"Mocking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the air was softly moved and troubled, the surrounding gloom faintly lightened as with a misty dawn, and then was dark again; or drowsy, far-off cries and confused noises seemed to grow out of the silence, and, when they had attracted the weary ear, sank away as in a mocking dream, and showed themselves unreal. Nebulous gatherings in the fog seemed to indicate stationary objects that, even as one gazed, moved away; the recurring lap and ripple on the shingle sometimes took upon itself the semblance of faint articulate laughter or spoken words. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... music: sweet sounds of love. The bark of the squirrel, the cooing of mated doves, the "rat-ta-ta" of the pecker, and the constant and measured chirrup of the cicada, are all ringing together. High up, on a topmost twig, the mocking-bird pours forth his mimic note, as though he would shame all other ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... true—as true as death. And though it was all many years ago, I can tell you, it seems to me now that I can hear the water lapping in the canal outside the lattice and see the wind nodding the flowers on the table that were mocking me—a nosegay one minute, and the next a bouquet for a tomb of something gone and buried. Nor from then to now have I opened these lips to tell living soul ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... on them; frequently they could not, but when they did the rooting section was not dashed. It lifted up its multiple voice, young, insolent, unafraid, in mocking song, and Honor Carmody, just on the edge of the section, beside her stepfather, sang ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... provoked. The conduct of the bulls annoyed me exceedingly, and I really fancied that they knew it. Their manoeuvres were of the oddest kind, and some of them appeared to be made for the purpose of mocking me. At times they would charge up very close—their heads set in a menacing attitude; and I must confess that with their black shaggy fronts, their sharp horns, and glaring red eyes, they looked ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... reckless way, Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores The illuminated manuscripts, that lay Torn and neglected ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... hanged,—and so on, and so on, until I could not longer endure the embarrassment of it; then I would shoo them away, and they would circle around in the air a little while, laughing and deriding and mocking, and presently settle on the rail and do ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... downstairs. A wild panic came over me, and my head grew dizzy. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed full of mocking eyes, and I thought I heard stealthy steps creeping up the stairs. I dared not stay where I was, but I was too afraid to go out into the passage in the dark. Then my eyes fell on the candle, and I picked it up and was going ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... All Aunt Temperance's mocking, nevertheless, provoked Aubrey less than his mother's reality. He flushed red again, and looked ready to weep, had it been less unmanly. Temperance took care not to ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... across its shining surface. It was a fitting avenue to a land of wonders. All sign of the Indians had passed away, but animal life was more frequent, and the tameness of the creatures showed that they knew nothing of the hunter. Fuzzy little black-velvet monkeys, with snow-white teeth and gleaming, mocking eyes, chattered at us as we passed. With a dull, heavy splash an occasional cayman plunged in from the bank. Once a dark, clumsy tapir stared at us from a gap in the bushes, and then lumbered away through the forest; once, too, the yellow, sinuous ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cynicism,—what gentleness, what tenderness, what wise kindness he was capable of,—what loyalty to his friends and to his principles, what reverence for sacred things, what infinite depths of pathos, lay beneath that mocking exterior. Let us gather together a few of these personal traits as they have been given us by different hands, and try to make thus a true likeness of the man as he appeared to those who knew him best. The events of his life were few and by no ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... dares make it. He is afraid of the commonplace; he won't face it; and the revenge life takes on people who do that, people who are really afraid, people who attitudinize, is to infect them in some subtle, mocking way with the very thing ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... shabby little place to look at, though the resort of all the bloods, who crowded stalls and stage door. Killigrew laughingly informed Carminow that Ishmael had never met an actress in his life, and in reply to Carminow's half-mocking commiseration, Ishmael answered gaily that he had never even been to the theatre, except to a penny gaff that once visited Penzance. It was indeed with a secret tingling that he now found himself seated in a box. He brought to the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... while his father had been urging upon him the very course he most desired to take. No need for 'trying' to love her, he said to himself,—that was already done. And yet he was very jealous on her behalf. Was that love worthy of her which had once been given to Cynthia? Was not this affair too much a mocking mimicry of the last? Again just on the point of leaving England for a considerable time! If he followed her now to her own home,—in the very drawing-room where he had once offered to Cynthia! And then by a strong resolve he determined on this course. They were friends now, and he kissed the rose ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... are several mocking-birds tame enough to build in our yard and raise young birds. The old ones sing all night when it is moonlight. I am seven years old, and ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a sense he himself does not suspect. He has cursed the barren fig-tree of modern religious movements. But there comes a suspicion that he denies too much; that from between those supple sentences and those too plausible arguments one may catch a glimpse of the features of a mocking spirit. Chesterton has given us the keenest enjoyment, and he has provoked thought, even in the silly atheist. We all owe him gratitude, but no two readers of his works are likely to agree as to the causes of ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... not only bold and vociferous, but possesses a considerable talent for mimicry, and seems to enjoy great satisfaction in mocking and teasing other birds.—WILSON. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... you, I assure you I did, and now to find you in the morning, oh, so changed!' She clasped her little hands and inclined her head, while the sweet voice sank into a cadence of melancholy which seemed so genuine that the mocking ripple of a laugh immediately following was almost a shock to me. Where had this creature of the dull English countryside learnt all such ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... derisive laugh from the opposite throne interrupted the answer. The Bar stood up, his black eyes dancing with mocking laughter. