trifler, you must disguise your mockery more artfully. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... so rise, So bright, so rolling back the clouds into Vapours more lovely than the unclouded sky, With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains, And billows purpler than the ocean's, making In heaven a glorious mockery of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... this indigestion, for you are fond of cake." The novices laughed again, and thought themselves safe. But after breakfast the Prioress sent for Cecilia, and they saw her leave the novitiate angry with them all—she had caught sight of their smiles and dreaded their mockery, and went to the Prioress wondering what plausible contradiction she could give to Angela's story of the ugly counterpart, so she was taken aback by the ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Parma, and I bade adieu to Bentivoglio and his friends. The Court was at Colorno, but having nothing to gain from this mockery of a court, and wishing to leave for Bologna the next morning, I asked Dubois-Chateleraux, Chief of the Mint, and a talented though vain man, to give me some dinner. The reader will remember that I had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the merest monochrome roughing in of a head, but it presented the dumb waiting, the longing, and, above all, the hopeless enslavement of the man, in a spirit of bitter mockery. ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... George. He walked on the opposite side of the thoroughfare, his manner of dejection precisely what I should have expected. Followed closely as usual he was by the Judson cur. A spirit of desperate mockery seized me. I called to Mrs. Judson, who was gathering glasses from a ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... shrieked, shrank from the stranger's side, gazed at him for a moment, in the wildest dismay, and sank insensible upon the floor. Feathertop, likewise, had looked towards the mirror, and there beheld, not the glittering mockery of his outside show, but a picture of the sordid patchwork of his real composition, stript of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... spread about, I know not how, Marie Fiquet became famous, and it is still said in our country, "She is a maid of Thilouse," in mockery of a bride, and to ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... sir, said these knights, such a knight met with us to our great damage. And first he smote down my fellow, Sir Bleoberis, and sore wounded him because he bade me I should not have ado with him, for why he was overstrong for me. That strong knight took his words at scorn, and said he said it for mockery. And then they rode together, and so he hurt my fellow. And when he had done so I might not for shame but I must joust with him. And at the first course he smote me down and my horse to the earth. And there he had almost slain me, and from us he took his horse and departed, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... loose hot sand, amidst this shadeless mockery of a forest, Carmena swung steadily along at her graceful stride. Her movements seemed as lacking in effort as the lope of a coyote or the bound of a cat. Lennon would not have realized how greatly she was exerting herself had he not seen how ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... then flashed out; and now and again I saw her eyes half raised, less often now, as though the music made her dream. But yet I could have sworn I saw a dimple in her cheek through the mask, and a smile of mockery on her lips. ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... he was at once handed by Sir John Menteith to Sir John Seagrave, and carried by him to London. He was taken on horseback to Westminster, the mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen, with a great number of horse and foot, accompanying him. There the mockery of a trial was held, and he was in one day tried, condemned, and executed. He defended himself nobly, urging truly that, as a native born Scotsman, he had never sworn fealty or allegiance to England, and that he was perfectly justified in fighting ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... destroy the good, or the energy, of the few days which man has to live. Against the rich, the luxurious, the Pharisee, the false lawyer, the priest, and the unjust judge, Holbein uses his fiercest mockery; but he is never himself unjust; never caricatures or equivocates; gives the facts as he knows them, with explanatory symbols, ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... hands drop at his sides. He gazed at her and her expression was of wistful mockery—compassionate rather than ironical. Then he looked away down the length of the chapel. In the warm afternoon light, the solid and rich brown of the arcaded stalls on either hand, emphasised the harmonious radiance ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... teeth is the continual contention and combat of falsities with each other, consequently of those who are in falsities, joined with contempt of others, with enmity, mockery, ridicule, blaspheming; and these evils burst forth into lacerations of various kinds; since everyone fights for his own falsity and calls it truth. These contentions and combats are heard outside of these hells like the gnashings of teeth; and are also turned ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... matter? How many who have learned their catechism and deplore the ignorance of others, make the least effort to place their chief end even in the direction of that of their creation? Is it not the constant thwarting of their aims, the rendering of their desires futile, and their ends a mockery, that alone prevents them and their lives from proving an absolute failure? Sir George, with his inveterate, consuming thirst for whisky, was but the type of all who would gain their bliss after the scheme of their own fancies, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... lodging-place for wayfaring men"—so he speaks as early as under Josiah, chap. ix. 1 (2)—"and I would leave my people and go from them; for they are all adulterer, an assembly of treacherous men." But from these personal vexations and attacks, he neither was, nor could be exempted. Mockery, hatred, calumny, ignominy, curses, imprisonment, bonds were his portion. To bear such a burden would have been difficult to any man, but most of all to a man of his disposition. "The more tender the heart, the deeper the smart." He was not a second Elijah; he had a soft disposition, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... there was a general feeling of confusion and perplexity in his mind. What could he say? or how could he act? He began to stammer out something like gentleness, and something like reproof. But she who stood before him was as an accusing spirit, to whom apology was mockery, and repentance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... entrance was effected by the kitchen; and not only was there no fire, but there was no light of any description; and the one dip we brought on to the scene betrayed such squalor on all sides, that the suggestion of a salle-a-manger in connection with such a kitchen became at once an impudent mockery. When this farther room was reached, it proved to be even worse than the kitchen. It was shut up for the night—had been shut up apparently for a week—and was in the possession of the cats of the town, and the flies of Egypt. Two monstrous hounds entered with us; and the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... the fruitful bloom[310] Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen, The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom, The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between,— The wild rocks shaped, as they had turrets been, In mockery of man's art; and these withal A race of faces happy as the scene, Whose fertile bounties here extend to all, Still springing o'er thy banks, though Empires ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the old witchcrafts of Poland, the old devilries of his race, laid visible hold on the hopeful young man, that he must now take purely satiric estimate of so great an opportunity, with a programme which looked like formal irony on the kingly position, a premeditated mockery of those who yielded him, on demand, a servile reverence never before paid to any French monarch? Well! the amusement, or business, of Parisians, at all events, would still be that of spectators, assisting at the last act of the ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... gathered up the dazzled sunbeams to scatter them broadcast over hills and fields and flying houses. Now and then the hoarse whistle of the engine broke the early morning quiet, only to be flung back on itself by wood and cave and mountainside in a scornful shout of mockery. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... praise most those in whose presence they are standing, yet no one would dare to relete to a chief what he, and all those who heard it, knew to be a false and imaginary, not a true account of his deeds; because that would be mockery, not praise. ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... no dissembling in the look Hattie Balcome gave the older woman. The young eyes were full of comprehension, and mockery; they said as plainly as words, "Here is one who knows you for what you are—in spite of your dainty manners, your gentle voice, your sweet words." Nor could the girl keep out of her tone something of ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates |
