"Sneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me. You must know too that there are many better painters here than Master Jacob (Jacopo de' Barbari) is abroad (wider darvsen Meister J.), yet Anton Kolb would swear an oath that no better painter lives than Jacob. Others sneer at him, saying if he were good he would stay here, and ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... anybody?" she asked peevishly. "And you needn't sneer. He's done lots else besides just seeing animals. Once he steered a ship in the South Seas for two days and two nights when the crew were down with the New Guinea fever. And another time he was working at a mine in Andalusia. The miners went on strike. He and some ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... in front," Mrs. Hart said, as she bent forward and squinted sidewise with quite a visible sneer. "You'd look powerful funny walking along kicking up the skirt behind. With a veil on nobody could tell whether you was going or coming. Take my word for it—that stuff'll fade, even in the sun. You won't get more than one or two wearings out ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... of the Boers are not intended to produce a sneer at their ignorance, but to excite the compassion of their friends. They are perpetually talking about their laws; but practically theirs is only the law of the strongest. The Bechuanas could never ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... forget how I saved my coppers, one by one, until I had accumulated a sum large enough to buy a whole cocoanut, which I presented to her in the proudest moment of my life, and how the other girls tossed their heads with the affectation of a sneer, and with pretended indifference to this astonishing stroke of fortune? And that fatal evening when I provoked my little beauty's wrath, and in all the receding opportunities of "Post-Office" and "Copenhagen" she had turned her face ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... This creature of an obsolete order had the temerity to laugh at her. Moreover—— She flashed a glance from Clavering's angry anxious face to the beautiful woman opposite, and a real color blazed in her cheeks. But she summoned a sneer. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... are quick to see the blemish in the distant neighbor's style, You can point to all his errors and may sneer at him the while, And your prejudices fatten and your hates more violent grow As you talk about the failures of the man you do not know, But when drawn a little closer, and your hands and shoulders touch, You find the traits you hated really don't ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... to Norie—to die and set free Honoria to marry Major Petworth Armstrong! She felt Norie still hankered after him, but perhaps kept him at bay partly because of her mother's molluscous clingings—No! she wouldn't even sneer at Lady Fraser. Lady Fraser had been one of the early champions of Woman's rights. Very likely it was a dread of Vivie's sneers and disappointment that had mainly kept back Norie from accepting Major Armstrong's advances. Well, when next they met she—Vivie—or better ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Hatchway, I always took you to be a better seaman than to overset our chaise in such fair weather. Blood! didn't I tell you we were running bump ashore, and bid you set in the ice-brace, and haul up a wind?"—"Yes," replied the other, with an arch sneer, "I do confess as how you did give such orders, after you had run us foul of a post, so as that the carriage lay along, and could not right herself."—"I run you foul of a post!" cried the commander: "d— ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... turpitude. Rome under the dying glories of the empire scarcely parallels its knavish gluttonies of illegal seizure. And Wall Street has been the boiling point of all this infectious train of outrages against a patient people—one that presumes to rate itself really democratic, and to sneer at countries over seas in which to-day a Credit Mobilier, a Pacific Railroad atrocity, a Manhattan Railroad brigandage, would make Trafalgar Square or the Place de la Concorde howl ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... riding," said he with a sneer; "it's worth a ride to Fahan to fetch a truss of straw when there's plenty ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt, Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt; Then, while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip, Defiance glanced in Casey's eye, a sneer curled ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... of their less fortunate hedge-bottom brethren and the British public, who delight in calling them either 'the King,' 'Queen,' 'Prince,' or 'Princess.' It is true also that there are vast numbers of the Gipsies who, with a chuckle, tongue in cheek, wink of the eye, side grin and a sneer, say they have these important personages amongst them; and if any little extra stir is being made at a fair-time in the country lanes, in the neighbourhood of straw-yards, they will be sure to tell them that either the 'king,' 'queen,' ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the level of their understandings, return it to them thus modified, and lay on the lash of sarcasm with unsparing hand. They would feel the sting, perhaps wince a little under it; but they bore no malice against this sort of attack, provided the sneer was not sour, but hearty, and that it held well up to them, in a clear, light, and bold type, so that she who ran might read, their incapacity, ignorance, and sloth. They would riot for three additional lines to a lesson; but I never knew them rebel against a wound given to their self-respect: ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... too supercilious and ready to sneer. It is only bad taste. It may have been very true devotion which erected these ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this class of persons. They are usually found quite credulous regarding matters beyond their everyday field of work and thought, and accept without question the most ridiculous teachings and dogmas reaching them from the voice of some claimed authority, while they sneer at some advanced teaching which their minds are incapable of comprehending. Anything which seems unusual to them is deemed "flighty," and lacking in appeal to ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... Andy, and there was a sneer in his voice. "Well, I don't think you can do it, Tom Swift! You'll never build an airship; even if you have a ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... were all slaves and, I believe, full-blooded Negroes. They constituted a remarkable quintet of slave leaders, combined the very qualities of head and heart which Vesey most needed at the stage then reached by his unfolding plot. For fear lest some of their critics might sneer at the sketch of them which I am tempted to give, as lacking in probability and truth, I will insert instead the careful estimate placed upon them severally by their slave judges. And here it is: "In the selection of his leaders, Vesey showed great penetration and sound judgment. ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... sneer again" is to carry canvas to such an extent as to strain the ropes and spars to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... as snow, seemed to shrink before his sneer as from a deadly weapon; and like a flash of light some divination of the truth pierced the Westerner's brain. They were fugitives from justice, making for the Mexican line. That the man was wounded a single glance had told him. It was plain to be seen that the wear ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... her the various articles he had used; among others, his rosary, crucifix and prayer-book. How careful he had been to keep them hidden away, where they might not offend her eye, or provoke her ridicule and sneer. She read every day, in the "Following of Christ," the chapter John had last read, which the faded rose ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his witty endeavours might have so easily elicited. That the school, indeed, did not feel his design, perceive its accomplishment, and participate in his sneer, was, for many anxious months, a riddle I could not resolve. Perhaps the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible; or, more possibly, I owed my security to the master air of the copyist, who, disdaining the letter, (which in a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Holland may have entertained from Sir Jacob Downing have not reached us; but it is right to say, that Mr. Walpole had quarrelled with Lord Holland, and was glad on any occasion, just or otherwise, to sneer ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the Colonel began, a sneer on his thin lips, "is larger than you may think. At the top of a wing which stretches back toward the jungle there is a room where Spanish prisoners were once confined. With your permission I'll escort you boys there, advising you, in the meantime, ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... is the way that physicians mend or end us, Secundum artem: but although we sneer In health—when ill, we call them to attend us, Without the least propensity ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... a cold sneer, "he is, too—at least as far as church and state can make him; but I am no more his wife at heart than I am Satan's. Truly of the two I should prefer the latter, for then I should be wedded to something grand—a fallen angel; as it is, I have the honor to be wife ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... us he had never before heard. Sir, if the honorable member had never before heard of Mr. Dane, I am sorry for it. It shows him less acquainted with the public men of the country than I had supposed. Let me tell him, however, that a sneer from him at the mention of the name of Mr. Dane is in bad taste. It may well be a high mark of ambition, Sir, either with the honorable gentleman or myself, to accomplish as much to make our names known to advantage, and remembered with gratitude, as Mr. Dane has accomplished. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... was reason to think so; besides, I met him as I was going to the feast, stopped him, and told him where I was hastening; when he replied, as I thought, with a sneer, 'You will have a delicate repast!' I did not then know that he was entrusted with the care of it, and concluded that this manner of answering me arose from my supposition of his not being invited; but the tart was no sooner cut up than his reason for answering ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... sailors believe that ships have souls, it may be that she gloried in her shame, like other fallen creatures; for her large, slanting oval hawse-pipes and boot-top stripe gave a fine, Oriental sneer to her face-like bow, and there was slur and insult to respectable craft in the lazy dignity with which she would swash through the fleet on the port tack, compelling vessels on the starboard tack to give up their right of way or be rammed; ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... terrible Bishop, the man who had put military discipline into the ranks of his mighty organization, rode his horse as the Kaiser would have liked to ride entering Paris. His small, bitter, fanatical face wore a deeply carved sneer. His great black beard flapped in the breeze, and he sang as he rode. Behind him came huge floats depicting in startling tableaux the hideous menace of the gooseberry. Bands blared and crashed. Then, ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... And I wake from my dreaming," he mused. "Wake to know That my place is not here—I must go—I must go. Who dares laugh at Love shall hear Love laughing last, As forth from his bowstring barbed arrows are cast. I scoffed at the god with a sneer on my lip, And he forces me now from his chalice to sip A bitter sweet potion. Ah, lightly the part Of a lover I've played many times, but my heart Has been proud in its record of friendship. And now The mad, eager lover born in me must bow ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... fancy worse. Forsaken by th'inspiring Nine, I waited at Apollo's shrine: I told him what the world would say, If Stella were unsung to-day: How I should hide my head for shame, When both the Jacks and Robin came; How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer, How Sheridan the rogue would sneer, And swear it does not always follow, That semel'n anno ridet Apollo. I have assur'd them twenty times, That Phoebus help'd me in my rhymes; Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove. But, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... with a sneer, "do YOU want to take the kid and raise her, yourself? We've either got to do away with her, or keep her hid. Do YOU want to be her nurse, and keep with her in some cave or other ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... idle, then, to sneer at 'medical materialism,' and stigmatise it as superficial. Many people are constitutionally afraid of words, and there is nothing that arouses prejudice so quickly as a name. But it is really not a question of materialism, medical or non-medical. It is a mere matter ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... got a photograph, I should have headed for Japan, not for France." I laughed, but I was thinking deeply. His line of reasoning as to the incongruity of the marriage was not so different from my own that I could sneer at his suspicions. Very convincingly, as became a practical-minded man, he expanded his views as to the unlikelihood of my uncle's marrying a girl but little beyond school age. I shrank from telling him ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... ran on—(but here, No tale, (tho' in print, more true is) 50 My Muse stops short in mid career— Nay, gentle Reader, do not sneer! I cannot chuse but drop a tear, A ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... corruption in our American cities, the use of town councils, State legislatures, and even of the Federal Government in the interests of private business, have discredited the democratic system throughout the world. It has given more material for those of other lands who despise democracy to sneer at us than anything that has yet happened in this land. And this has come about under the regime of the emancipated woman. Is she in no way responsible for it? If she had kept the early ideals of the woman's part in democracy as clearly before her ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... sentimental, bold as a lion, destructively experienced in hardship and endurance, very quick indeed to single out and wither humbug that was within her range of knowledge, but innocent as a child before any other sort of humbug whatsoever. That was why she could now sneer at the stage-heroine, and could play with the mysterious beauties of her own reflection; but it was why she could also be led into quick indignation by ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... scowl with a lazy sneer. The young man would pay also, and that reflection was nectar to his soul. Carelessly he betook himself to the verandah. The dancing did not attract him—so he had told Daisy Musgrave earlier in the day, a remark of which she had been swift ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... formality of a greeting Feisel smiled down at Philon in a half-sneer. "Well, Philon, how we doin' with ...
— The House from Nowhere • Arthur G. Stangland
... grim little joke to stand as it is," he said, as he snapped his big jaws together and twisted the muscles of his mouth into a sneer. He had a habit, when he closed an emphatic speech, of twisting the muscles of his mouth in that way. When animated in talk, he was the incarnation of disobedience, defiance, ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... duty!" he exclaimed, with a sneer. "It shall not be a light one, let me tell you. Now, as you can walk, find some food—shell-fish and water. I don't ask for impossibilities, but take care you do not touch any till I ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... in holiday garments joining in the long train, and if they have no land they have money, good store, and as for their churches, they are eclipsing us all. Their invasion of our territory is a dreadful scandal, and they sneer at us and at all other religious men and women and they flout the parish priests and call them humdrums, and schism is at work horribly, and the people are running away from the old guides, and there ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... put in Scipio, nodding cheerfully, while the stained-glass windows flung flecks of red and blue on his honest ebony features. "An' Cai Tamblyn all de while no better'n a fool. 'Him,' he'd sneer, not playin' up, but pullin' his cross face. Dat's a lesson if ebber dere was one. Cai Tamblyn left with fifty, an' me with three time fifty. 'To my faithful servant, Scipio Johnson. . . .' And so Miss Marty, when it came to choose, took me on—Scipio Johnson, Esquire, of this Parish—and ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the face that looks at it. To meet hate with hate, and scorn with scorn, is not the way to turn hate into love and scorn into sympathy. Indifferent equilibrium in the presence of active antagonism is not possible for us. As long as we are sensitive we shall wince from a blow, or a sarcasm, or a sneer. We must bless in order to keep ourselves from cursing. The lesson is very hard, and the only way of obeying it fully is to keep near Christ and drink in His spirit who prayed 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... berths. It was pleasant, certainly, to laugh at Joinville's admiral's flag floating at his foremast, in yonder black ship, with its two thundering great guns at the bows and stern, its busy crew swarming on the deck, and a crowd of obsequious shore-boats bustling round the vessel—and to sneer at the Mogador warrior, and vow that we English, had we been inclined to do the business, would have performed it ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... come from anyone else, I should have turned the question aside with a sneer. But it so happens that I owe a great deal of gratitude to this particular Friend. It was he who, at a time when I was so afflicted with rheumatism that I could scarcely leap five feet into the air without pain, said to me one day quite casually: ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... the precious things of the soul, I should think you would be very glad to prove it by some sacrifice; and I know that two hearts are brought closer, and all the memories of life made dearer, by some such trial in the early days. People sneer at love in a cottage, but I am sure that love that could wish to live anywhere else is not love. And as to the social career, a person who has once come to know the life of the heart soon ceases to care for any kind of life that is heartless; a social ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... made the men draw nearer. Was it a sneer? A slur on all things English? A challenge to resent the statement, and resenting, to show one's mettle? Frontiersmen on the upper Missouri fought at a word in the early seventies. No need for cause. Men had been shot for less ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... to get married, and least of all to a seeress. Precognition is the least understood of the Psi powers, and the most erratic. But of all people, I could least afford to sneer ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... drift-wood, and launching them on voyages across the cove, with the feather of a sea-gull for a sail. If the voice of ages tell me true, this is as wise an occupation as to build ships of five hundred tons, and launch them forth upon the main, bound to "far Cathay." Yet, how would the merchant sneer at me! ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been excited; on his sending a lictor to one of the soldiers who was clamorous, when a tumult and scuffle arose from the circumstance, being struck with a stone he retired from the crowd; the person who had given the blow, further observing with a sneer, "That the quaestor got what the general had threatened to the soldiers." Postumius being sent for in consequence of the disturbance, exasperated every thing by the severity of his inquiries and the cruelty ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... and he could have throttled on the spot the man who by perjury, out of vindictiveness and for selfish reasons, had marred his existence forever. The blood rushed to his head as he saw this same man striding past him now, a sneer on his lips, in haughty indifference. Nay, worse, he heard the commander of the regiment say ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... circulating in the homes of the poor, flowing through the little shops which cater to their needs, cementing again family unions which harsh fate was tearing asunder, uniting the wife to the husband, and the parent to the children. No; in spite of Socialistic sneer and Tory jeer and glorious beer, and all the rest of it, I say it is a noble and inspiring event, for which this Parliament will be justly honoured by generations unborn. I said just now that a Tory tariff victory ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... answered, with a laugh; "and what poor gull am I to adore an attested wanton?" Then, with a sneer, he spoke of Melicent, and in such terms as ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... know, pray, that they are perishing?" answered Tom, with something very like a sneer. "And if they were, do you honestly believe that any talk of yours can change in five minutes a character which has been forming for years, or prevent a man's going where he ought to go,— which, I suppose, is the place to which ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... a determined, savage, implacable trot. He caught up on the Carl at last, for the latter had stopped to eat blackberries from the bushes on the road, and when he drew nigh, Cael began to jeer and sneer angrily at ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... nephew who came to see her now and then. He had obtained an open exhibition at Oxford, and one day I found that he had a Greek Euripides in his pocket, and that he needed little help from a dictionary. He sometimes brought with him a college friend, and well do I remember a sneer from this gentleman about the poor creatures whose acquaintance with AEschylus was derived from Potter. I did not look at a translation again for ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... harpoon-like with energy sufficient to batter in the forehead of a bullock. But the listless implement bounced off the head of the shark as a stick from a drum, provoking merely a contemptuous wave of the tail which seemed to signify a sneer. The axe was also employed with negative results, for the difficulty of delivering an effective blow from the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... and alter our type. We didn't listen to Matthew Arnold. We've never thoroughly turned out and cleaned up our higher schools. We've resisted instruction. We've preferred to maintain our national luxuries of a bench of bishops and party politics. And compulsory Greek and the university sneer. And Lady Frensham. And all that sort of thing. And here we are!... Well, damn it, we're in for it now; we've got to plough through with it—with what ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Burgos? For what? To show my scars and hear court ladies Rail at the wars for making men so hideous? To bear the coxcomb's sneer, the minion's fawning, And see fools sweetly smile at my good fortune, Who, when my death was signed, smiled full as sweetly? No, no, I'll none on't. [Seeing Caesario.] Plagues and fiends! another! More gold and silk; more ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... indignation upon the young girl's face. Mrs. Arnot watched the by-play with an amused expression. There was not much cynicism in her nature. She believed that experience would soon prick the bubble of his vanity, and it was her disposition to smile rather than to sneer at absurdity in others. Besides, she was just. She never applied to a young man of twenty the standard by which she would measure those of her own age, and she remembered Haldane's antecedents. But Mr. Arnot went to his ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... it revealed. "So that's where he's going," he said softly to himself. "Cousin Alex was right as usual." He grimaced unpleasantly. "He's up to something—that's for sure." His face twisted into an expression that was half sneer, half triumph. "This is going to be fun." He moved the control, and his airboat, hovering silently at five thousand meters, dropped toward the ground in free fall as Douglas loosened the Burkholtz in the holster ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... exertions, that zeal which has never wavered, that hope so steadfast, since it is that of an Englishwoman for her husband, that patience under misconstruction, that forgiveness for the sneer of jealousy, and that pity for the malicious, which you have so pre-eminently displayed, may yet, by God's help, one day reap its reward in the accomplishment of your wishes, is ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... fashioned unuttered entreaties,— Went, and came again in a year at the time of the meeting, Haggard and wan of face, and wasted with passion and sorrow. Dead in his eyes was the careless smile of old, and its phantom Haunted his lips in a sneer of restless, incredulous mocking. Day by day he came to the outer skirts of the circle, Dwelling on her, where she knelt by the white-haired exhorter, her father, With his hollow looks, and never moved ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... persuasive powers," she said, with almost a sneer in her tones, "you'd better not go to Elmhurst. One or the other of your country cousins might supplant you in ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... stranger had at last become Tired of long waiting, and of sitting dumb Upon his charger; so with greenest leer He vented his impatience in a sneer. "Is this," he said, "the glorious Table Round, And is its glory naught but empty sound? Braggarts! I put your bluster to the test, And find you quail before a merry jest!" Then the great king himself stood up in ire, With clenched hand raised, and eyes that gleamed dark fire, And fronting the ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... it's a stupid, stubborn reason. Oh, I heard you talking with the second mate. You're afraid the other captains will sneer at you because you didn't come back with a full ship. You want to live up to our silly reputation even if you do have to beat and starve men and drive ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... everywhere by her beauty and splendor achieve new successes and triumphs! She would frequent the circles of American ministers, for the express purpose of meeting there her countrywomen, and overwhelming by her magnificence those who had once, dared to sneer at that high flavor of Indian blood which had given luster to her raven hair and fire to her dark eyes! Returning to England after this royal progress on the Continent she would pass her days in cherishing her beauty ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... misogamists and misogynists may sneer at love, and jeer at marriage. So melancholy is this our age that even by some women marriage seems to be doubted. Yet we may believe that there is not a woman in all Christendom who does not dote upon the name of ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... the last "Atlantic." If anything could make John Bull blush, I should think it might be that; but he is a hardened and villainous hypocrite. I always felt that he cared nothing for or against slavery, except as it gave him a vantage- ground on which to parade his own virtue and sneer at ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... He certainly seems to be doing his damnedest. [With a sneer.] The stage missed a great actor ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... and Ezekiel and the Revelation. Dante, Blake, Shelley, the best of Lamennais and the best of Hugo excite in me nothing but a passionate reverence. I can walk day-long and night-long by Ulai and Chebar and Lethe-Eunoe and have no thought of sneer or slumber, shrug or satiety. But when you ask me to be agitated at Count Albert of Rudolstadt's violin ventriloquising Satan I really must decline. I do even remember the poor creature Paul de Kock, and would fain turn to one of the things he was ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Molly with a sneer. "Do you mean to try to choke it down my throat that my whiteness would save me should your people rise up against Niggers in Wilmington? Honestly, Ben Hartright, do you mean that?" Molly arose from the sofa and stood up before ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... of Mongolfier, nor the dubious contrivance of Marriott. A gentleman of proper aspirations would scorn to employ either, as the Man-Frog would reject a diving-bell, or the subterranean chieftain would sneer at the Mont Cenis tunnel. These "weak inventions" only emphasize our impotence to strive with the subtle element about and above. They prove nothing so conclusively as that we can't fly-a fact still more strikingly proven by the constant thud of people tumbling out of them. To ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... The sneer conveyed in the tones stung him to the quick. But he made an effort to conceal his chagrin, and said, with apparent calmness: "You must admit it was an unaccountable freak to start for the plantation in the evening, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... that little conventional speech," he cried with a sneer. "A man builds all his hopes of happiness on one woman, and she coolly shatters the fabric of his life, and then tells him to go and build elsewhere. I daresay there are women in the world who would condescend to marry me if I asked them, ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... "You may sneer as much as you like," he at length blurted out, "but you cannot deny that your visits to this house are paid with the object of addressing my affianced wife. You are right when you describe such conduct as ungentlemanly. You are no gentleman! But ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... fine example of late Victorian instructional material of the unpretentious persuasion. Some of Browne's views were ahead of his time in terms of compassion and conservation, so I urge modern readers not to sneer at what they see as his out-of-date interest in "stuffed animals". Nor should they take too patronising an attitude to Browne's long paragraphs and occasionally strained concordances; he was not a professional writer and he produced a fine, readable, and useful work. Both to the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... militarism. For this same year agriculture received for all its needs the comparatively paltry sum of $12,000,000. In spite of the fact that our nation is devoting two thirds of its enormous national expenditures to war, our militarists point to our vast national wealth and sneer at the niggardly mortals who object to spending it ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... their sermons, set forth the majesty and beauty of Christianity with such justness of thought, and such energy of language, that the indolent Charles roused himself to listen and the fastidious Buckingham forgot to sneer; men whose address, politeness, and knowledge of the world qualified them to manage the consciences of the wealthy and noble; men with whom Halifax loved to discuss the interests of empires, and from whom Dryden was not ashamed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sneer at the pretty things, and turn away because they weren't gold, or silver, or precious ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... generally of the other passengers. When we took the vacant seat behind them, we were subject to a prolonged stare from the two young misses, and we distinctly heard one of them address the other, saying with a sneer, "I wonder how much that old lady's bonnet cost, when new, I would ask her only it must have been so long ago, I am sure she has forgotten by this time." Aunt Lucinda was not one to let this pass unnoticed. Touching the young lady lightly on the shoulder, to attract ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... young Lamotte, with something very like a sneer upon his handsome face. "Let me repair the damage. I'll ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... a wish ascribed to a great and good man—Johnson, and which has been noticed with a sneer by unbelievers, a wish that he might see a spirit from the other world, to testify to him of the truth of the resurrection. This has been sneered at, as if it were a confession of the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence which we ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... features were bold but very regular; the piercing, steel-gray eyes were unusually large, and beautifully shaded with long heavy, black lashes, but repelled by their cynical glare; and the finely formed mouth, which might have imparted a wonderful charm to the countenance, wore a chronic, savage sneer, as if it only opened to utter jeers and curses. Evidently the face had once been singularly handsome, in the dawn of his earthly career, when his mother's good-night kiss rested like a blessing ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... cannot walk the Way,— The thorns, the thirst, the darkness, And bleeding feet and aching heart! I hear the songs and revels of the throng,— They sneer upon my downcast face with scorn,— Yet, O my God, I must and shall ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... to devotion's highest flight sublime Exalt the mind, by tenderest pathos' art, Dissolve, in purifying tears, the heart, Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime; The fond illusions of the youth and maid, At which so many world-formed sages sneer, When by thy altar-lighted torch displayed, Our natural religion must appear. All things in thee tend to one polar star, Magnetic all ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... recovering from a shock. Altogether, Diana felt that her deed of daring had fallen very flat. She was annoyed that no one congratulated her upon it. She considered that for a girl of fourteen it was rather a record. Monty would not be able to sneer at "Miss America" again. She strolled in a casual way past the font which he was decorating, and made a final effort to wring from him ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... a sneer. "How comes it, then, that yonder I see a waggon laden with goods, and oxen in the yokes? Yes," he repeated with meaning, "with goods whereof we have known the like at Buluwayo; for Lobengula also sometimes buys guns from white ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... ought rather to have said that Christians inculcate, theoretically, a contempt of the present life, while, practically, they enter as keenly into its pleasures as the 'worldling,'"—uttering the last word with an approach to a sneer. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... expenditure of money amassed through the clever advertising and sale of table relishes, throat emollients, fireside novels, canned edibles, cigarettes, and chewing tobacco. The money was no doubt legitimately earned. The patent-medicine man and the millionaire tailor have my entire respect. I do not sneer at honest wealth acquired by these humble means. The rise—if it be a rise—of these and others like them is superficial evidence, perhaps, that ours is a democracy. Looking deeper, we see that it is, in fact, proof of our utter and ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... blessings! Dost Thou forget that my soul has been an abyss of sin? How is this, O Lord, how can it be that such great grace has come to the lot of one who has so ill deserved such things at Thy hands!' He who can read that, and a hundred passages as good as that, and who shall straightway set himself to sneer and scoff and disparage and find fault, he is well on the way to the sin against the Holy Ghost. At any rate, I would be if I did not revere and love and imitate such a saint of God. Given God and His Son and His Holy Spirit: given sin and salvation and prayer and a holy life; and, with many ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... the center of a broad elephant trail near the drinking hole, the warriors turned back toward their village. On the morrow they would come again. Tarzan looked after them, upon his lips an unconscious sneer—the heritage of unguessed caste. He saw them file along the broad trail, beneath the overhanging verdure of leafy branch and looped and festooned creepers, brushing ebon shoulders against gorgeous blooms which inscrutable Nature has seen fit to lavish ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wealth, who might, if he pleased, be distinguished in parliament, in society, on the turf itself, or in any of the pursuits where unlimited supplies of money are strictly necessary. The old amateurs, whom La Bruyere was wont to sneer at, were not satisfied unless they possessed many thousands of books. For a collector like Cardinal Mazarin, Naude bought up the whole stock of many a bookseller, and left great towns as bare of printed paper as if a tornado had passed, and blown the leaves ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... at least half this modest, but useful supply, to dressing the little Gerard beyond his station in life. "If it does come from Gerard, he shall see his boy neat." All the mothers in the street began to sneer, especially such as had brats ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... point. On Monday. If it weren't for the journey, I should have been glad enough to be rid of the minx. I'm glad as it is, indeed; for a more insolent, upstanding, independent, answer-you-back-again young woman, with a sneer of her own, I never saw, Amelia—but I must get to Schlangenbad. Now, there the difficulty comes in. On the one hand, if I engage a maid in London, I have the choice of two evils. Either I must take a trapesing English girl—and I know by experience ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... back in wonder and tried to listen. It was all about a mysterious companionship with God, stuff that sounded like "rot" to him; uncanny, unreal, mystical, impossible! Could it be true that Court, their peach of a Court, whose sneer and criticism alike had been dreaded by all who came beneath them—could it be that so sensible and scholarly and sane a mind as Court's could take up with a superstition like that? For it ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... been. Men who have endured the lifelong laceration of taunt and sneer and suffered the loss of well nigh all things, there have been not a few. Though the fires of persecution have burned with fiercer intensity in other parts of China, yet we have not escaped having our garments singed ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... this was not the first head it had been in; far from that. Above a year ago, as Friedrich himself informed us, it had been in Friedrich's own head,—though at the time it went for absolutely nothing, nobody even bestowing a sneer on it (as Friedrich intimates), and disappeared through the Horn-Gate ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Avenue doesn't call on Culman Terrace, you know. . . ." Again she laughed. "No, Jack isn't made for that sort of life, thank God. He aches for the big spaces in his boyish way, for the lands where there are big things to be done. . . . And I've encouraged him. There'll be nobody there to sneer if his clothes get frayed and he can't buy any more—because of the children's boots. There'll be no appearances to keep up there. And I'd a thousand times rather that Jack should stand—or fall—in such surroundings, than that he should sink ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... habit. A year will with certainty accomplish it. Your physiognomy has naturally much of benevolence, and it will cost you some labour (which you may well spare) to eradicate it. Avoid, for ever avoid, a smile or sneer of contempt; never even mimic them. A frown of sullenness or discontent is but one degree less hateful. You seem to require these things of me, or I should have thought them unnecessary. I see, with pleasure I see, that you have engaged in this matter. We shall both be gratified by the result, which ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... again. One of the next arrivals was Bell Masters, very fine in her new dress, but flushed and overheated to an unbecoming degree. She rowed up smartly, shipped her oars in true nautical fashion, sprang from the boat, and held out her hand to her companion with a hardly repressed sneer: "Pray allow me to assist ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... I ever heard anywhere; and I was wonderfully struck with these inveterate remains of her origin, though the impression was very much weakened by seeing the other ladies of Naples." A naval lieutenant at Naples stated he "thought her a very handsome, vulgar woman." There is no stabbing with a sneer about this opinion. It expresses in a few words the candid opinion of the sailor. Mrs. St. George thinks her "bold, daring, vain even to folly, and stamped with the manners of her first situation much more strongly than one would suppose, after having ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... phantasy;—or search the breast of her, who lets concealment "feed on her damask cheek"—who prays blessings on him, who hath wasted her youthful charms—then mounts with virgin soul to heaven:—we, in our turn, might sneer at the worldling, and pin our fate on the tale of the peasant girl, who discourses so glibly of ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... than we were painted"? — Faith, no word of black was said; The lightest touch was human blood, and that, you know, runs red. It's sticking to your fist to-day for all your sneer and scoff, And by the Judge's well-weighed word ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... the above prayer, Mazin turning humbly towards his accursed betrayer, said in a supplicating tone, "What hast thou done, my father? didst thou not promise me enjoyment and pleasure?" The magician, after striking him, with a scowling and malignant sneer, exclaimed, "Thou dog! son of a dog! my pleasure is in thy destruction. Nine and thirty such ill-devoted wretches as thyself have I already sacrificed, and thou shalt make the fortieth victim to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... will appreciate such heroism, exhibited at the sacrifice of your own blood and family, you do not know your countrymen in these days. The only men who deal in sentiment in our time are demagogues, who never feel it. A sneer will go up from all the circles of the capital, from all the presses of the land, at a man who seeks, in a political age, to play the part ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... boldly, without being invited, and looked around. I detected a sneer in his voice as he said, "So this is where ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... your error see, Of sneering where you cannot understand: You've owned your fault: let by-gones by-gones be; Past blows from Punch forgetting—there's my hand. Lick whom you list—creation if you please: Let those who choose laugh at me: let them sneer; I earn, before I eat, my bread and cheese; I love my language; and I like my beer. Content with what I have, so that it come Through honest sources: happy at my lot, I seek not—wish not—for a fairer home. Hard work: my Bible: children: wife: a cot: These are my birthright, ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... cannot control a sneer. The men who are lumber-hewers, dirt-diggers, cod-fishers and factory operatives will never face the Southern chivalry. He despises the sneaking Yankees. Traders in a small way arouse all the arrogance of the planter. He cannot bring any philosophy of the past to tell him ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Prince. If you should happen to be on the avenue near the Castle gate at twelve o'clock, you will see the beauty and chivalry of Graustark. The soldiers are not the only ones who are on parade." There was an unmistakable sneer in his tone. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Punch—incarnate justice, Intends henceforth to lick All who shall scorn and sneer at you: ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... lowly, the ignorant, and the poor. Soon they began to see that the lowly, the ignorant, and the poor would not come to the Church, and that, therefore, the Church must go out to them. In a day much nearer to our own a prelate of the Established Church indulged in a very unlucky and unworthy sneer at the expense of the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. He called him an "Archbishop of the slums." The retort was easy and conclusive. It was an admission. "Exactly; that is just what I am. I am an archbishop of the slums; that is my business; that is what I desire to be. My ministry ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... to spare a woman because she is English? My good Raoul, you amuse me," replied the Sheik, with an ugly sneer. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... he was not a Fellow of the Royal Society; was knighted by Charles II. in 1662, and died in 1682. His first literary appearance had been made forty years earlier in a way very common in French literary history, but so uncommon in English as to have drawn from Johnson a rather unwontedly illiberal sneer. At a time unknown, but by his own account before his thirtieth year (therefore before 1635), Browne had written the Religio Medici. It was, according to the habit of the time, copied and handed about in MS. (there exist now five MS. copies showing remarkable differences ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Whilst he was talking to me, an officer from the port guardship came on board. He was a very handsome man, about thirty, with a deep scar across his forehead, and I noticed that he looked at me very keenly—almost rudely—and I fancied I saw something like a sneer on his face as he turned away to speak ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... a sneer. "I don't doubt you've accepted as much before—and chucked the other chaps as you'd like to chuck me. I don't care how you settled your score with them—if you fooled 'em I'm that much to the good. Don't stare at me like that—I ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... man to jilt her. Then seize your chance. All the affections which have gone out to him, unmet, ready to droop, quivering with the painful, hungry instinct to grasp some object, may possibly lay hold of you. Let the world sneer; but God pity such natures, which lack the faith and fortitude to live and die true to their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... charity of friends because some pleasant, clean, ideal employment has not presented itself, than to soil one's hands with a little of the inevitable mud. I don't think I ever felt anything more keenly than I did a sneer from an acquaintance of mine who was in the habit of borrowing money from me. He was a painter, whose pictures were never sold because he never worked hard enough to know how to draw, and it came to my ears indirectly that he had said that "he would rather ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... centralization, and that free society has no interest to be compared for an instant in importance with that of preserving these individual rights. No nation is free in which this is not the paramount concern. Woe to America when her sons and her daughters begin to sneer at rights! Just so long as the citizens are protected individually in their rights, the towns and counties and States cannot be stripped; but if the former lose all love for their own liberties as equal units of society, the latter will become the empty shells ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... world sneer at the maiden aunt, but God has a throne burnished for her arrival, and on one side of that throne in heaven there is a vase containing two jewels, the one brighter than the Kohinoor of London Tower, and the other larger than any ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... another pang of regret. She knew that had the boat been there, her next impulse would have been to go to the Tenor just as she was, bareheaded, and in her thin evening dress. With what object, though? To beg for the honour of his acquaintance, she supposed! But, alas! she could not sneer in earnest, or laugh in earnest, at any absurdity she chose to think there was in the idea. For she acknowledged—in her heart of hearts she knew—that the acquaintance of such a man was an honour, especially to her, as she humbly insisted, although she had not broken any of the commandments, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the other on their heart! Be it so for the present; we shall see how long this statuesque attitude can be maintained; meantime, it chances strangely—as several other things have chanced while I was writing these notes to you—that they should have put in that sneer (two lines before) at my note on the meaning of the Homeric and Platonic Sirens, at the very moment when I was doubting whether I would or would not tell you the significance of the last song of Ariel in ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... was discoursing to his class on oratory and mentioned the fact that Webster and Choate both came from Dartmouth; that Wendell Phillips graduated at Harvard, but the university had not seen much of him since. At the mention of Wendell Phillips some of the boys from pro-slavery families began to sneer. Professor Child raised himself up and said determinedly, "Wendell Phillips is as good an orator as either of them!" He was chagrined, however, at Phillips's later public course,—his support of Socialism and General Butler. Neither did he like Phillips's Phi ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... fellows' tempers were getting frayed and thin. The Colonel's sneer was like a match to a magazine, and in an instant the Frenchman was dancing in front of him with a broken torrent of angry words. His hand was clutching at Cochrane's throat before Belmont and Stephens ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hat and shirtsleeves, presently appeared. He grinned when he saw me, and the thick snub of his nose would have seemed like a sneer ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... operation of natural causes, and may therefore confess the effects of Religion and morality in promoting the well being of the community; may yet, according to their humour, with a smile of complacent pity, or a sneer of supercilious contempt, read of the service which real Christians may render to their country, by conciliating the favour and calling down the blessing of Providence. It may appear in their eyes an instance ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... those of the mighty Emperor Charles V? And can this suffering invalid, flying from foes who are almost on the heels of his attendants, jolted over craggy passes in midnight darkness, buffeted by the tempest, and withered by the sneer of adverse fortune—can this be the Emperor of Germany, King of Spain, Lord of the Netherlands, of Naples, of Lombardy, and the proud chief of the golden Western World? Yes, Charles, thou art reading a stern lesson by that fitful torch-light; but thy strong will is ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... yet?" asked the other carelessly, yet always with that hint of a sneer; and innocently Flatray answered, "They seem ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... bitter sneer; "ay, dreaming. Och, I wish to God I was ONLY DREAMING; but I am very much afraid it is worse than that, and that there is trouble and misfortune hanging ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... belonging to it who are worthy of all respect and esteem, and as such I beg leave to point out the particular young lady who is perusing these lines. Do not, dear madam, then imagine that if I knew you I should be disposed to sneer at you. Ah, no! Fitz-Boodle's bosom has tenderer sentiments than from his way of life you would fancy, and stern by rule is only too soft by practice. Shall I whisper to you the story of one or two of my attachments? All terminating fatally (not in death, but in disappointment, which, as it occurred, ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray |
