"Cynic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... noble thought," said the cynic, with an obsequious sneer. "Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp, and would display the glories of Your Lordship's progenitors more truly in the ancestral vault ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... studied various systems of philosophy, with a view, if possible, to discover the truth. His attention had at length been directed to the Scriptures, and in them he had found that satisfaction which he could not obtain elsewhere. When in Rome about A.D. 165, he came into collision with Crescens, a Cynic philosopher, whom he foiled in a theological discussion. His unscrupulous antagonist, annoyed by this discomfiture, turned informer; and Justin, with some others, was put to death. Shortly afterwards Polycarp, the aged pastor of Smyrna, was committed ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... stirred up critics of every sort and kind; socialists who denounced him as an individualist, land nationalisers who had not realised the difference between communal and national ownership, or men who denounced him as an arm-chair cynic, careless of the poor and ignorant of the meaning of labour. Mr. Spencer considered the chief attack to be directed against his position; the regimental socialists as ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... same disease as Pigasov's,' observed Rudin, 'the desire of being original. One affects to be a Mephistopheles—the other a cynic. In all that, there is much egoism, much vanity, but little truth, little love. Indeed, there is even calculation of a sort in it. A man puts on a mask of indifference and indolence so that some one will be sure to think. "Look at that man; what talents he has thrown away!" But if you ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... may be puzzled to understand why Dr. Wyville Thomson, not being a cynic, should relegate the "Land of Promise" to the bottom of the deep sea, they may still more wonder what manner of "milk and honey" the Challenger expects to find; and their perplexity may well rise to its maximum, when they seek to divine the manner ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... had resulted in the capture of the army, he added these words: "But, after all, your excellency's achievements in the Jerseys were such that nothing could surpass them!" And the witty and wise old cynic, Mr. Horace Walpole, with his usual discrimination, wrote to a friend, Sir Horace Mann, when he heard of the affair at Trenton, the night march to Princeton, and the successful attack there: "Washington, the dictator, has shown himself both a ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... my house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by. They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, Wise, foolish—and so am I. So why should I sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban? Let me live in my house by the side of the road, And ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... this all?" the cynic sneers, "The remnant of a shrine?" Alas for him who never hears Or heeds the world divine And in this fragment fails to see A ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the prince of cynics, the very personal and very haughty Diogenes, have had the right to charge another cynic, as rent for this same place in the sunshine, a bone for twenty-four hours of possession? It is that which constitutes the proprietor; it is that which you fail to justify. In reasoning from the human personality ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... audience to the deputies of the Illyrian provinces; who loudly congratulated their own felicity under the auspicious government of Probus, his Praetorian praefect. Valentinian, who was flattered by these demonstrations of their loyalty and gratitude, imprudently asked the deputy of Epirus, a Cynic philosopher of intrepid sincerity, whether he was freely sent by the wishes of the province. "With tears and groans am I sent," replied Iphicles, "by a reluctant people." The emperor paused: but the impunity of his ministers ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... A cynic might imagine that Meouf knew this, and that his claims to being a good Samaritan were affected by the fact that he would have the trouble of carrying the helpless man, and his wish to do so for as ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... illustrates peculiarly the anomalous position of black men, and the terrific stress under which they struggle. And the struggle and the fight of human beings against hard conditions of life always tends to develop the criminal or the hypocrite, the cynic or the radical. Wherever among a hard-pressed people these types begin to appear, it is a visible sign of a burden that is threatening to overtax their strength, and the foreshadowing of ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Diogenes Laertius, transl. by Yonge, p. 226. Diogenes the Cynic evidently had Thales in his mind when he said "that mathematicians kept their eyes fixed on the sun and moon, and overlooked what ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... critic, as skilful as Salmasius or Scaliger, but still more learned in the language of abuse. This cynic was the Attila of authors. He boasted that he had occasioned the deaths of Casaubon and Scaliger. Detested and dreaded as the public scourge, Scioppius, at the close of his life, was fearful he should find no retreat in which he might ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of shallow souls Around his ears in clamorous cadence rolls; He swells, he glows, he twinkles; The sapient Chairman wags his snowy pate, Whilst cynic triumph, cautious yet elate, Lurks laughing in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... more than any other has caused La Rochefoucauld to be criticized severely as a cynic, if not a misanthrope, appeared only in the first two editions of the book. In the others, published in the author's lifetime, it was supprest. In defense of the author, it has been maintained that what he meant by the saying was that the pleasure derived from a friend's misfortunes has its ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... that naturalistic principle leads to this dissolution of all solid fundamentals of moral principles, and that it is but an inconsequence, certainly worthy of honor and of notice, if all the advocates of naturalism do not profess this dissolution of all moral principles with the same cynic frankness that is shown by many ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... Omaha road, and the shy and beautiful troutlet, and the dark and silent Chippewa squawlet and her little bleached out pappooselet, were it not for the unkind and cruel thrusts that I would invoke from the scenery cynic who believes that a newspaper man's opinions may be largely ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... her legions Caesar would still be master of three-fourths of the earth. Rome thought more in her latter days of grapes and oysters and mullets, that change colour as they die, and singing girls and flute-playing, and cynic verse of Horace—anything rather than corn. Rome is no more, and the lords of the world are they who have mastership of wheat. We have the mastership at this hour by dint of our gold and our hundred-ton guns, but they are telling our farmers to cast ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... A cynic, considering the fact that women was the last thing made by God, asserts that the product shows both His experience and ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... just the opposite form. We may be just as proud of our bad looks, as of our good looks. This is the trick of the Cynic. This is the reason why almost every town has its old codger who seems to delight in wearing the shabbiest coat, and driving the poorest horse, and living in the most dilapidated shanty of anyone in town. These persons take as much pride in their mode ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... returned with a wry smile at Kit, and a touch of cynic humor, "you had right in going. The lieutenant would have had no pleasure in adding me to his elopement, and, as we hear,—your stolen trail carried you to ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... that I am not pleased with the bitterness of your letters—a bitterness unworthy of my philosophic tutor of the happy bygone days at Vevay. I wish my true love to see all things clearly, and to be the just and honest man I have always deemed him—not a cynic who seeks a sorry comfort in misfortune by carping at ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... with publishers and libraries—have nothing to fear from any censorship. They censor themselves. They take the most particular care not to write anything original, courageous, or true, because these qualities alienate more subscribers than they please. I am not a pessimist nor a cynic, but I enjoy contemplating the real facts ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... thin face, narrow white forehead, and high-bridged nose might have belonged to an Oxford don or fashionable preacher, but, apart from these features, Austin Turold had nothing in common with such earnest souls. By temperament he was a dilettante and cynic, who affected not to take life seriously. His axiom of faith was that a good liver was the one thing in life worth having, and a far more potent factor in human affairs than conscience. He had at one time regarded his brother Robert as a fool ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... these was that sort of irreverent criticism of women in which male parties so often indulge. Bitter cynic though he was, women were sacred to Andrews. To speak disrespectfully of a woman in his presence was like uttering blasphemy in the study of a cardinal. Tcheriapin very quickly detected the Scotsman's weakness, and one night he launched out into a series of amorous adventures which set Andrews ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... wood-lots, he came to be what he was. Many people thought his peculiar ways were an affectation, but I believe that he was one of the plainest and simplest of men; as plain and single-minded as President Lincoln himself. It was his theory of the way men should live. He was a Diogenes without being a cynic. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... brute power of the other man, the incarnation of the thing that is, with a cynic's contempt for dreams and dreamers, had given voice to her own rebellion and ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... long ere we arrived at the place of destination. Of course nothing could be said in my defence. Hanging was my inevitable fate. I resigned myself thereto with a feeling half stupid, half acrimonious. Being little of a cynic, I had all the sentiments of a dog. The hangman, however, adjusted the noose about ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... rather reminds one, in his evident contempt for Epitaphs, of the cynic who asked, "Where are all the ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... wonder that his parents should have given to him such a name, and a greater wonder that Abigail should have married him. He inherited Caleb's estate; but he was far from inheriting his virtues. His wealth was great; but he was a selfish, snarling cynic. Abigail's name signifies "the joy of her father;" but he could not have promised himself much joy in her, caring more for the wealth than for the wisdom of her husband. Many a child is thus thrown away—married to worldly wealth and to nothing else which is desirable. Wisdom is good ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... quest of a man; a man himself not to be laughed at or despised; visiting Corinth, he was accosted by Alexander the Great: "I am Alexander," said the king, and "I am Diogenes" was the prompt reply; "Can I do anything to serve you?" continued the king; "Yes, stand out of the sunlight," rejoined the cynic; upon which Alexander turned away saying, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." D'Alembert declared Diogenes the greatest man of antiquity, only that he wanted decency. "Great truly," says Carlyle, but adds with a much more serious drawback than that (412-323 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... we cannot grant any importance to a possible strain of Phoenician blood in him (for the Phoenicians were no philosophers), yet it is quite likely that through Asia Minor he may have come in touch with the Far East. He studied under the cynic Crates, but he did not neglect other philosophical systems. After many years' study he opened his own school in a colonnade in Athens called the Painted Porch, or Stoa, which gave the Stoics their name. Next to Zeno, the School of the Porch owes most to Chrysippus (280—207 ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... far from agreeing with the cynic Geoffroy, who used to say that modern works were deficient in power because authors ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... untruths published in the French press during the war has been reproduced by the Paris journal, Bonsoir. It contains abundant pabulum for the cynic and valuable data for the psychologist. The example might be followed in Great Britain. The title is: "Anthologie du Bourrage de Crane." It began in the month ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... that Solomon and Job have best spoken of the misery of man, the former the most fortunate, the latter the most unfortunate of creatures. And yet it seems strange to me that John Benham, the millionaire, Jerry's father, cynic and misogynist, and Roger Canby, bookworm and pauper, should each have arrived, through different mental processes, at the same ideal and philosophy of life. We both disliked women, not only disliked but feared and distrusted them, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... older residents of Warehold, they had only words of praise for the turnout. Uncle Ephraim declared that it was a "Jim Dandy," which not only showed his taste, but which also proved how much broader that good-natured cynic had become in later years. Billy Tatham gazed at it with staring eyes as it trundled down the highway and turned into the gate, and at once determined to paint two of his hacks bright yellow and give each driver a lap-robe with the letter "T" worked ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of a Meyers said some things, and I thought I'd be clever and prove them. I can't ask your pardon. There aren't words enough in the language. Why, you're the finest little woman—you're—you'd restore the faith of a cynic who had chronic indigestion. I wish I—Say, let me relieve you of a couple of those small towns that you hate to make, and give you Cleveland and Cincinnati. And let me—Why say, Mrs. McChesney! Please! Don't! This isn't ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... very good one, in the sense of being valuable. Whatever your mood may be, that of the moralist, cynic, satirist, humourist, whether you love, pity, or despise your fellow-man, here is grist for your mill. It ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... (except possibly Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN and the cynic who professes to hate letters so much that he wishes that they cost a shilling a-piece to send) will agree, one good resolution which above all others you should concentrate upon for 1921, and that is to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... quaint old cynic, "matters can't be mended by swearin' at 'em, is advice I often give myself, but never take. I s'pose it's bed-time. To-morrow we will take another squint at your ugly fortunes, and see which side pints toward daylight. Would you mind readin' a ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... with something like the composed gravity with which they heard on Sundays the reading of the second lesson. But as the stage-talk went on, the slave-maidens announcing themselves without delay comfortably modern and commonplace, and Pilate a cynic and a decadent, though as distinctively from Melbourne, it was possible to note the breaking up of this sentiment. It was plain after all that no standard of ideality was to be maintained or struggled after. The relief was palpable; nevertheless, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... There never was a man who was more entirely free from that intellectual conceit which breeds disdain. Nothing is so discouraging and heart-breaking to young people as the sneer of an intellectual cynic. A sarcasm about an act of youthful mental enthusiasm not only often casts a fatal chill over the character, but is resented as an injury never to be forgiven. The most humble youth would have found in Mr. Mill the warmest and ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... look upon her dark face. Nothing to her was right or good; this world was a desert, her friends had all left her, strangers looked coldly upon her. As for the future, there was nothing to look forward to in this world or the next. As Dave Moony, the village cynic, said, "Mary Ann wa'n't proud or set up about nothin' but bein' the darter of a man that had c'mitted the onpar'nable sin." Poor woman! her eyes were blinded to all the beauty and brightness of this world, to the ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... was a Cynic philosopher of Gadara, who made money in Thebes by usury, lost it, and hanged himself. He wrote satirical pieces, which are lost; some said that they were the joint work of two friends, Dionysius and Zopyrus of Colophon, in whom ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the kind, you old cynic! I shan't tell you another thing about it." But still she went on: "We've taken the old Laurence house on the corner of Garfield Avenue and Pine Street, and it's to be fitted up to accommodate any sort ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... meditated on the subtle relations created between himself and his audiences, as they have watched in his impersonations the shifting tariff—the ever gliding, delicately graduated sliding-scale of dramatic right and wrong. He may have gloated, if he be a cynic, over the depths of ghastly horror, or the vagaries of moral puddle through which it may have been his duty to plash. But if he be an honest man, he will acknowledge that scarcely ever has either dramatist or management wilfully biassed the effect of stage representation in favor of evil, and of ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... tenderness as though it were a cancer, love as a disease, and romantic aspirations as mere uncomfortable growths injurious to self-interest, but Gervase was not one of these. Outwardly he assumed more or less the composed and careless demeanor of the modern French cynic, but inwardly the man was a raging fire of fierce passions which were sometimes too strong to be held in check. At the present moment he was prepared to sacrifice everything, even life itself, to obtain possession of the woman he coveted, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... certainly "a vile Whig"), but most of all perhaps to a sort of horrified recoil from the novelist's easy handling of temptations which were no easy matter to his critic—was nearly if not quite propitiated by it: and the enthusiasm for it of such a "cynic" as Thackeray is well known. Of the very few persons whom it would not be ridiculous to name with these, Scott—whose competence in criticising his own art is one of the most wonderful though the least generally recognised things about him—inclines, in the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... stronger sense of being nearer some perfect truth than a Gothic cathedral or an Etruscan villa. All around you, under the Concord sky, there still floats the influence of that human faith melody, transcendent and sentimental enough for the enthusiast or the cynic respectively, reflecting an innate hope—a common interest in common things and common men—a tune the Concord bards are ever playing, while they pound away at the immensities with a Beethovenlike sublimity, and with, may we say, a vehemence and perseverance—for ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... it from a story about an old Canadian having smoked himself to death with it, and spell it "Kill a Kannuck." Others spell it "Kill a Cynic," and believe that DIOGENES, the founder of the Cynical School of philosophy, died of a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... that weep.' Those who are glad feel less need of sympathy than do the sorrowful, and envy is apt to creep in and mar the completeness of sympathetic joy. But even the latter of the two injunctions is not altogether easy. The cynic has said that there is 'something not wholly displeasing in the misfortunes of our best friends'; and, though that is an utterly worldly and unchristian remark, it must be confessed not to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... in the place nearest to the monarch himself; and not even his enemies dared to assert that his political conduct was guided by other motives than the consideration of public welfare. Indeed, if there is any phrase for which he, the apparent cynic, the sworn despiser of phrases, seems to have had a certain weakness, it is the word salus publica. To it he sacrificed his days and his nights; for it he more than once risked his life; for it he incurred more hatred and slander than perhaps any ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... laughingly, 'you are a hypocrite of the other sort. You pretend to be cruel, and callous, and careless of all that's good—a cynic and a mocker. But I have found you out: you are really gentle and ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Duke Orsino, Orsino the poet-lover being, so to speak, Shakespeare's easiest and most natural portrait. In Hamlet, if one may dare to say so, Shakespeare has discovered too much of himself: Hamlet is at one and the same time philosopher and poet, critic and courtier, lover and cynic—the extremes that Shakespeare's intellect could cover—and he fills every part so easily that he might almost be a bookish Admirable Crichton, a type of perfection rather than an individual man, were it not for his feminine gentleness ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... turn to bid adieu for a season, to one, who for many a weary day, was doomed to undergo the pangs of blighted affection. Such pangs are but too poignant and enduring, let the worldly man say what he may. Could we but read the history of the snarling cynic, blind to this world's good—of him, who from being the deceived, has become the deceiver—of the rash sensualist, who plunging into vice, thinks he can forget;—could we but know the train of events, that have brought the stamping madman to his bars—and his cell—and his realms of ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... if I had loved you, Miss Malgregor," explained the Senior Surgeon gravely, "my offer of marriage to you would not, I fear, have been a very great oratorical success. Materialist as I am,—cynic—scientist,—any harsh thing you choose to call me,—marriage in some freak, boyish corner of my mind, still defines itself as being the mutual sharing of a—mutually original experience. Certainly whether a first marriage be instigated in love or worldliness,—whether it eventually proves itself ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... with cynic, declares that there's always an amicable way out of a dissension, if we get rid of Lupus ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. But stay! no age was e'er degenerate, Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, For in our likeness still we shape our fate. 90 Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, Something that gives our feeble light A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; A seed of sunshine that can leaven ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... third century of a dream and standing up to some cynic who's trying to tell us we're not going to get any better. Are we at the end? Well, I can't tell it any better than the real thing—a story recorded by James Madison from the final moments of the Constitutional Convention, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Chasseuse sat mute and downcast. This personal development came as a complete surprise to her. Pride would not permit her to plead her own cause. Dubois glanced at her covertly. He was still annoyed and defiant; but even he, hardened scoundrel and cynic though he was, could not find words to contest ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... for the ordinary, my lord?" said the cynic;—"weel, ye canna do better—there is choice company there, and peculiarly selected, as I am tauld, being, dootless, sic as it is desirable that young noblemen should herd withal—and your noble father wad have been blithe to see you ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... your sleeve, you wretched old cynic, if you knew how I lie awake nights, with my gas turned down to a star, thinking of The Pines and the house across the road. How cool it must be down there! I long for the salt smell in the air. I picture the colonel smoking his cheroot on the piazza. I send you and Miss Daw off on afternoon ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... all the Charleys, and the Bohms, and the Cohns, and the Kitties hadn't taken the fine edge from Beverly's good inheritance and good bringing up; his instinct had survived his scruples, making of him an agile and charming cynic, whom you could trust to see the right thing always, and never do it unless it was absolutely necessary; he would marry any amount of Kitties for their money, and always know that beside his mother and sisters they were as dirt; ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... virtues were truthfulness and fair-mindedness toward his friends—rare and incongruous virtues for a professional burglar; nevertheless, he possessed them in a marked degree. This is a statement to make a cynic smile, and is one of those cases where the result is justifiable; yet, however the cynic may smile, there is plenty of all-around good faith in the world, and there is no nation, race or color, no clique, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... fallacious''; but the time of which I speak was his best, and his influence upon me was good. I remember especially that his "Lamp of Power'' made a very deep impression upon me. Carlyle, too, was at his best. He was the simple, strong preacher;—with nothing of the spoiled cynic he afterward became. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... to appear tedious and dull to one who hath first read his work. What eloquence could furnish so fine a description, or convey so strong a idea of the pride of Alexander, as the short answers of that prince to the Cynic philosopher, or to Darius? or of the modesty of Phocion, as the well-chosen circumstances of his ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of mood and mood, Mine ancient humour saves him whole— The cynic devil in his blood That bids him ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... a cynic, a loafer always from his cradle on—indeed, his mother used to say that he nearly kicked her to death ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... going on between Dora and myself was a riddle to which I vainly sought a solution. That this cynic who charged every man and woman with immorality should, in the circumstances, be so absolutely undisturbed in his confidence regarding his wife seemed nothing short of a miracle. When I now think of the riddle ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... months' run, Witnesses Two Hundred, Ninety and One: Clergymen, guardians, factors, physicians, Middlemen, labourers, smart statisticians, Journalists, managers, Gentiles and Jews, And this is the issue! A thing to amuse A cynic, the chat of this precious Committee, But moving kind hearts ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... a historical novel," said the gaunt young recruit from Grand Rapids. He was a cynic who had tried newspaper work, and who still maintained that the generals did not have as much intelligence ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... except Lady Carmian and Ruth, simultaneously raised a disclaiming voice, which by its vehemence at once showed what an unfounded assertion Charles had made. Lady Carmian, a handsome young married woman, only smiled languidly, and, turning the bracelet on her arm, told Charles he was a cynic, and that for her own part, when in robust health, she liked what little she read "strong;" but in illness, or when Lord Carmian had been unusually trying, she always fell back on a milk-and-water diet. Mrs. Thursby, however, felt that Charles had struck a blow at the sanctity ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... how to live with the great, he would scorn his vegetables. Tell me, which maxim and conduct of the two you approve; or, since you are my junior, hear the reason why Aristippus' opinion is preferable; for thus, as they report, he baffled the snarling cynic: "I play the buffoon for my own advantage, you [to please] the populace. This [conduct of mine] is better and far more honorable; that a horse may carry and a great man feed me, pay court to the great: ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... cynic; he is only wise because he is Life and He is death, the creator and the corrupter ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... she had avoided natural joys. She had perhaps even been the slave of her self-respect. Never at all good-looking though certainly not ugly, she had been afraid of the effect of her wealth upon men. And because she was so rich she had never chosen to marry. She was possibly too much of a cynic, but she had always preserved her personal dignity. No one had ever legitimately laughed at her, and no one had ever had the chance of contemptuously pitying her. She must have missed a great deal, but now in middle-age she was surround by ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... view the fools' show drift pass. His last experiment in the actively objective had ruined a girl and promised to produce a fine picture. And that was the end of it. No fellow-creature could ever share this cynic's barrel with him. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... times it would have done the heart of a cynic good to have been there; song and joke and hearty laugh followed in such quick succession that it seemed more like working for fun than ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... not be confounded with his Stoic or Cynic namesake,) was a pupil of Anaximenes, and wrote a treatise on Nature, of which Diogenes Laertius gives the following account: "He maintained that air was the primary element of all things; that there was an infinite number of worlds ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the voice of optimism, of faith, of simple, steadfast love. No cynic or pessimist can be really happy. A cynic is a man who is morally near-sighted,—and brags about it. He sees the evil in his own heart, and thinks he sees the world. He lets a mote in his eye eclipse the sun. An incurable cynic is an individual who should long for death,—for ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... celebrated Cynic philosopher, got such a box on the ear from Nicodromus, the musician, that his face swelled up and became black and blue; whereupon he put a label on his forehead, with the inscription, Nicodromus fecit, which brought much disgrace to the fluteplayer ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... pertness and vivacity of his dialogue—Addison, whose fame as a poet greatly exceeded his genius, which was cold and enervate; though he yielded to none in the character of an essayist, either for style or matter—Swift, whose muse seems to have been mere misanthropy; he was a cynic rather than a poet, and his natural dryness and sarcastic severity would have been unpleasing, had not he qualified them, by adopting the extravagant humour of Lueian and Rabelais—Prior, lively, familiar, and amusing—Rowe, solemn, florid, and declamatory—Pope, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... names of the Revolution, the very mention of which is like the sound of a trumpet. Such names are the precious jewels of our history, to be garnered up among the treasures of the nation, and kept immaculate from the tarnishing breath of the cynic and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... A cynic might say that the people can't go far wrong in politics because they can't be very right. Our so-called representative system is unrepresentative in a deeper way than the reformers who talk about the money power imagine. It is empty and thin: a stifling of living ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... [that] have been taken to bring this poor country into ruin and disgrace, or they are of the number of those who have had a share in the actings and contrivances against it; for my lord, he must rather be an insensible stoic than an angry cynic, who can survey the measures of some men without horror and indignation—To see men act as if they had never taken an oath of fidelity to their king, whose interest is inseparable from that of his people, but had sworn to support the ruinous projects of abandoned ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... Oh dear me! I desired to shape a Democratic Budget! But I fear 'twill be a fizzle, howsoe'er I fake and fudge it! Second E. M. Don't talk like that, my H-RC-T, for such cynic slang is shocking! But—the Revenue Returns, no doubt, our dearest hopes are mocking. First E. M. Oh, I know you ape the casuist, and love the pleonastic, But how tackle our taxation in a manner really drastic With a Revenue declining! From the task my courage blenches, But—what ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... ever since and nobody has missed him, I'm sure. I remember him dimly as a tall dark man who used to lounge about alone in his garden and was always reading books. Sometimes he came into our garden and teased us children. He is said to be a cynic and to detest society. If this latter item be a fact I almost feel a grim pity for him. He may detest it, but he will be dragged into it. Rich bachelors are few and far between in Riverton, and the mammas will ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pupils inquired of Epictetus, and he was a person who appeared to be inclined to Cynicism, what kind of person a Cynic ought to be, and what was the notion ([Greek: prolaepsis]) of the thing, we will inquire, said Epictetus, at leisure; but I have so much to say to you that he who without God attempts so great ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... knew the English. They were not emotional or poseurs like some other nations, and Hector Bracondale was essentially a man of the world, and rather a whimsical cynic as well. So to see him thus moved must mean great things. She was guilty, too, for helping to create the situation. She must do what she could for ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... most promising time in front of us," that old cynic replied, while he puffed rings of smoke. "It all should be as full of adventure as an egg ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... very different spirit and for very different ends do men contemplate the dark side of human life. The cynic expatiates on painful things—the blot on life's beauty, the shadow on its glory, the pitiful ending of its brave shows—only to gibe and mock. The realist lingers in the dissecting chamber for very delight in revolting themes. The pessimist enlarges on the power of melancholy that lie may ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... her, Arnold. Don't you know, you old cynic, that women can't stand such flattery as yours?" ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... of Stoic philosophy, born at Citium, in Cyprus, son of a merchant and bred to merchandise, but losing all in a shipwreck gave himself up to the study of philosophy; went to Athens, and after posing as a cynic at length opened a school of his own in the Stoa, where he taught to extreme old age a gospel called Stoicism, which, at the decline of the heathen world, proved the stay of many a noble soul that but for it would have died without sign, although ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... inscription to be placed over the door of a house, "Let nothing enter here but what is good."—"Then where will the master go in?" asked a cynic. ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... books, right is right, and wrong wrong, and he is never tempted to jingle his jester's bell out of season, and make right look ridiculous. And if the humour of "Pickwick" be wholesome, it is also most genial and kindly. We have here no acrid cynic sneeringly pointing out the plague spots of humanity, and showing pleasantly how even the good are tainted with evil. Rather does Dickens delight in finding some touch of goodness, some lingering ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... as he always is contented when he can make satisfactory arrangements to sacrifice himself unselfishly and pretend to himself he is a cynic. Whether because the armed guard of their own people put new courage in them, or because rifles at their rear made them more afraid, the stragglers gave less trouble for the next few hours. Perhaps they were growing more used to the march, and some of them were numb with ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... Like It,' which quickly followed, is a dramatic adaptation of Lodge's romance, 'Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie' (1590), but Shakespeare added three new characters of first-rate interest—Jaques, the meditative cynic; Touchstone, the most carefully elaborated of all Shakespeare's fools; and the hoyden Audrey. Hints for the scene of Orlando's encounter with Charles the Wrestler, and for Touchstone's description of the diverse shapes of a lie, were clearly drawn from a book called ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... straightway put herself in motion, and followed her beloved George Louis. One seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. The king we had selected; the courtiers who came in his train; the English nobles who came to welcome him, and on many of whom the shrewd old cynic turned his back—I protest it is a wonderful satirical picture. I am a citizen waiting at Greenwich pier, say, and crying hurrah for King George; and yet I can scarcely keep my countenance, and help laughing at the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... too well to suppose I have ever turned away from it," retorted Dumaresque. "Do not credit the gossip of Lavergne. He has worked so long among clays and marbles that he has grown a cold-blooded cynic. He distrusts all warmth and color ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Schmucke was a philosopher, an unconscious cynic, so greatly had he simplified his life. Two pairs of shoes, a pair of boots, a couple of suits of clothes, a dozen shirts, a dozen bandana handkerchiefs, four waistcoats, a superb pipe given to him by Pons, with an embroidered tobacco-pouch—these ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... OPTIC is a nom de plume that is known and loved by almost every boy of intelligence in the land. We have seen a highly intellectual and world-weary man, a cynic whose heart was somewhat embittered by its large experience of human nature, take up one of OLIVER OPTIC's books, and read it at a sitting, neglecting his work in yielding to the fascination of the pages. When a mature and exceedingly well-informed mind, long despoiled ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... those who were in greatest reputation among them, and lived a private quiet life, he sent Onesicritus, one of Diogenes the Cynic's disciples, desiring them to come to him. Calanus, it is said, very arrogantly and roughly commanded him to strip himself, and hear what he said, naked, otherwise he would not speak a word to him, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... boon, from whom proceed Each forceful thought, each prompted deed; If but from thee I hope to feel, On all my heart imprint thy seal! Let some retreating cynic find 75 Those oft-turn'd scrolls I leave behind: The Sports and I this hour agree, To rove ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... found himself in surroundings so different from those he had left that it seemed incredible they should exist in the same world. The Duke of Monte Alloro was that rare survival of a stronger age, a cynic. In a period of sentimental optimism, of fervid enthusiasms and tearful philanthropy, he represented the pleasure-loving prince of the Renaissance, crushing his people with taxes but dazzling them with festivities; infuriating them by his disregard ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... of mood and mood, Mine ancient humour saves him whole — The cynic devil in his blood That bids ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... who expects the Hindoos to accept her view of politics has herself accepted their view of religion. She wants first to steal their earth, and then to share their heaven. The same Imperial cynic who wishes the Turks to submit to English science has himself submitted to Turkish philosophy, to a wholly Turkish view ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... calculation of my own mind, that it was the simple result of the deduction of my own reasoning [applause], and if you have shown me gratitude on this matter I will not say that I have not felt in a certain sense it was not deserved, from the motives I have alluded to. And if, as some cynic has said, gratitude is nothing whatever but the means of securing favors to come, I can assure you that you have accomplished your object [laughter and applause], and if you have desired that, in any means which Providence has placed in my power, in any ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... though often the first to reach the hotel, which he always entered by a side door, because he did not believe in the treating system. And it was Mr. Eskew Arp, only seventy-five, but already a thoroughly capable cynic, who, almost invariably "opened the argument," and it was he who discovered the sinister intention behind the weather of this particular morning. Mr. Arp had not begun life so sourly: as a youth he had been proud of his ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... some Prince by his subjects deposed, Whose strength he, by seeking to crush it, disclosed, In resigning the power he lack'd power to support Turns his back upon courts, with a sneer at the court, In his converse this man for self-comfort appeal'd To a cynic denial of all he conceal'd In the instincts and feelings belied by his words. Words, however, are things: and the man who accords To his language the license to outrage his soul, Is controll'd by the words he disdains to control. And, therefore, he seem'd in the deeds of each day The light ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... the bow, Drayton, courtly and wise, Kindly cynic, and wise, (You hardly had known him now,— The flame of fight in his eyes!) His brave heart eager to feel How the oak would ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... much he couldn't understand. Moreover, he was a lone wolf. Had been since the Second Interplanetary War wrenched him from the quiet backwater of his country home an eternity of eight years before and hammered him into hardness—a cynic who trusted nobody and nothing ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... unpalatable things." Thus far the rival sages. Tell me true, Whose words you think the wiser of the two, Or hear (to listen is a junior's place) Why Aristippus has the better case; For he, the story goes, with this remark Once stopped the Cynic's aggravating bark: "Buffoon I may be, but I ply my trade For solid value; you ply yours unpaid. I pay my daily duty to the great, That I may ride a horse and dine in state; You, though you talk of independence, yet, Each time you beg for scraps, contract a debt." All ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... a very clever man, but clever in thought, and especially in word, only. He scorns art, women, and family life. He does not know what the point of honour means. He is a cynic in his love affairs, and indifferent in his friendships. He has no respect even for paternal tenderness, but he is full of contradictions, even to the extent of fighting a duel about nothing at all, and sacrificing ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... the strong and cunning few Cynic favors I will strew; I will stuff their maw with overplus until their spirit dies; From the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... minister, nor friend ever looked upon those notes which this "little Duke with his cruel, piercing, unsatisfied eyes" was so busily penning. Says Vallee: "He filled a unique position at Court, being accepted by all, even by the King himself, as a cynic, personally liked for his disposition, enjoying consideration on account of the prestige of his social connections, inspiring fear in the more timid by the severity and fearlessness of his criticism." Yet Louis XIV. never seems to have liked ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... be thought that this young man would play the cynic. He is superbly the optimist, though now again he struck a note of almost cynic whimsicality. 'Of course our art is in its infancy—' He waited for my nod of agreement, then dryly added, 'We must, I think, consider it the Peter Pan of the arts. And I dare say you recall ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... tricks soon enough. It never seems to have occurred to Frederick that the possession of genius might imply a quality of spirit which was not that of an ordinary man. This was his great, his fundamental error. It was the ingenuous error of a cynic. He knew that he was under no delusion as to Voltaire's faults, and so he supposed that he could be under no delusion as to his merits. He innocently imagined that the capacity for great writing was something that could be as easily separated from the owner of it as a hat or a ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the cynic; "without it, few pursue successfully, and fewer are themselves pursued.—Stop!" he said to Miss Vere, as her companions moved off, "With you I have more to say. You have what your companions would wish to have, or be thought to have,—beauty, wealth, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... suspicious alacrity. "Oh, love, love, love!" crooned Peter. "Oh, love, love, love!" Oliver flushed. "Don't swipe all my butter, you simple cynic!" He knew what ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... some characteristic scraps of Sussex philosophy. Thus, Mr. Egerton tells of an old conservative whose advice to young men was this: "Mind you don't never have nothing in no way to do with none of their new-fangled schemes." Another Sussex cynic defined party government with grim impartiality: "Politics are about like this: I've got a sow in my yard with twelve little uns, and they little uns can't all feed at once, because there isn't room ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... learned professor in Trinity College, Dublin, a cynic and a humorist, is reported once to have wondered "why the old Irish, having a good religion of their own, did not stick to it?" Living in the "Celtic twilight," and striving to pierce backward into the dawn, reading romance, tradition and ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... which he took part quite recently. He went as the deputy of some missionary society to preach in the neighbourhood of Trantridge, a place forty miles from here, and made it his business to expostulate with a lax young cynic he met with somewhere about there—son of some landowner up that way—and who has a mother afflicted with blindness. My father addressed himself to the gentleman point-blank, and there was quite a disturbance. It was very foolish of my father, I must ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Her ingenuousness amused him; her developing taste and imagination interested him; her freshness, her freedom from any sense of his importance in the world fascinated him, and there was a keener pleasure than he dreamed in the novel sensation of breathing the perfume of what he, the one time cynic, would have staked his life on being unsullied purity. Their relations were to him a delightful variation upon the intimacy of master and pupil. Either he was listening to her or was answering her questions—and the time flew. And there never was a moment ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... paper," remarked he. "'Tis a combination I have noticed before. I wonder will some astute perfumer ever seize the idea? It would have its guilty appeal for our sex—perchance for t'other; though I'm no cynic like you ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... are not in the world very long before they realize that its hopes in this admonition are but inverted fears, that the shake of its head is a scepticism which troubles not to articulate itself in words. A French cynic counsels us to always deal with a friend to-day on the possibility that he may be an enemy to-morrow. And there is a wide and deeply-rooted prejudice in favour of holding the imperatives of integrity on the ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... sense undistinguished. On this position Chesterton lays great stress. It was this, he thinks, that made him an optimist. It was the same position that made Browning an optimist. It is the disbelief in the Divine image in Man that makes the cynic and the pessimist. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... they thought more about mourning dresses, than they did about the dead child," remarked the cynic of the group. ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... and Baudelaire, their lips were wet with wine; Oh poseur, pimp and libertine! Oh cynic, sot and swine! Oh votaries of velvet vice! . . . Oh gods of ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... "What will you do? She will not 'be under obligations.' Perhaps, even, she likes her strange profession; perhaps she finds the delight of battle, that you know so well, in pitting her wits against the brains of the mighty; perhaps she has a cynic soul that finds a savage joy in running down the faults of the seemingly faultless—running them to earth and taking her profit therefrom. Who are you, Marcus Gard, to cavil at the lust of conquest—to sneer ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... customary bounds, And meet with others, curs or hounds, Imagine what a holiday! The native dogs, whose interests centre In one great organ, term'd the venter, The strangers rush at, bite, and bay; With cynic pertness tease and worry, And chase them off their territory. So, too, do men. Wealth, grandeur, glory, To men of office or profession, Of every sort, in every nation, As tempting are, and sweet, As is to dogs the refuse meat. With us, it is a general ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... not of right, was more cordial than Eve had expected to witness, for each really entertained a respect for the other, in reference to a merit of a particular sort; Mr. Bragg esteeming Mr. John Effingham as a wealthy and caustic cynic, and Mr. John Effingham regarding Mr. Bragg much as the owner of a dwelling regards a valuable house-dog. After a few moments of conversation, the two withdrew together, and just as the ladies were about to descend to the drawing-room, previously to dinner, Pierre ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper |