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... and my frocks, they were home-made. We had no caged birds. Our yards and woods thrilled with bird-song all day long for eight months of the year, and mocking-birds filled June and July nights with music sweeter and more varied than the storied strain of the nightingale. I had never seen a canary, and knew nothing of him except as I had read of one in what I called a ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... to beg Anne Ashton's pardon," returned Lady Maude; her tone this time unmistakably mocking. "Anne is so common ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... attached by the fierce taunts and invectives of their often invisible foes who reviled them as water-dogs, fetching and carrying for a master who despised them; as mercenaries who coined their blood for gold, and were employed by tyrants for the basest uses. If stung by these mocking voices, they turned in the darkness to chastise their unseen tormentors, they were certain to be trampled upon by their comrades, and to be pushed from their narrow pathway into the depths of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... always, and if she so much as stealthily advanced a tea-spoon towards a neighbouring glass (which she often did), for the purpose of abstracting but one sup of its sweet contents, Quilp's hand would overset it in the very moment of her triumph, and Quilp's mocking voice implore her to regard her precious health. And in any one of these his many cares, from first to last, Quilp never ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... after the messenger's escape she summoned me to her side, thrusting the shibrayah curtains apart and beckoning with the fingers turned downward, Bedouin fashion. We conversed quite amicably for more than an hour, she mocking my Arabic pronunciation, but asking innumerable questions about India—who my mother was, for instance, and whether my father used to beat her much; what physic was used in India for date-boils; why I had not stayed at home; wasn't I afraid of meeting Ali Higg; ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... "Why, this is an unexpected pleasure—a visit from you, Mr. Vicar," he cried, in mocking jest. "Hope you have come to your senses! Sit down. Will you take ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... his mind. That is to say, he might contrive to withdraw from the district without having repaid Kostanzhoglo at all! Truly a splendid idea! Yet it is only fair to say that the idea was not one of Chichikov's own conception. Rather, it had presented itself—mocking, laughing, and winking—unbidden. Yet the impudent, the wanton thing! Who is the procreator of suddenly born ideas of the kind? The thought that he was now a real, an actual, proprietor instead of a fictitious—that ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... what I am—heaven help me!" Nick broke out, tossing his hat down on his little tin table with vehemence. "I'm a freak of nature and a sport of the mocking gods. Why should they go out of their way to worry me? Why should they do everything so inconsequent, so improbable, so preposterous? It's the vulgarest practical joke. There has never been anything of the sort among ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... hastened toward the plow. So brief had been her meeting with the storekeeper that, immediately following it, his features had escaped her. Now she recalled them, and thought she recalled that, when he had accosted her, they had worn a mocking expression. What if her father, in his sudden excitement and concern, should tell Lounsbury that the claim was not yet filed upon! should confide in this stranger, who might then take advantage of the ignorance, age and ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... uniform. Stories were told of her dirt and shiftlessness, of the hens which roosted in her kitchen. Poor Mrs. Jim Sloane, in her blue plaid shawl, tramping frequently from her solitary house through the village, was a byword and a mocking to all ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... they all slept soundly, dreamt of water, and awoke to the sad reality that they were tormented with thirst, and were on a sandy heath with the salt waves mocking them; but they reflected how many of their late companions had been swallowed up, and felt thankful that they had been spared. It was early dawn when they all rose from the forms which they had impressed on the yielding sand; and by the directions of Philip, they separated in every ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... as, for some reason unaccountable to Katrina, they seemed not to like her husband. We waited until we were out of sight of the house, and then seated ourselves gloomily on a wayside rock under a sheltering tree. A robin, perched on a branch above our heads, burst into mocking song. The sun still shone; I wondered ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... louder and madder around the mighty goddess, until she, bursting with impatience, suddenly cried, in a tone of the most agonized Titanic pain, "Silence! Silence! I hear the voice of the beloved Prometheus. Mocking cunning and brute force are chaining the Innocent One to the rock of martyrdom, and all your prattling and quarreling will not allay his wounds or break his fetters!" So cried the goddess, and rivulets of tears sprang from her ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... casts his eye. Angelina! Nothing else was of any account. How would it all end? He drifted along in blissful apprehension of what the next day might bring. She seemed to have become genuinely well-disposed towards him of late, though in rather a mocking, maternal sort of fashion. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... sight, From the dark-fringed lids where they trembled bright, A rustling was heard in the brushwood near, And a crone, whose wild and fantastic gear Betrayed the erring of mind within, Stood in her presence with mocking grin. "Said I not sorrows in dark array, Crowded the future of Morna Grey? Why from the cheek do the roses fly? Where is the light of the flashing eye? Where has the rounded lips, ruby red, Gone, since we parted beside the dead? ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... from the end), he is not particular, and is ready to use other people's money for the purpose as if it were his own, provided only he knows that he can do so safely, and without discovery; you would either believe that the recommender was mocking you, or that he had lost his senses. So sharply and clearly marked are the boundaries of morality and self-love that even the commonest eye cannot fail to distinguish whether a thing belongs to the one or the other. The few remarks that follow may appear superfluous where the truth is so plain, ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... scholar and the gentleman and the singer—and leave philosophy and politics, which he does not understand, and shriekings and cursings, which are unfit for any civilised and self-respecting man, he is perfect. Like the American mocking-bird, he is harsh only when aping other men's tunes—his true power lies in ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Lost Soul, in allusion to the bird in South American forests which has so intensely mournful a note that the Indians give it a name which signifies a lost soul. The first birds which were sent did not reach him, and the Emperor on hearing it sent two more. The bird is larger than a mocking bird, and has sober gray plumage, very unlike the bright-hued creatures usually seen in ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... below the dignity of his experience. He might never hope to fathom its meaning while he lived; but he grieved for the wrong he had done it, as if at the instant of the apparition he had offered that majestic, silent figure some grotesque indignity: thrown a pillow at it, or hailed it in tones of mocking offence. He was profoundly and exquisitely ashamed even before he ceased to tell the story for his listeners' idle amusement. When he stopped doing so, and snubbed solicitation with the curt answer that everybody ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... from it and flinging men this way and that disappeared into the storm center. She could hear his voice, too, loud and angry, and see the quick dispersal of the crowd. Some of the men, foreigners, passed quite near to her, and eyed her either sullenly or with mocking smiles. She was quite oblivious of them. She got out and ran with shaking knees across to where Pink lay on the grass, his profile white and sharply chiseled, with two or three men bending ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dark corridor, into the big room mellow with candle-glow, back to the table with its mocking tea-urn and chinaware. He felt a thing like clammy sweat on his back. He sat down. And ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... rails from the palms to the snow, Through States that are greater than Emperors know, Forty-eight States that are empires in might, But ruled by the will of one people tonight, Nerved as one body, with net-works of steel, Merging their strength in the one Commonweal, Brooking no poverty, mocking at Mars, Building their cities to talk with the stars. Thriving, increasing by myriads again Till even in numbers old Europe may wane. How shall a son of the England they fought Fail to declare the full pride of his thought, Stand with the scoffers who, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... watched the sorrow of the evening sky, And smelt the sea, and earth, and the warm clover, And heard the waves, and the seagull's mocking cry. ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... Claude addressed to Jacques Coictier, there was that sardonical, biting, and covertly mocking accent, and the sad cruel smile of a superior and unhappy man who toys for a moment, by way of distraction, with the dense prosperity of a vulgar man. The ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... kitty—I've found her," said auntie, suddenly seizing Fly by the shoulders, and stopping her mocking-bird mouth. "Poor pussy, she has ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... corrupt already," said Grace, as Rachel thought the last speech too mocking to be worthy of reply, and went on picking up ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... complaisantly to glide, the nullity which they adorn with the title of science,—all this filled me with fright, for I felt the doubt and despair into which contact with it would inevitably have plunged me, if, by a special favor, the tone and mimetics, alike self-sufficient and mocking, of these free-thinkers, as they are now styled, had not, from the first, inspired me with aversion for them and a ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... answer, nor did his people so much as fire on us. They turned tail and crept off like a pack of frightened jackals—pursued by the mocking ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... "The Beast was mocking us," cried the merchant; "he must have pretended to give us all these things, knowing that I could not carry ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... haven't slept for weeks. Night and day I've had the fear—the fear always with me. You don't know what it is—you can't imagine. It's like a terrible ghost, keeping pace with you wherever you go, laying his icy finger upon you whenever you would rest, mocking at you when you try to drown thought even for a moment. Don't you try me too far, Zoe. I'm not responsible. Laverick isn't the man you think him to be. He isn't the man I believed. He did have ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... snatched away, and then were swept off. The shouted jokes were broadened and strengthened to fit that riot and uproar. This sudden robust life, following the routine of our subdued company on its lonely and disappointed vigils in a deserted sea, the cheery men countering and mocking aloud the sly tricks of their erratic craft, a multitude of masts and smoking funnels around us swaying in various arcs against a triumphant sky, the clamorous desperation of clouds of wheeling kittiwakes, herring-gulls, black-backed gulls and gannets, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... shan't see you to-morrow—until the evening?" Brett, standing by her side, the mare's bridle over his arm, was regarding her with an oddly mocking expression in his eyes. She almost felt as though he had been reading her thoughts. "I shall be going backwards and forwards to the yacht, to see that everything is shipshape for ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... said, with a faint mocking smile and a side glance at me. "It is occasionally met with in man and is easily detected by the blue bye-product it gives off while growing." He twisted the tube slowly round. "It is quite an interesting culture," he continued idly. "Do ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... hear the notes repeated once again His ear has caught when listening to the mocking-bird's refrain, And interwoven with the sense a mystic something rings That fills the soul with ecstasy when ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... prematurely wrinkled face, into the half-dim eyes, she held the hand fast with a pressure not of force but of entreaty. Then they passed on, the by-standers shouting out the derisive chorus of "Come to Jesus!" with which London roughs delight in mocking any passenger whom they suspect of religious tendencies. In all her sadness, Erica could not help smiling to herself. That she, an atheist, Luke Raeburn's daughter, should be hooted at ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... fragment of a memoir, in which, out of all the chasms of his barren and melancholy past, there rose two malignant truths that seemed literally to glare upon him with mocking and demon eyes. The woman whose remembrance had darkened all the sunshine of his life had loved another; the friend in whom he had confided his whole affectionate loyal soul had been his perfidious rival. He had read from the first word to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and across the intervening space her voice came to him, half-mocking, half-alluring, "Have you ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... half-mocking contrition. "I am as bad as you are. But, as I say, there are times when I should like to shriek the truth in the world's face, and see what it would do. I don't think anything could be ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... cried he, in a loud and mocking tone. "Ho, there! my Lady Carse! A word with you!" But she ran up the Wynd as fast as she ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... As though mocking his words, there burst upon the sleeping countryside the shriek of a giant siren. It was raucous, virulent, insulting. It came as sharply as a scream of terror, it continued in a bellow of rage. Then, as suddenly as it had cried aloud, it sank to silence; only after a pause of an instant, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... but a month old! Ah," he went on, "if you knew the difference it makes—this having chosen and broken and spoken! I am twice the man I was yesterday! Yesterday I was afraid of her; there was a kind of mocking mystery of knowledge and cleverness about her, which oppressed me in the midst of my love. But now I am afraid of nothing but ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... was watching and mocking him; "yes, that there are, under the bridges. I've watched a dozen chips go ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... heard it rise and swell, Tolled by the iron steamer's bell; Told by the mocking voice of Fate, Rung through her ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... taunting, that is the spell of it; Mocking, baulking, that is the hell of it; But I'll shoulder my pack in the morning, boys, And I'm going because I must; For it's so-long to all When you answer ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... Sartoris, who sat smoking a cigarette, with a sardonic smile on his face. All the others had gone, and the body was gone from the table; on the latter was a dark crimson cloth surmounted by a mass of flowers arranged tastefully around an electric stand. Sartoris laughed in an easy, mocking way. ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... Odin, mindful of former tricks, sent for Red Loki and began very closely to question him. Others had seen Idun in his company on that eventful day when she had been carried away, and so, finding it impossible to keep the matter hidden, Loki confessed, with a mocking laugh, that he had betrayed her into the ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... believed, Miss Hopgood's suppression of him. Ass that he was not to see what he ought to have known so well, that he was playing the fool to her; he, with a grown-up son, to pretend to romance with a girl! At that moment she might be mocking him, or, if she was too good for mockery, she might be contriving to avoid or to quench him. The next time he met her, he would be made to understand that he was PITIED, and perhaps he would then learn the name of the youth who was his rival, ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... are repeated references to events in the "Second Part"; to the murder of Rutland by the "black-faced Clifford"; to the crowning of York with paper, and the mocking offer of a "clout steeped in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland." It must not be forgotten that these striking likenesses, references, unities, are not between "Richard III." and the portion of the "Contention" ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... force that gave so signal a power to the Oxford Movement, endeavours to make up for that sad if not fatal deficiency by an almost inexhaustible credulity, a marked ability in superstitious ceremonial, a not very modest assertion of the claims of sacerdotalism, a mocking contempt for preaching, and a devotion to the duties of the parish priest which has never been excelled in the history of ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... which his brown hair was closely trimmed. The warmth of the Gallic wine which it was his habit to drink to excess at night, caused his eyes to shine, and colored his pale cheeks. His face was imperious, his laugh mocking and cruel. He was leaning on one elbow, holding in one hand, thinned with debauchery, a wide gold cup, enriched with pearls. He looked at it leisurely and fitfully, still fixing his piercing gaze on the two prisoners, who were placed in ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... replied a drum-major, with half-closed eyes, and a mocking smile; "do not be alarmed; we will pluck the pigeon according to rule. We will take care; we will ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... eyes, under their flattening brows, gazed thoughtfully at him. The corners of her mouth lifted a little with their wing-like, quivering motion. Two moods were in her; one had its home in her brooding, tragic eyes, one in her mysterious, mocking lips. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... leaped into the sea, intending to swim to her. But it was otherwise ordained. A breeze which had sprung up freshened, and the junk soon left me far behind. As for the other junk, I never saw it again, for I never looked back or thought of it—only, as I left it, I heard a mocking laugh from the one-eyed villain, who, I afterwards found out, owned ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... angels!" Heliobas surveyed him sadly as he spoke. "Nay! ... pray rather that they may find THEE!" He looked long and steadfastly at Alwyn's countenance, on which there was just then the faint glimmer of a rather mocking smile,—and as he looked, his own face darkened suddenly into an expression of vague trouble and uneasiness—and a strange quiver passed visibly through him from ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... grandeur. The soft gray folds of the gown swept over the carpet. There was a hint of rose-color in it that caught the lamp-light. Elizabeth glanced teasingly over her shoulder at the Pretender, who turned abruptly away. He was a very poor sort of Pretender, after all, and he feared the mocking gaze of those gray eyes. They might read the secret in his own and laugh at it. He picked up the magazine she had dropped and began turning over its pages, just to show his ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... answered—answered, yes, to shatter, as like as not, with pitiless realities the tender figment of a dream. No, he said, he dared not expose himself to a possible disillusion, to play into the hands of sardonic nature, ever mocking at man. No; but he would carry his ship close inshore and watch from the bridge the unfolding bays and tiny settlements of that lost paradise, and then, dipping his flag to his vanished youth, he would sink over the horizon, his memory thrilled and his ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... land almost within reach; they knew and announced how rich and spacious the heritage would be, if once the entry could be made good. But on that 'if' everything hung. Nature was not bound to give up her secret, or was bound only in a mocking covenant with an impossible condition: Si caelum digito tetigeris; if only some fortunate hand could touch the inaccessible firmament, and bring down the golden chain to earth! But fruition seemed out of sight. Even those who were most willing to advance in this direction, could only regret that ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... are turned on this strange form, as she, in mocking gesture, casts a look of withering scorn on the scene around her, and startles the jovial vassals with the reproachful words "No heir! No heir!" The laughter is hushed, the pipes no longer sound, for the witch with uplifted hand beckons that she had a message to tell—a message from Death—she ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... of like nature, tore Owen's soul in that hour of strange and terrible temptation. He seemed to see himself standing before the thousands of the savage nation he went to save, and to hear the mocking voices of their witch-finders commanding him, if he were a true man and the servant of that God of Whom he prated, to give them a sign, only a little sign; perhaps to move a stone without touching it with his hand, or to cause a dead bough ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... innumerable domestic failures, Bertha could not altogether like her. Submissive to the point of slavishness, she had at times a look which did not harmonize at all with this demeanour, a something in her eyes disagreeably suggestive of mocking insolence. Bertha particularly noticed this on the day after Martha had received her first wages. Leave having been given her to go out in the afternoon to make some purchases, she was rather late in returning, and Bertha, meeting her as she entered, asked her to be as quick as possible in getting ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... only broke off a leaf and nibbled at it contemplatively. "Maybe I won't risk it. 'I don't want to spoil a single hour,'" she repeated, mocking his dignity, 'by any thought of yours or mine that would lead us away from the music.' Maybe I'm in danger." And then, "You know you're not so ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... alive!" A queer light danced like a mocking spirit in Private Ford's eyes, and again he laughed—an exceeding bitter laugh. "I've been made an example of all my life," he said. "I've sometimes thought it was what I was created for. Ah, thanks!" he added in a different tone, as the doctor ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... preconcerted attitude towards the "Northern hireling," she had been met with official brusqueness, contemptuous silence, or aggrieved indignation,—but nothing so exasperating as this. She even fancied that this elegant but sardonic-looking soldier was mocking her. She bit her red lip, but, with a scornful gesture of her ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... the son of Sighvat the Red. He was a great voyager, and a comely and a courteous man; tall too, and strong. He was a man of proud spirit, and a good skald, and well trained in most feats of strength. He was noisy and boisterous, and given to jibes and mocking. He made the land east in Hornfirth. Skiolld was the name of his fellow-traveller; he was a Swedish man, and ill to do with. They took horse and rode from the east out of Hornfirth, and did not draw bridle before they came to Lithend, in the Fleetlithe. ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... inanimate Nature with the human degradation and deformity before me, I felt, as I confess I had never done before, the truth of a remark of a rare thinker, that "Nature is loved as the city of God, although, or rather because, it has no citizen. The beauty of Nature must ever be universal and mocking until the landscape has human figures as good as itself. Man is fallen; Nature is erect."—(Emerson.) As I turned once more to the calm blue sky, the hazy autumnal hills, and the slumberous water, dream-tinted by the foliage of its shores, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake—if the Walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs there—who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention. The most aldermanic, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Oxford Street, the cabman struck away to the west, in order to come upon Westminster by the main artery of Regent Street. The great thoroughfare was quiet enough now. Fashion was at rest, but even here, and in its own mocking guise, misery had its haunt. A light laugh broke the silence of the street, and a girl, so young as to be little more than a child, dressed in soiled finery, and reeling with unsteady step on the pavement, came up to the cab ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... held his peace until he had gained his bride. As it was; the folly of the three knocked at her heart, uniting to bring the heavy accusation against one poor woman, quite in the old way: the Who is she? of the mocking Spaniard at mention of a social catastrophe. Rosamund had a great deal of the pride of her sex, and she resented any slur on it. She felt almost superciliously toward Mr. Romfrey and Nevil for their not taking hands to denounce ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... drive up through Texas was pleasant, between blossoming yellow trees and yuccas like wax candles and pink bouquets of peach trees and mocking birds' songs. ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... tweet, tweet!" It was Bea's best soprano, with several extra trills strewn between the consonants. "Listen to the mocking-bird. Oh, the mocking-bird is singing on the bough. Bravo, encore! ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... involuntary dismay in the last words which Apollonius connected with the failure at a reconciliation. Fritz Nettenmair repeated them softly, and this time they sounded like a mockery of Apollonius, like mocking regret at the failure of a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... his tail as usual he dropped it between his legs and turned away in evident disgust. And from that time onward he would never touch it with his tongue, and it was plain that when they tried to tempt him, setting beer before him and smilingly inviting him to drink, he knew they were mocking him, and before turning away he would emit a low growl and show his teeth. It was the one thing that put him out and would make him angry with his ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... profusion and high living, excited his starving subjects to revolt. The prelate ordered the rebels to be arrested, confined them in a building, and set it on fire. Not content with this outrage, he added insult to injury by mocking the wail of the sufferers, and comparing their cries with the squeaking of mice. In the night which followed the diabolical deed, a swarm of mice penetrated to the apartments of the archbishop's palace, attacked him, and tried to tear the flesh from ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... the threshold lies, Mocking sleep with half-shut eyes— With head crouched down upon his feet, Till strangers pass his sunny seat— Then quick he pricks his ears to hark And bustles up to growl and bark; While boys in fear stop short their song, And sneak in startled speed along; ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... attention in the way one thanks a friend. The waiter went back to his companions and sat down amongst them, embarrassed and snubbed. But Mr. Blom left the verandah with bitter thoughts and pushed his way through the crowd; he fancied that he could hear a mocking: "He hasn't been able to get dinner, ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... her cousin; but the mocking spirit, if it lurked in his words, failed on this occasion to peep from his face. "Do you wish Madame Merle ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... Katrina's Sun-dial To James Whitcomb Riley A Health to Mark Twain A Rondeau of College Rhymes The Mocking-bird The Empty Quatrain Inscriptions for a Friend's House The Statue of Sherman by St. Gaudens The Sun-dial at ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... of harsh voices, mouthing the wild gipsies' jargon, had no effect on Baltic. Seeing that he could gain nothing from the mocking crowd, he pushed back one or two, who seemed disposed to be affectionate with a view to robbing his pockets, and shouted loudly, 'Mother Jael! Mother Jael!' till the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... that thou callest me?' 'Ay,' answered the other, 'come hither.' Accordingly, Pinuccio, dissembling and making a show of being sleepy-eyed, arose at last from beside the host and went back to bed with Adriano. The day come and they being risen, the host fell to laughing and mocking at Pinuccio and his dreams; and so they passed from one jest to another, till the young men, having saddled their rounceys and strapped on their valises and drunken with the host, remounted to horse and rode away to Florence, no less content with ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... not realize that her scoffing disbelief in Mac's avowals, and her gay indifference were the very things that kept him at fever heat. He was not used to being thwarted, and this high-handed little working-girl, with her challenging eyes and mocking laugh, who had never heard of the proprieties, and yet denied him favors, was the first person he had ever known who refused absolutely to let him have his own way. With a boy's impetuous desire he became obsessed by the idea of her. When he was not with her, he devised schemes to remind her ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... quite at home here,' said the old duck waddling off. And so they did, all except the duckling, who was snapped at by everyone when they thought his mother was not looking. Even the turkey-cock, who was so big, never passed him without mocking words, and his brothers and sisters, who would not have noticed any difference unless it had been put into their heads, soon became as rude and unkind as ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... a third. Toilers, living without pride or delight or hope, with the stories of Pleasure Cities ringing in their ears, mocking their shameful lives, their privations and hardships. Too poor even for the Euthanasy, the rich man's refuge from life. Dumb, crippled millions, countless millions, all the world about, ignorant of anything but limitations and unsatisfied desires. They are born, they are thwarted ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... hearing this amazing prediction; for she said, "After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?" The child was born, however, and was called Isaac, "the laugher," in remembrance of Sarah's mocking laugh.* There is a remarkable resemblance between his life and that of his father.** Like Abraham he dwelt near Hebron,*** and departing thence wandered with his household round the wells of Beersheba. Like him he was threatened with the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... afternoon, I spied her through the best-parlor window, sobbing dismally. When she heard and saw me, she tried to compose herself in vain; but the only account she had to give of her grief was, that "the mocking-bird sang so dreadfully, and the Doctor told Aunt Cumberland she [Nelly] was not going to die. There," added she, under her breath, "I didn't mean to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... fell upon the "great unwashed" below. Out of it swelled a muttering as the leader made a low, mocking obeisance to the girl, following it with a word that brought a jubilant yelp from his adherents. Stooping, he ladled up in his cupped hand a quantity of gutter filth. Where the flowers had but a moment before fluttered in the ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... turned to the Moolah with a mocking smile, and pointed at the results of his ministrations. Then he gave an order, and in an instant the four men were seized. A couple of deft turns with a camel-halter secured each of their wrists. Fardet screamed out, for the rope had bitten into his open ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which she had imagined; not the evil mocking fiend; but one rather who originally had not been without good instincts, and who might have become a virtuous man had fate not prevented. It was not the leering, sneering tempter that she saw, but rather some representation of that archangel ruined, for ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Enlivened the way; How they flirted with bubbles That danced on the wave, Or listened to mermaids That sang from the cave; Or slid with the moonbeams Down deep to the grove Of coral, where mullet And goldfish rove: How there, in long vistas Of silence and sleep, They waltzed, as if mocking The death of the deep: How, oft, where the wreck Lay scattered and torn, They peeped in the skull, All ghastly and lorn; Or deep, 'mid wild rocks, Quizzed the goggling shark, And mouthed at the sea-wolf, ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... that ye are exiles in the forest and suffering great afflictions as if ye had none to take care of you, himself in prosperity, this wretch entertained the desire of beholding you plunged in adversity and misfortune. They came hither for mocking you and the illustrious daughter of Drupada. The lord of the celestials also, having ascertained this purpose of theirs, told me, 'Go thou and bring Duryodhana hither in chains along with his counsellors. Dhananjaya also with his brother should ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Mocking-Bird. "During the space of a minute, I have heard it imitate the woodlark, chaffinch, blackbird, thrush, and sparrow.... Their few natural notes resemble those of the nightingale, but their ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... away. Fruitlessly she hunted through boxes, bowls, flowerpot holders, and the music davenport. And while she was eagerly searching for the portrait, it was growing in size and distinctness in her imagination, attaining to a man's stature, was assuming a mocking air and defying her. Her head was on fire, her feet were like ice, and she could feel terror creeping into the pit of her stomach. Just as she was about to give up the search, about to go and bury her face in her pillow, she remembered that her mother kept some photographs in her ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... sitting-room, and Lot's face confronted her at once, white and peaked, with hollow blue eyes lit, as of old, with a mocking intelligence of life. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... swarm, deploying down the sea: For then, by such bright circumstance abashed, Religion pales and flees thy mind; O then The fears of death leave heart so free of care. But if we note how all this pomp at last Is but a drollery and a mocking sport, And of a truth man's dread, with cares at heels, Dreads not these sounds of arms, these savage swords But among kings and lords of all the world Mingles undaunted, nor is overawed By gleam of gold nor by the splendour bright Of purple robe, canst thou then doubt that this Is aught, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... inhabitants were seen, but in every part where I landed, fires had been made, and the woods of Cape Clinton were then burning; the natives had also been upon Entrance Island, which implied them to have canoes, although none were seen. There are kangaroos in the woods; hawks, and the bald-headed mocking bird of Port Jackson are common; and ducks, sea-pies, and gulls frequent the shoals at low water. Fish were more abundant here than in any port before visited; those taken in the seine at the watering beach were principally ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... knew when he was in earnest, so habitually mocking was his tone. But she grew towards a perception of his ideal, and dimly apprehended in him a mind far beyond any she had ever known. Mrs. Moss, almost as reticent as Mrs. Haney herself, came and went about the studio ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... him with a mocking laugh. "'Our fair land of Spain'," he sneered, "is not the land of the Jew nor have we found it fair." But before he could speak further, the other clapped a warning hand ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... wall, panting, eyes closed. A shocking sense of degradation flooded her soul. She felt as though she were drowning in it, fathoms deep. Her lids fluttered open and she saw the gambler. He was still sitting on the stool. A mocking, cynical smile was in ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... Siam enjoys no exemption from that mocking law which condemns the hero strutting on the stage of the world to cut but a sorry figure at home. Toward these helpless slaves of his nod his deportment was studiously ungracious and mean. No smile of pleased surprise or approbation ever brightened his gloomy countenance. True, the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... the mocking difference of then and now! It isn't a thought that will make one gay, Though they say Jove laughs at the lover's vow— At the lover's vow ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... him with a lamp suspended from a long pole. The performer takes something from his mouth, and, having made a laudatory address regarding its merits, replaces it between his teeth, and resumes his imitations of many birds and quadrupeds. His mocking-bird is very fair; his thrush, passable; but his canary less successful, being rather too reedy and harsh. Farm-yard sounds are thrown off with considerable imitative power. His pig is so good, indeed, that it invites a purchaser, who puts one of the calls into his mouth, and frightfully distorts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Saul's head was sent to the temple of Dagon, probably as a kind of effacing of the shame wrought there by the presence of the ark. The false gods had triumphed, as their worshippers thought, and Saul's death was Jehovah's defeat. That apparent victory of the idols and the mocking exultation over the bloody trophy and dinted armour are, to the historian, not the least bitter consequences ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that which the French singer assumed—was now seventeen, and the poor Prince three-and-twenty. What mocking hand had thought it sport to bring the match so near the powder? A fragrant room hung with rose-colored silk and brilliant with wax lights, a bed dressed in lace, a silent palace, and Venice! Two young and beautiful ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... relenting—solitary Arab's tent, rising with saintly signals of peace, in the dreadful desert, must Kate indeed die even yet, whilst she sees but cannot reach you? Outpost on the frontier of man's dominions, standing within life, but looking out upon everlasting death, wilt thou hold up the anguish of thy mocking invitation, only to betray? Never, perhaps, in this world was the line so exquisitely grazed, that parts salvation and ruin. As the dove to her dove-cot from the swooping hawk—as the Christian pinnace ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... her to the second period of her childhood, when as yet she understood nothing of the things of life. She thought with an almost mocking regret of the days when all her happiness was to work beside her mother in the tapestried salon, to pray in the church, to sing her ballads to a lute, to read in secret a romance of chivalry, to pluck the petals of a flower, discover what gift her ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... never thus favoured unless they have done an extraordinary number of evil deeds since the last period of meeting. After the feast they begin dancing, but such as have no relish for any more exercise in that way amuse themselves by mocking the holy sacrament of baptism. For this purpose the toads are again called and sprinkled with filthy water, the Devil making the sign of the cross, and the witches calling out [oath omitted]. When the Devil wishes to be particularly amused, he makes the witches strip off ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... it is a great comfort to our friends, to have it said, that we ended well; for we all desire (as Balaam did) "to die the death of the righteous." But what shall we call a disesteeming, an opposing, or (indeed) a mocking of God: if those men do not oppose Him, disesteem Him, and mock Him, that think it enough for God, to ask Him forgiveness at leisure, with the remainder and last drawing of a malicious breath? For what ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... there is a shoe, or call it a slippa, that I've rutha hesitated about showin' to you, because I know that you're all rutha serious-minded, I don't ca'e how young ye be, or how good-lookin' ye be; and I don't presume the'e's one among you that's eve head o' dancin'." In the mirthful hooting and mocking that followed, the shoeman hedged gravely from the extreme position he had taken. "What? Well, maybe you have among some the summa folks, but we all know what summa folks ah', and I don't expect you to patte'n by them. But what I will say is that if any young lady within the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... went Israel. She read the letters which her God had written, and believed in the holy promises which they contained. God will in time redeem her; and when he says: "How could you alone be faithful of all the mocking nations?" she will point to the law and answer: "Had not thy law been my delight, I should long since have perished ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... of Evarra — man — Maker of Gods in lands beyond the sea. Because his God decreed one clot of blood Should swerve one hair's-breadth from the pulse's path, And chafe his brain, Evarra mowed alone, Rag-wrapped, among the cattle in the fields, Counting his fingers, jesting with the trees, And mocking at the mist, until his God Drove him to labour. Out of dung and horns Dropped in the mire he made a monstrous God, Abhorrent, shapeless, crowned with plantain tufts, And when the cattle lowed at twilight-time, He dreamed it was the clamour of lost crowds, And howled among the beasts: "Thus ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... that Hicks!" he exploded, gesticulating with a sheaf of papers. "Hicks, the mocking-bird! He is mocking us—with his 'Billion-Dollar Mystery!' Say—here I am writing to Jack Merritt; he played football four years for old Bannister; he was captain of the Gold and Green eleven; last Commencement he graduated, and the last thing he said to me was, 'Scoop, old ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... heaven and bless you!" "Have you done with this preaching?" said the chief commissioner. "You have abused our patience finely," another added; "the nation is generous, and will take care of his education." But she had fainted, and heard not these words of mocking cruelty. Nothing could touch ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... life. He had been married a couple of years, two children had been born to him; yet instead of settling down he appeared suddenly to have become wilder. In 1887 he accepted the editorship of a lady's paper, The Woman's World, and was always mocking at the selection of himself as the "fittest" for such a post: he had grown noticeably bolder. I told myself that an assured income and position give confidence; but at bottom a doubt began to form in me. It can't be denied that from 1887-8 on, incidents occurred from time to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... in Latin, as Ainsworth elaborately explains, "a mocking by grimaces, mows, a flout, a frump, a gibe, a scoff, a banter;" and Sannio is "a fool in a play." The Italians change the S into Z, for they say Zmyrna and Zambuco, for Smyrna and Sambuco; and thus they turned Sannio into Zanno, and then into ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... gone Mrs. Middleton buried her face in her hands, and sent forth sob after sob from her crushed heart—crushed by the sinfulness and mocking disobedience of her first born. While she was still weeping, Fanny stole softly from the apartment and went in quest of her sister. She found her, as she had expected, in her room, and going up to her threw her arms around her neck, and plead long and earnestly that she would go to Mr. Wilmot. ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... swayed with a mocking grace, And held our gaze as they flitted by; Our deep-drawn breaths were our sole reply, As one by ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... the moralist, the theologian, or,—leaving both revelation and the pandects,—become the philosopher, pacing the universe for occult truth; or the metaphysician, tracking the region of the supersensuous; and, over every theme, flying on mocking mental pinions, seeming an intellectual satan, passing through the region of vain questionings and doubtful disquisition, dim out to the abyss. And thus he lived, using, and abusing, his rare gifts; no ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... mocking, cruel invention— What the deep intention? Who shall give replies? Demons wildly sporting, God's beautiful distorting, Or His ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... on ankle or wrist, to tell of captivity, the little man was running about the hill, to all appearance as he list—his moving shadow dodging hither and thither, as if it were a long-legged, short-bodied goblin quizzically mocking his motions, or playing at hide-and-seek with him among the trees and bushes. But Burl observed that the dear little fellow, though left to his freedom, never came nigh the giant, nor the grim ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... that not only as regards style, but the prevailing mood of mind in which the facts and characters are scanned. That mood is for the most part ironical. There is philanthropy, doubtless, at the bottom of it all; but a mocking spirit, a profound and pungent irony, are the manifest and prevailing characteristics. It is a philanthropy which has borrowed the manner of Mephistopheles. It is a modern Diogenes—in fact it is Diogenes Teufelsdrockh himself, surveying the Revolution from his solitary watch-tower, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... stature before the bending of the solemn figure with the covered head. Samuel anointing David.—A king again, with face hidden in deep shade, holding a naked sword in his right hand, and a living infant in the other; and two women before him, one with a mocking smile on her face, the other with her head turned up in passionate entreaty, grown women they are plainly, but dwarfed to the stature of young girls before the hidden face of the King. The judgment of Solomon.—An old ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... recollection of his turning to look into the face of that magnificent looking young man who had been the cynosure of all eyes as he left the church with his mother. He was conscious also of a strange uncanny sense that this smiling handsome man, with mocking, dancing light in his eyes, was no ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... announce that his "roadster" waited for him at the hotel entrance, and Corliss put on a fur motoring coat and cap, and went downstairs. A door leading from the hotel bar into the lobby was open, and, as Corliss passed it, there issued a mocking shout: ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... the mocking-bird Was singing loud and clear, But notes more musical to me Were falling on my ear; For from your noble heart you poured Love's low, yet thrilling tone, And every word your pure soul breathed Was ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... Famous Victories of Henry V.," the old play which gave Shakespeare his roistering Prince and the first faint hint of Falstaff, Harry Percy lived in story and in oral tradition. His nickname itself is sufficient evidence of the impression he had made on the popular fancy. And both Prince Henry when mocking him, and his wife when praising him, bear witness to what were, no doubt, the accepted peculiarities of his character. Hotspur lived in the memory of men, we may be sure, with thick, hasty speech, and hot, impatient temper, and it is ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... hawk carry away the poor little duck; but he soon laughed again, for as he watched the robber in his flight through the air, he saw a number of little birds fly after him,—sparrows, swallows, finches, all chirping at him and mocking him; then a tribe of bigger birds, blackbirds, magpies, rooks, and jays, flew after him also; and as the hawk could not fly fast with the duckling in his claws, they soon overtook him, and we saw them peck at his wings and his tail, and pull his feathers out; and they all screamed and ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... Stephen—in which Archie was his unconscious helper. Then, if Stephen ventured to speak while waiting outside for admittance in the morning—which he did very seldom—Simon would repeat his words in a loud, mocking voice, and comment upon them, and turn them into ridicule, till poor Stephen dreaded the sight of him more than of all the ...
— Archie's Mistake • G. E. Wyatt
... seemed—something flickered on the surface of the water in front of him. A shadowy white gleam it was. It danced before his eyes like a mocking spirit—and was gone. But shortly it reappeared, and with it a lantern and a rope, with somebody clinging to the end of the rope. Trevannion had just time to recognise the figure of Garstin, swaying slowly above him, before he ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Op. 2, he says: "The composer pretends to be going to work out the theme." It is curious, and sad at the same time, to behold with what distinction Chopin treats the bassoon, and how he is repaid with mocking ingratitude. But enough of the orchestral rabble. The Adagio is very fine in its way, but such is its cloying sweetness that one longs for something bracing and active. This desire the composer satisfies only partially in the last movement (Rondo vivace, 2-4, E major). Nevertheless, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... said a mocking voice overhead, and there was that wretched parrot, looking down from one of the ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... hard at work with the mistiness of dreaming. He was half aware that he was stretched out upon a bed, yet it seemed to him that he was bound down with fetters of iron, which resisted his wildest efforts to break. It seemed to him that he was struggling fiercely, and that Jake was looking on mocking him. At last, utterly weary and exhausted he gave up trying and called upon Arizona. He shouted loudly, but he could not hear his own voice; he shouted again and again, raising his screams to a fearful pitch, but still no sound came. Then he thought that Jake went away, and ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... still when I would embrace you? If we could throw our arms around one another we might find sad comfort in the sharing of our sorrows even in the house of Hades; does Proserpine want to lay a still further load of grief upon me by mocking me with ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... uncaringly, that house upon the sand which a delusion of the spirit had made seem a castle grounded in eternity. Why blind one's self to the truth and call life fair? For what had they fought and suffered and believed and hoped? Just to hear the mocking voice of the ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... at discord with his character. He was proud of his order, and yet despised its actual leaders. He was ready alternately to boast of his vices and to be conscious that they were degrading. He shocked the respectable world by mocking 'Satanically,' as they held, at moral conventions, and yet rather denounced the hypocrisy and the heartlessness of precisians than insulted the real affections. He covered sympathy with human suffering under a mask of misanthropy, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... tried to shake off their influence. Once or twice she caught a glimpse of a black shadow over her shoulder, just a reflecting vanishing glimpse, and when she turned hastily round there was nothing there, but the voices, mocking and gibbering, ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... the chief priests mocking said among themselves with the scribes, "He saved others; himself he cannot save. Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross, that we may ...
— Jesus of Nazareth - A Biography • John Mark
... eyes must answer now, When Reason, with a scornful brow, Is mocking at my overthrow! Oh, thy sweet tongue must plead for me And tell why ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... exceedingly treacherous one, for both Mr. Audubon and Mr. Nuttall speak of his efforts to decoy little birds within his reach by imitating their notes, and he does this so closely that he is called a mocking-bird in some parts of New England. When he utters his usual note and reveals himself, his voice very properly resembles the 'discordant creaking of a sign-board hinge.' A flock of snow-birds or finches may be sporting and feeding in some low shrubbery, for instance. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... sang "Listen to the Mocking Bird," which it repeated very creditably indeed, dropping but two notes on the third verse. This it made up for, I am bound to admit, by throwing in some ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... receive the transmission. Most of all they must have that "other" quality, so triumphant and self-verifying that seeing it constrains belief. A mediator wholly unlike ourselves would be a meaningless and mocking figure. But a mediator who was chiefly like ourselves would ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch |
