"Disdainful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... face made him pause. She had risen and stood facing him, her eyes blazing resentment, her lips curled in a disdainful smile. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... rare it happens otherwise Whatever course I adopt many people will condemn me Whitehall, the largest and ugliest palace in Europe Who counted others only as they stood in relation to himself Wise and disdainful silence is difficult to keep under reverses With him one's life was safe World; so unreasoning, and so little in accord ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... mentally nicknamed Rita. In the afternoon she had appeared, he could not imagine why, to regard him as a portion of the scum of the earth. He thought her extremely pretty, and full of charm, yet he could not help feeling provoked, in spite of his amusement, at the disdainful curl at the corners of her mouth when she addressed him. Now, he was equally at a loss to understand why or how the Grand Duchess was replaced by a gentle and tender-voiced maiden, who looked up at him from under her long ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... for what has happened to me. I left Madame Des Roches's full of the warm impatience of love, and flew to my Emily at Silleri: I was received with a disdainful coldness which I did not think had been in her nature, and which has shocked me beyond ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... suit and its rejection. Rosalind, her spirit chafed with what had passed, returned his gaze haughtily. But he maintained his steadfast look as though he had been hewn out of stone; and presently, impatient and disdainful, she turned away. Then, and instantly, Harding pursued his way in silence. And Rosalind grew somehow aware that he had determined to stand at gaze until her eyes were lowered. Thereupon she classed his presumption with that of the other who had dared address ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... one of those thoroughly irreproachable young noblemen whom the upper classes of Britain give to civilisation. He bore everywhere with him the disdainful sense of security which comes from great hereditary wealth, a historic name inscribed in the "Peerage and Baronetage"—a book second only to the Bible in England—and a beauty against which nothing could be urged, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... delicate one, with many diverse departments, functioning under extremely difficult conditions? For thus it in truth is. Could you once accomplish this feat of imaginative faculty, you would never again say, with that disdainful accent of yours: "Mrs. Omicron has nothing in the world to do but run the house." For really it would be just as clever for her to say: "Mr. Omicron has nothing in the world to do but ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... him with a disdainful curve of the lips that could scarcely have been described as a smile of welcome. "I imagine it would take a good deal of that sort of thing to make much impression upon you, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... their portraits. Chaucer's face is round, good-humoured, constitutionally pensive, and thoughtful. You see in it that he has often been amused, and that he may easily be amused again. Spenser's is of sharper and keener feature, disdainful, and breathing that severity which appertains to so many of the Elizabethan men. A fourteenth-century child, with delicate prescience, would have asked Chaucer to assist her in a strait, and would not have been disappointed. A sixteenth-century child in like circumstances would ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... sovereign. He affected to consider all that took place at Babylon as his own doing, and his brother as being merely his docile instrument, not deserving mention any more than the ordinary agents who carried out his designs; and if, indeed, he condescended to mention him, it was with an assumption of disdainful superiority. It is a question whether Shamash-Shumukin at this juncture believed that his brother was meditating a design to snatch the reins of government from his hand, or whether he merely yielded to the impulse of wounded vanity in resolving to shake off a yoke which had become ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the only marked quality of Coriolanus. His pride was equally great. He was a noble of the nobles, so haughty in demeanor and so disdainful of the commons that they grew ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... other study boys would particularly sympathise with his late associates. Since the previous evening he had been cool with Duncan, and the rest had long rather despised him as a boy who'd do anything to be popular; so he sat there silent, looking as disdainful as he could, and not touching the tea, for which he felt disinclined after the recent potations. But the contemptuous exterior hid a self-reproving heart, and he felt how far more noble Owen and Montagu were than he. How gladly would he have changed places with them! how much he would have ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... of Southwark complained that "the Knight Marshal's men were very unneighbourly and disdainful among them," with every indication that a prolonged insurrection would endure. However, the matter was brought to the attention of the lord chamberlain, and such edict went forth as assured the ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... had heard barking. Bending down toward the trunk of a decayed oak they saw a mastiff sitting in a hollow as in a niche. His disdainful and yet placid glance told them that his mind was disordered. It was the dog of Diogenes, to whom God had accorded solitude in this tub, hollowed out of a very tree itself. With indifference he watched the dogs with the spiked collars pass by. Then to their great astonishment he left his moss-grown ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... manner. Lady Gertrude and Isobel discussed various matters pertaining to the village Welfare Club, while Roger preserved an impenetrable silence, and though Nan made a valiant pretence at eating, lest Lady Gertrude's gimlet eyes should observe her lack of appetite and her thin, disdainful voice comment on the fact, she felt all the time as though the next mouthful must inevitably ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Mrs. Gilligan, feeling very brave and disdainful in the bright sunshine. "I don't believe there's a bit of mystery ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... balete itself, no one willingly ventured near the spot. A belated herdsman looking for some of his strayed charges told of lights that he had seen there, and when some venturesome youths went to the place they heard mournful cries. To win the smiles of his disdainful lady, a forlorn lover agreed to spend the night there and in proof to wrap around the trunk a long piece of rattan, but he died of a quick fever that seized him the very next day. Stories and legends ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Her disdainful eyes wandered to the farther end of the portico, where Alfred Branch, in his natty suit of white grasscloth, plucked at his ebon whiskers with untanned fingers, and talked society nothings with the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... passions, the haughty and disdainful temper, which made Clarendon's great abilities a source of almost unmixed evil to himself and to the public, had no place in the character of Temple. To Temple, however, as well as to Clarendon, the rapid change which was taking place in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and Betsy shared a secret admiration for the brilliant qualities which were flashed before their eyes; they privately agreed that May was more of a real lady than either the baronet's hard-tongued wife or the disdainful Hilda Shale. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... union, the Benedictine, in obedience to the command of his superiors, was obliged to break off the intercourse. Thenceforth, Bastide renounced all intimate human contact. He had no friend; he wished for none. He secluded himself with disdainful pride; the sight of a new face turned his distant and cold; people in society he treated with insulting indifference. Perhaps it was only from a fear of disappointment that he harshly withstood even the most friendly advances, for there lay at times a vague yearning for love in the depths of ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Joe should come over in the morning with a larger supply, bringing at the same time the yellow hen who was desirous of assuming the cares of a family. During the discussion of these practical matters, Rosetta Muriel had maintained a disdainful silence. But when Mrs. Cole went to pack a basket, the daughter, for the first time, took an active part ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... crushed her hand in his, and said, "Tell me no more of them, Lilias, I cannot bear it;" he was thinking how the proud feet of his disdainful wife would spurn the turf from his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Saaera!" exclaimed Fatima, with a disdainful toss of her head, and a scornful turning up of her two protruding teeth; "all stuff and nonsense! There's no law in the Saaera; and if there was, you know we're never coming into it again. The price you'd get for those three hobbledehoys ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... gave her gloves a disdainful, careless twirl, and went on her way to her room. To her astonishment, a few moments later, she heard the front door slam. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... she was beloved by Demetrius. However that might be, when Puck returned with the little purple flower, Oberon said to his favourite, "Take a part of this flower: there has been a sweet Athenian lady here, who is in love with a disdainful youth; if you find him sleeping, drop some of the love-juice in his eyes, but contrive to do it when she is near him, that the first thing he sees when he awakes may be this despised lady. You will know the man ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... within a horse litter, and carried, as though in a bier, amongst his people. "Now we shall see," said these, "which of these recreant lords will follow him to the host." The king sent urgent messages to the knights who were so disdainful of Lot, summoning them on their allegiance to hasten to his aid. For himself he was carried straight to Verulam.[1] This once was a fair city where St. Alban fell upon his death, but was now altogether ravaged and ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... Rocky Mountains and the Itasca summit, stands ready to gulp it down. The scene is truly magnificent, and the struggle not slight. For more than twenty miles, the transparent blue waters of the Ohio are crowded along the Tennessee coast; but the Mississippi, swollen by its summer flood, as if disdainful of its rural and peace-like properties, gains the mastery before reaching Memphis, and carries its characteristic of turbid geologic power for a thousand miles more, until its final ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... herself, "you are so young, so frank and fearless, so talented, so impatient of imbecility, so disdainful of vulgarity, you need a lesson; here it is then: far more is to be done in this world by dexterity than by strength; but, perhaps, you knew that before, for there is delicacy as well as power in your character—policy, as well ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... and cursed myself for a fool. The Indians again gave tongue to their approval, and gathered in a ring, leaving the space between Pemaou and myself clear. All was ready for the game to proceed. I hesitated a moment, and the Ottawas laughed, while Pemaou looked disdainful. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... surveyed him fixedly with a glacial and disdainful insolence. His lips also curled ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... is one of the most peculiar features of Welsh poetry. In the ode to which I allude the poet complains of the barbarity of his mistress, Morfydd, and what an unthankful task it is to be the poet of a beauty so proud and disdainful, which sentiment ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... but still they did not desert the Federal party. The latter clung to the spoils of office for their partisans, to the old restrictive franchise, and to the obnoxious Stand-up Law, nor were they less disdainful of the dissenters and ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... this was by the way, so far as it availed the captain with Mrs. Tweedie, who passed him on the road as cold as ever, and received the swear-money disdainful, and never said "thank you" for it, though there was eighteen dollars in the bag and the biggest share Coe's. Afiola himself had been getting out of favor for two months. He couldn't manage to be deacon of ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... he hop'd to be made happy with the enjoyment of her last Favours; but she seeming to be mightily affronted at his Discourse, told him, That if he did'nt leave off prating at that rate to her, she would call to her Man to Kick him out of the Shop: Which disdainful Carriage did so much exasperate him, that he replyed with some heat, Why Madam, do you think I cann't do your Business as well as John did, at the Three-Cranes Tavern in Thame-street, last Night? These words made her change as Pale as Death: Sir, said she, As you are a Gentleman, ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... made him boisterously arrogant, blusteringly disdainful of his intellectual superiors, and brazenly foul-mouthed. It was as though he was shouting: "I don't have to fear or respect anybody now! I have got a lot of money. I can do as I damn please." More than one ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... him for that speech. His careless words and disdainful attitude cut her sensitive nature to the quick. Evidently he ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... little one obeyed. He caught them in his arms and set them down. The girl sat still, staring at him with reproachful, with disdainful eyes. ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... had pulled on his outer clothing and had stood moodily by, watching Dave's more workmanlike preparations with a disdainful smile. ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... known except that she was his father's second wife, and that her Christian name was Bella, or perhaps surname Bello. It might, however, be conjectured, from the remarkable and only opportunity which our author has taken of alluding to her, that he derived his disdainful character rather from his mother than father.[6] The father appears to have died during the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... write that he was poisoned by his wife Ethelburga daughter vnto Offa king of Mercia (as before ye haue heard) and he maried hir in the fourth yere of his reigne. She is noted by writers to haue bin a verie euill woman, proud, and high-minded as Lucifer, and therewith disdainful. She bare [Sidenote: Ethelburga hir conditions and wicked nature.] hir the more statelie, by reason of hir fathers great fame and magnificence: whome she hated she would accuse to hir husband, and so put them in danger of their liues. And if she might not ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... abbe, thoroughly pleased with me, expressed his satisfaction to everyone, while his father had such a singular affection for me, that I was assured by the Count de Favria, that he had spoken of me to the king; even Madam de Breil had laid aside her disdainful looks; in short I was a general favorite, which gave great jealousy to the other servants, who seeing me honored by the instructions of their master's son, were persuaded I should ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... superfluous word, without the joints and bands of structure; they say it in brief, rapid sentences, which come down, sentence after sentence, like the strokes of a great hammer. No wonder that in their disdainful brevity they seem rugged and abrupt, "and do not seem to end, but fall." But with their truth and piercingness and delicacy of observation, their roughness gives a kind of flavour which no elaboration could give. It is none the less that their wisdom is of a somewhat cynical ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... in the world where you can wave a magic wand like that," said Birotteau, with an Asiatic gesture worthy of the Arabian Nights. "You will do me the honor to come to my ball, monsieur? Men of talent are not all disdainful of commerce; and you will meet a scientific man of the first order, Monsieur Vauquelin of the Institute; also Monsieur de la Billardiere, Monsieur le comte de Fontaine, Monsieur Lebas, judge and president of the Court of commerce, various magistrates, Monsieur le ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... "You shall understand," he says, "that this sixth of November, I spoke with Sir Robert Bowes" (the head of the family, his bride's uncle) "in the matter you know, according to your request; whose disdainful, yea, despiteful, words hath so pierced my heart that my life is bitter to me. I bear a good countenance with a sore troubled heart, because he that ought to consider matters with a deep judgment is become not only ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thou, Edwy, with disdainful mien The little Naiad of the Downton Wave? High 'mid the rocks, where her clear waters lave The circling, gloomy basin.—In such scene, Silent, sequester'd, few demand, I ween, That last perfection ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... he only saw their backs. But he had no doubt who one of the couple was. The fair hair, the tall, slim, long-limbed figure, the perverse sloppiness of dress which could not quite obscure her grace of youth, betrayed the disdainful prodigy of Rackham Park. The creator of Linda Spavinsky swam ahead of him. Had he doubted her identity, a glance at the door from which she had emerged would have dispelled the doubt. It was the entrance to a picture gallery, where, cubes and curves having served their turn ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... days before he had warned the caballeros—the gentlemen of the court who were going back to Grant and Bowie, to be on their guard every inch of the way beyond the Wells, and now his heart was heavy. He feared that, disdainful of his caution, they had driven straight into ambush. Ought not the Teniente Blake to push forward at once with his whole force and ascertain their fate? Blake bade him hold his peace. If harm had come to that ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... epoch to epoch, changing names and circumstances to suit the locality, and attaching itself to outstanding figures and fresh events without changing its essential spirit and character. The more formal Muses despised these rude and unlettered rhymes—when they noticed them at all it was in a disdainful or patronising spirit—and this holds true of the eighteenth century almost as much as of the sixteenth. It is not that ballad poetry was dumb, but that history was deaf ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... itself, however, is not of much importance, for I believe he really likes you. But, after that, he told me of his love for me. Perhaps I was a little too insolent, too disdainful. I do not know exactly how far I went; but I found myself in such a perplexing, such a painful, such an extraordinary situation, that I dared ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... that any of us were so charmed with him as one might be led to suppose from your remark, Edith," said Isabel Mainwaring, with a disdainful glance towards the attorney, who had seated himself beside Miss Carleton; "but here, almost any one will answer for a diversion, and he was ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... me." She glanced away under her master's half amused, half disdainful glance, then added ...
— Mam' Lyddy's Recognition - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... That much for thy service!" with a disdainful gesture of his fingers. "A strapping lad like thee would be the ruin of my trade. I might as well give up bag ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... filled Kathinka with loathing. Well she knew that it meant not love, but the basest of passions, and that a Jewess could never become more than the passing fancy of Count Drentell. With a disdainful glance at him, she ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... The discordant and disdainful laughs that burst from the restrained seamen were a sufficient pledge of their indifference to so trifling a danger. Borroughcliffe noted their hardened boldness, and taking the supper bell, which was lying near him, he rang it, for a minute, with great violence. The heavy tread ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... interests which it involved. Catching his eyes sometimes, as he sat there, looking out idly, indifferently, upon it all—this success which was the breath of life to Dick—she found him somewhat admirable; disdainful, fastidious, reserved—beneath his surface good-humour, his constant kindness, he could scarcely be a happy man. In flashes of sudden gratitude, she would have been glad often to have done something for him, had there been anything in the world to do. And then she laughed at herself ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... power of the bench; at other times a personal dislike to one of his puisnes caused him to derogate from the dignity of his court, in cases where he was especially careful to protect the interests of suitors. With silence more disdainful than any words could have been, he used to turn away from Mr. Justice Willes, at the moment when the latter expected his chief to ask his opinion; and on such occasions the indignant puisne seldom had the prudence and nerve to conceal his mortification. "I have not been consulted, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... a matsouri, a fete, a procession passing through the quarter which is not so virtuous as our own, so our mousmes tell us, with a disdainful toss of the head. Nevertheless, from the heights on which we dwell, seen thus in a bird's-eye view, by the uncertain light of the stars, this district has a singularly chaste air, and the concert going on therein, purified in its ascent from the depths ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... fled the field, A Spartan born, his Spartan mother killed; Then, stretching forth his bloody sword, she cried (Her teeth fierce gnashing with disdainful pride), "Fly, cursed offspring, to the shades below, Where proud Euro'tas shall no longer flow For timid hinds like thee! Fly, trembling slave, Abandoned wretch, to Pluto's darkest cave! For I so vile a monster never bore: Disowned by ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... of Zeus!" exclaimed the stranger. "By these fetters, no!" And, weak as he was, the forest rang with his disdainful laughter. ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Stella with a disdainful smile. "I am sure Marian will be accommodating enough to go with Alice, although you have walked no further than they did. You will go, ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... mouth over a high collar and a green tie, behind the grating, and a disdainful hand pushed the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... the King].—Now that I have seen him, I can well understand why Sakoontala should pine after such a man, in spite of his disdainful rejection of her. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... Brought up in the country, she was strong, active, brave, and full of life. To all her charms of delicate beauty she united the energy of physical and moral health. She was the proud-spirited and fearless girl, no less than the sweet and affable mistress of the house. I often found her haughty and disdainful. Patience and the poor of the district never found her ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... with another laugh. "Your disdainful aunt is going to pay me for Kobuk in coin which you will learn more of bye and bye." He turned to the girl. "I'm not such a bad fellow, Jean," he continued with an attempt at an ingenuous smile. "Come, kiss me once and the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... and humour. The story of the Oak and the Briar, related as his friendly commentator, Kirke, says, "so lively and so feelingly, as if the thing were set forth in some picture before our eyes," for the warning of "disdainful younkers," is a first fruit, and promise of Spenser's skill in vivid narrative. The fable of the Fox and the Kid, a curious illustration of the popular discontent at the negligence of the clergy, and the popular suspicions ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... eyes bent on her beneath the high, bald forehead, just as we see him in the bust, she would have met him fearlessly, and controverted his claims to the authorship of the plays, to his very face. She had taught herself to contemn "Lord Leicester's groom" (it was one of her disdainful epithets for the world's incomparable poet) so thoroughly, that even his disembodied spirit would hardly have found civil treatment at Miss ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to a heap o' trouble, friend," he remarked, surveying the tall, graceful figure with a rather disdainful eye. "We don't dress up much in these parts, ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... A disdainful gesture completed her meaning. Thus, under the influence of her disastrous education, Emile for the second time killed her budding happiness, and destroyed its prospects of life. Maximilien's apparent indifference, and a woman's smile, had wrung from her one of those sarcasms ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... Irene in grey silk shot with palest green. He looked, sideways, at Fleur's face. Rather colourless-no light, no eagerness! That love affair was preying on her—a bad business! He looked beyond, at his wife's face, rather more touched up than usual, a little disdainful—not that she had any business to disdain, so far as he could see. She was taking Profond's defection with curious quietude; or was his "small" voyage just a blind? If so, he should refuse to see it! Having promenaded round the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the aisle with his sister's hand on his arm, his face was crimson and reluctant, and he stared straight before him as if unwilling to meet all the watching eyes that followed their progress. But the bride walked proudly and firmly, her head held high with even the suspicion of an upward, disdainful curve to her beautiful mouth, the ghost of a defiant smile. To all who saw her she was a splendid ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... stood there, slowly interpreting to Ida, by graceful allusive signs, the words of the service, one could not think that behind his impassive face there was any feeling for the man or for the woman. He had that disdainful smile which men acquire who are all their lives aloof from the hopes of the hearthstone and acknowledge no ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the porter's door, the citoyenne Remacle, leaning on her broom, looked at her lodger with the eyes of virtue beholding crime in the clutches of the law. Little Josephine, dainty and disdainful, held back Mouton by his collar when the dog tried to fawn on the friend who had often given him a lump of sugar. A gaping crowd ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... Beauseant had fair hair and dark eyes, and the pale complexion that belongs to fair hair. She held up her brow nobly like some fallen angel, grown proud through the fall, disdainful of pardon. Her way of gathering her thick hair into a crown of plaits above the broad, curving lines of the bandeaux upon her forehead, added to the queenliness of her face. Imagination could discover the ducal coronet of Burgundy in the spiral ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... materialistic in mind; so inflammable in emotions; so grotesque in its virtues; so violent in its excesses; so complacently oblivious of all the higher values of wealth; so giddied with the new wine of liberty and crude abundance; so open of speech, of heart, of home, and so blithely disdainful of a hundred risks of life, health, and property. And all this the young observer's glance took in with maybe more realization of it than might be looked for in one not yet twenty-one. Yet his fuller attention was for matters nearer and of ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... the top dressing of dust, he was tall, cleanly built, and evidently as hard as a wire nail. His hair missed red by the merest fraction, and his eyes were a clear blue, level and direct. He moved as lightly as a prowling animal, and he met the supercilious and disdainful glances of his fellow passengers with a ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... on the Sunday preceding the Tuesday fixed for the execution, but it fell through on a rumor of confession. The Monday papers contained a last masterly letter from Grodman exposing the weakness of the evidence, but they knew nothing of a confession. The prisoner was mute and disdainful, professing little regard for a life empty of love and burdened with self-reproach. He refused to see clergymen. He was accorded an interview with Miss Brent in the presence of a jailer, and solemnly asseverated his respect for her dead ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... gave herself up to the dance. The young mountaineer was no mean partner. Forward and back they glided, their swift feet beating every note of the music; Faster receding before her partner, and now advancing toward him, now whirling away with a disdainful toss of her head and arms, and now giving him her hand and whirling till her white skirts floated from the floor. At last, with head bent coquettishly toward her partner, she danced around him, and when it seemed that she would ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... of the Duke of Cumberland, it concealed a proud and selfish spirit, which could ill brook the superiority of his elder brother, Frederic, Prince of Wales, or bear with temper the popularity of another. When, in after years, his brother's death was communicated to him, those jealous and disdainful feelings broke forth. "It is a great blow to the country," he said, sarcastically; "but I hope, in time, it will recover it." That want of faith in human nature, of reverence for good motives, that absence of a generous ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... means account for the variety of passions excited within him by the mere difference of the spacing, time, or rhythm of music? In my new condition of living I notice that the soul throws out with most disdainful impatience music that was formerly beautiful to my mind and heart (or my creature); and certain types of flowing cadences (very rarely to be found), sustained in high, flowing, delicate, and soaring continuity will produce in her conditions akin ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... cross the road and climb to an outside seat. Whilst the magistrate waved a friendly farewell from the top of the disappearing car, Fandor shrugged disdainful shoulders, and, with pitying lips, muttered ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... writing a criticism, making a speech, studying the law."[9] These innocent looking definitions are probably not without an ironic sting. It requires no great stretch of the imagination, for example, to catch in Hazlitt's eye a sly wink at Lamb or a disdainful glance toward Leigh Hunt as he gives the reader his idea of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... A deep flush overspread his handsome face, his eyes glowed under the too lofty brow with the fierce light of fever, his waving locks stood out in wild confusion round his head, while the finely cut upper lip with its disdainful curl seemed the very seat of scorn and bitterest contempt. Every feature wore that same expression, and not a trace of fear or regret. But his panting breast betrayed to the physician's first glance that they had here to deal with a sick ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... least surprise or impertinent curiosity, but received me with all the obliging civility possible. I know no European court, where the ladies would have behaved themselves in so polite a manner to such a stranger. I believe, upon the whole, there were two hundred women, and yet none of those disdainful smiles, and satirical whispers, that never fail in our assemblies, when any body appears that is not dressed exactly in the fashion. They repeated over and over to me; "UZELLE, PEK UZELLE," which is nothing but, Charming, very Charming.—The first sofas were covered with ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... were resumed by the same set in town next winter. The memories and the methods of one season were tided over to another. Gertrude was still "gay"—perhaps gayer—and a little more openly impatient with her husband, and a little more openly disdainful of him. Young men swarmed and fluttered, and those who had "never tried it on" before seemed inclined to ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... I have done with it?" said the virago, with a disdainful toss of her head—"what but fling it back in the face of the messenger— the worthless thing. No doubt it is a love-token sent to this colonel ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... soliloquy. Moreover, Locke's misunderstandings of Descartes were partly justified by the latter's verbal concessions to tradition and authority. A man who has a clear head, and like Descartes is rendered by his aristocratic pride both courteous and disdainful, may readily conform to usage in his language, and even in his personal sentiments, without taking either too seriously: he is not struggling to free his own mind, which is free already, nor very hopeful of freeing that of most people. The innate ideas ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... as I have said, are in the minority, for obvious reasons, for these little disdainful distinguished gentlemen figure here as potential fathers, with their fees somewhat indelicately named; for there's a husbandry on earth as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... She made a disdainful gesture with her hand as though sweeping him out of her path, and passing around him she ran swiftly from ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... disdainful as she coolly surveyed him from head to foot, "I should imagine that a strong, capable-appearing fellow like you might do much better than that. There is so much work in the world worth doing, and ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... where they list, to come and go through keyholes, to ride upon the wind, to overcome, in their soarings up and down, all obstacles of distance, time, and place. Thrice blessed be this last consideration, since it enables us to follow the disdainful Miggs even into the sanctity of her chamber, and to hold her in sweet companionship through the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... calm thine of stoic souls, who weigh Life well, and find it wanting, nor deplore; But in disdainful silence turn away, Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... age, was a mild, retiring, rather shy person, and endowed with a tenderness of disposition, of which the tranquil depths had not as yet been ruffled by the faintest breath of passion. His mother possessed almost unbounded influence over him; and he ever listened with a smile, a languid, half-disdainful one, to her eager speculations upon the numerous eligible matches that would present themselves the instant the "season" and their new establishment in Mayfair—of which the decoration and furnishing engaged all her available time and ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... could not. A poor oarsman may beat a fair swimmer, and she had the start of me. Steadily out to sea she rowed, and I toiled behind. If her mood lasted—and hurt pride lasts long in disdainful ladies who are more wont to deal strokes than to bear them—my choice was plain. I must drown there like a rat, or turn back a beaten cur. Alas for my triumph! If to have thought on it were sin, I was now chastened. But Barbara rowed on. In ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... conduct and conversation the habits of the criminal bar, and bullies and cross-examines even his dinner and his wine,—Joe, the husband of "the hand" by which Pip was brought up,—Wopsle, Wemmick, Orlick, the family of the Pockets, the mysterious Miss Havisham, and the disdainful Estella, are not repetitions, but personages that the author introduces to his readers for the first time. The story is not sufficiently advanced to enable us to judge of its merit, but it has evidently been carefully meditated, and here ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Susan gave a disdainful shrug. "What's the use of that kind of talk!" said she. "No use at all. The thing is, we haven't got what we want, and we've got to get it—and so we've got ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... in the stranger's wiping the sweat off his brow and going away. Fyodor Timofeyitch gave a disdainful sniff, lay down on his mattress, and closed his eyes; Ivan Ivanitch went to the trough, and the pig was taken away by the old woman. Thanks to the number of her new impressions, Kashranka hardly noticed how the day passed, and in the evening she was installed with her mattress ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... said Mrs. Lavender, "young people have much satisfaction in being proud: when they come to my age, they may find they would have been happier if they had been less disdainful." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... A disdainful silence followed. "Didn't yuh hear what I said?" Uncle Henry inquired, ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... gradually dawn on the Chinese philosopher that the Emperor could hardly be born every night. And when he learnt the truth the philosopher, if he was a philosopher, would be a little disappointed ... possibly a little disdainful. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... causes others. As his stature is short, and yet his waist very long, he appeared to much greater advantage on horseback than on foot; in all ways it is war, and war only, he is fitted for. His manner in society is constrained without being timid; it is disdainful when he is on his guard, and vulgar when he is at ease; his air of disdain suits him best, and so he is not sparing in the use of it. He took pleasure already in the part of embarrassing people by saying disagreeable things: an art which he has since made ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... retorted the Swede. He took seventy-five cents from his pocket and tendered it to Scully; but the latter snapped his fingers in disdainful refusal. However, it happened that they both stood gazing in a strange fashion at three silver pieces on the Swede's ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... me most was, that though this spectacle filled me with horror, the sultan my uncle, instead of testifying his sorrow to see the prince his son in such a condition, spat on his face, and exclaimed, with a disdainful air, "This is the punishment of this world, but that of the other will last to eternity;" and not content with this, he pulled off his sandal, and gave the corpse of his son a blow on ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... French (in shops), instead of being musical and sweet and sympathetic, like Madame Seraskier's, was barbarous and grotesque, with dreadful "ongs," and "angs," and "ows," and "ays"; and its manner overbearing, suspicious, and disdainful; and then we could hear its loud, insolent English asides; and though it was tall and straight and not outwardly deformed, it looked such a kill-joy skeleton at a feast, such a portentous carnival mask of solemn emptiness, such a dreary, doleful, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... of himself for being frightened at such an insignificant thing as Martin, he stalked majestically away, glancing back, first over one shoulder then the other, and kicking up his heels behind him in a somewhat disdainful manner. ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... grateful for any favor, however small; masterful, courageous, impassive, shrewd, resolute, fluent of speech; profoundly religious, even superstitious; hot-tempered, inscrutable, mendacious, revengeful sometimes and ofttimes forgiving, disdainful of woman and her charms; above all, boastful, conceited, and with a passion for glory. His pride and his imagination were to be barbaric in their immensity, his clannishness was to be that of the most primitive civilization. In all these ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... lively contact between the dominant and the dominated race, that a certain sympathy is begotten, or at the least a transfusion of prejudices, making life easier for both. But the Englishman sits apart, bursting with pride and ignorance. He figures among his vassals in the hour of peace with the same disdainful air that led him on to victory. A passing enthusiasm for some foreign art or fashion may deceive the world, it cannot impose upon his intimates. He may be amused by a foreigner as by a monkey, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it," said she. "I'll send the pot-boy to wait on you." In a perfectly affable manner she took the money from the uncouth digger, and then, throwing a disdainful glance at Carnac, she tossed her head ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... birth with those of money. The respect afforded to politicians, which he in his position also had to accede to, perfectly enraged him. Was a son of a nobody, a common fellow, to take precedence of him, and merely give an indifferent or disdainful glance at him?—at him, the descendant of the proud Counts of Castille! Not being able to put up with such a state of things, he resigned his appointment, and took up his abode again in the old-world ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... facts and arguments which obstruct the full sweep of his theory, he has an offensive habit of escaping from objections he will not pause to answer, by the calling of names and the introduction of Providence. He is most petulantly disdainful of others when he has nothing but paradoxes with which to oppose their truisms. He has a trick of adopting the manner and expressions of Carlyle, in speaking of incidents and characters to which they are ludicrously ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... situation, the homage commanded and the sensation created by this inopportune and unheralded arrival: deliberately Number One mounted the dais and posed himself in the throne-like chair. Then, as his look read face after face, he smiled with twitching and disdainful nostrils. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... directed to me; wait till I see who it is from," and Dexie picked a tiny roll of paper from among the blossoms. One hasty glance over the written lines, and Dexie curled her lip in a disdainful smile. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... only angel who appears in it is not one of the radiant Sympathies, with fair golden heads and dazzling faces and wings and robes of tender green, of the "Purgatory," not one of the living topazes or golden splendors of the "Paradise"; but is stern, disdainful, silent, waving from before his face all contact with the filthy gloom. His Lucifer is no flickering, gentlemanly, philosophic man of the world like Goethe's Mephistopheles, nor like Milton's Fallen ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... silence to thank me, which he did in very good English. His submissiveness only deepened my perplexity, but I couldn't help laughing as he walked away surrounded by the "troops," with Dutch leading the way—Dutch fully conscious that he had vindicated himself and disposed to be rather disdainful of his comrades. ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... would hear no reason, but drew his weapon; and Mercutio, who knew not of Romeo's secret motive for desiring peace with Tybalt, but looked upon his present forbearance as a sort of calm dishonorable submission, with many disdainful words provoked Tybalt to the prosecution of his first quarrel with him; and Tybalt and Mercutio fought, till Mercutio fell, receiving his death's wound while Romeo and Benvolio were vainly endeavoring ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... walked a noble figure of commanding stature, whose eyes flashed now and again on the shouting rabble, and whose white hair, escaped from his cap, waved tempestuously in the winter wind. There walked Sorley Boy, upright, sullen, disdainful; and behind him came Ludar, with tight- pressed lips and thunderous brow, his fingers twitching nervously on his belt, and his feet at every step kicking the snow impatiently from his path. I followed my master as in duty bound, and behind us ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... save by a disdainful flirt of her skirts as she set off down the lane, followed by Perkins, Cameron and Tim ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... and offices were thus occupied, bands were parading the gorgeous saloons and gazing with wonderment on their decorations and furniture. Some grimy ruffians had thrown themselves with disdainful delight on the satin couches and the state beds: others rifled the cabinets with an idea that they must be full of money, and finding little in their way, had strewn their contents—papers and books and works of art over the floors of the apartments; sometimes a band who had escaped ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... and, turning from me with a disdainful swirl of her short petticoat, began to descend into the depths below, seeing which, I scrambled to my feet and crossed to the trap, only to behold her standing beneath me, the ladder dragged quite out of ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... man devotes himself to study, and becomes learned, yet is disdainful with those less educated than himself, and is not particular in his dealings with his fellows, then the people say of him, "Woe to the father who allowed him to study God's law; woe to those who instructed him; how ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various |
