"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lucille more clearly, and the large, hazy outlines of Tode's features were beginning to assume the proper proportions. There was a diabolical leer upon Tode's face, unchanged during the five years since Jim had seen him last, except that it had become more evil, more powerful. The enormous and distorted face that Jim had seen had been simply due to the presence of some ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... remark with a chuckle of intense satisfaction and a leer at our big neighbour, Bob dived below again; and shortly afterwards a frizzling sound from forward, and an odour strongly suggestive of bacon and eggs, which was wafted upwards from the companion, informed me that he had entered upon the duties of the less dignified ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... such a willing—" added Schliemann, sidling up to him with a dreadful leer on his face. He made use of the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... with a leer, "'specially the new superintendent, you'd like me ter give 'im an extra warnin' ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... River Police Depot. It was that of a man who looked like a Lascar, who wore an ill-fitting slop-shop suit of blue, soaked and stained and clinging hideously to his body. His dank black hair was streaked upon his low brow; and his face, although it was notable for a sort of evil leer, had assumed in death ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... chatted at doorsteps, with idle house-girls; some courtesans flaunted in furs and ostrich feathers, through a group of coarse engineers; some sergeants of artillery, in red trimmings, and caps gilded with cannon, were reining their horses to leer at some ladies, who were taking the air in their gardens; and at a wide place in the street, a Provost-Major was manoeuvring some companies, to the sound of the drum and fife. There was much drunkenness, among both soldiers and civilians; and the people ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... men Worked then but as a little leaven; From some more modest palace then The Soul of Dives stank to Heaven. But when they planned with lisp and leer Their careful war upon the weak, They smote your body on its bier, For surety ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... Argyle Street on a Saturday night; other nights it is quieter, of course. Oh, he won't harm you.' A lumbering carter in a wild state of intoxication had pushed himself against the frightened girl, and looked down into her face with an idiotic leer. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... parson"; housekeepers in search of stolen goods; the "widow who bounced" from one end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a description in romantic style suggest the hand of another writer, possibly ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... thing, or the ugliness of an ugly one; but it takes a clever beast like Crawley to show you beauty in anything so absolutely repulsive as that woman's face. Look at it! He's got hold of something. He's caught the lurking fascination, the—the leer ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... We changed cars at Leer, where on the platform a drunken German soldier lurched against us, and, seeing us tied together, offered to lend us his knife to cut the cord, but the guard ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... and was going to shut the door, when the drunken old man turned round once more, and inquired with a cunning leer, "So you expect some one, my child? Whom do you expect, little Itzig? Is it a lad ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... regarded his question with an expressive leer. "Arrah! now, ye won't tell?" he said, in a hoarse whisper; "sure it'll be the death o' me av ye do. There's no end o' them things here—as many as ye like to pick; it's only the day before to-morrow that I turned up a nugget of pure goold the size of ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... yet the leer of the gipsy's eye made him think of the lying magpie. So he left her, and hastened on, and, behold! there stood before him the village maypole, bedecked with roses and ribbons, and a living garland of youths and fair maidens dancing ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... are thinking. But the mind goes out under this regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather late at night with a curious tendency to say the same ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the king taunted him from the black chaos that hid the dungeon walls. The words struck at him, filling his head with shooting pain, and he tottered back and sank to the ground to get away from them. They followed, and that vengeful leer of the king was behind them, urging them on, until they beat his face into the sticky earth, and smothered him into what ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... this little piece of information, and with his leer an inch from my chin, I answered slowly and calmly that it certainly was. I might add that he spoke Spanish by preference (according to Mexique very bad Spanish); for The Fighting Sheeney had made his home for a number of years in Rio, and his opinion thereof ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... thought as 'ow I'd better—wait a bit. So I waited, I did." And here, again, Milo of Crotona touched the peak of his cap, and looked from Barnabas to Cleone's flushing loveliness with eyes wide and profoundly innocent,—a very cherub in top-boots, only his buttons (Ah, his buttons!) seemed to leer and wink one to another, as much as to say: ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... as solid in mind as in body, and ere the scene grasped him against his will he says he saw with an angry impatience the flicker of a leer on the darkened face of the Peruvian. But it did not last. In a few minutes the two young Burghers were not the only ones whom the spell had subdued—the wizard was netted too. And then, as he stood, his hands still fluttering, they heard him drone ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... have been accessory to such vile work as to stab an unarmed and unsuspecting man, yet often as I thought of Alessandro's satyr leer, and the loathing bravely coupled with defiance which I had seen leap in answer to it in the face of his child Duchess, I thanked God that Lorenzino had no such ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... got the cinch on me, don't yer, Job Malden! 'It's a long lane that has no turn,' they say, and yer'll wish some day yer'd treated Dan Dean square!" and he turned with a leer and was gone. ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... back was nearly horizontal, and his green-stockinged legs striking out behind him with the furious rapidity of a great frog trying to push his head into the mud, he turned back his little face with a leer of triumphant derision at every moving thing which might happen to ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... eloquently puts it. Did any single bloom escape the blight of ineffable depravity? No—not one! Occasionally some fresh young thing would appear at Court—appealing and innocent. Then the atmosphere would begin to take effect: some one would whisper something to her—she would leer almost unconsciously; a few days later she would be discovered ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... should teach me. There's never a day in the week but I carry coals from Croydon to London; and now, when I rise in the morning to harness my horses, and load my cart, methinks I have a tailor sewing stitches in my heart: when I am driving my cart, my heart that wanders one way, my eyes they leer another, my feet they lead me, I know not whither, but now and then into a slough over head and ears; so that poor Grim, that before was over shoes in love, is now over head and ears in dirt ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... and gave the company to understand he took this as a polite acknowledgment of respect. But his gesture was accompanied with a disconcerted leer of smothered malice, which I could not misinterpret. It was sardonic; and, to me, who knew what was passing in his heart, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... with your lips—name her not!" cried Philip, growing livid with his emotions. "Talk not of the mercy—the forethought—a Beaufort could show to leer and her offspring! I accept it not—I believe it not. Oh, yes! you follow me now with your false kindness; and why? Because your ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or perhaps a present from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... will be to me, my lord, for having enabled him to establish the right," says Sampson, with a leer on his face. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Arden, with a leer on his dark face. "You are the fool, Helmar, not I. But see here, I am on business. Not of my own, but that of the person who ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... than by a few touches of chalk. Among the heads of distinguished personages, finding those of the King of Prussia and the Empress of Hungary, he changed the cast of their eyes, so as to make them leer significantly at each other. Note.—These (which in the catalogue are called an original portrait of the present Emperor of Prussia and ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its antagonist) were two old signs of the "Saracen's Head" and Queen Anne. Under the first was written ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... said the Knight; "Of him I have heard much good! I grant," he said, "with you to wend, My brethren all in-fere: My purpose was to have dined to-day At Blyth or Doncaster." Forth then went that gentle Knight, With a careful cheer; The tears out of his eyen ran, And fell down by his leer. They brought him unto the lodge door: When ROBIN 'gan him see, Full courteously did off his hood, And set him on his knee. "Welcome, Sir Knight!" then said ROBIN, "Welcome thou art to me; I have abide you fasting, Sir, All these hours three!" ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... his feet; but the business was over in two twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion, the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... paused by the door, while Tip, with a confident leer on his face, strode into the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... and Giorgione came Botticelli. Now, Botticelli builded on Giorgione, while Burne-Jones builded on Botticelli. Aubrey Beardsley, dead at the age at which Keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where Burne-Jones placed faith and abiding trust. Aubrey Beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in Botticelli's "Spring," I need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes about the face ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... variations any number of words will bear. He talks with a trillo, and gives his words a double relish. He had rather have them bear two senses in vain and impertinently than one to the purpose, and never speaks without a leer-sense. He talks nothing but equivocation and mental reservation, and mightily affects to give a word a double stroke, like a tennis-ball against two walls at one blow, to defeat the expectation of his antagonist. He commonly slurs every fourth ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... replied Gunn, with a leer toward the door. "Why, you don't think I'm afraid, Captain? You should ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... the expression of diablerie came in he found impossible to discover. Experiment was necessary. The eyebrows—it could scarcely be the eyebrows? But he altered them. No, that was no better; in fact, if anything, a trifle more satanic. The corner of the mouth? Pah! more than ever a leer—and now, retouched, it was ominously grim. The eye, then? Catastrophe! he had filled his brush with vermilion instead of brown, and yet he had felt sure it was brown! The eye seemed now to have rolled in its socket, and was glaring at him an eye of fire. In a flash of passion, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... warmly padded, and much stained and splashed. She had fine dark eyes, and was young, bold-looking, and handsome; but when she came nearer, the moist pallor of her skin, the slackness of her lower lip and jaw, and an eager and worn expression in her fine eyes, gave her a thirsty, reckless leer that filled Marian with loathing. Her aspect conveyed the same painful suggestion as her voice had done before, but more definitely; for it struck Marian, with a shock, that Conolly, in the grotesque metamorphosis of a nightmare, might appear in some such likeness. The lamp did not seem ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... enclosure Bakahenzie and the other two were arrested by astonishment. Lowering the body to the base of the idol which leaned sideways in a drunken leer, Birnier lifted the spear and brought it down accurately between zu Pfeiffer's left arm and breast, and dropping swiftly upon his knees to cover his actions, slashed his own left forearm. Then he jumped to his feet and held the blooded spear aloft ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... to be Monsieur," said the obese Turk with a graceful wave of the hand in my direction, "and not you, who has robbed my home of its treasure, unless," he added, and I shall always remember the hideous leer of that pulpy-nosed and small-pox pitted face, "unless Monsieur has ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... drum with the white of one clown. Then mix with a prologue and roll very thin. Fill with a circus just coming to town. One leer, one scowl and one tragical grin. Bake in a sob of Carusian size. Result: the ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... the cops!" cried Carietta, her small face distorted with a leer of the most horrid satisfaction, "'Lihu's cops. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the order, passing the American skipper, who was leaning on the bulwark looking sick, and as the sailor came up he turned to him with an ugly leer. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... responded Frye, in an instantaneously sweetened tone, "I am glad you were, and, as I told you, you are wise to cultivate him. I suppose," he continued with a leer, "that you were buying wine for some of the ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... mouldering linen, and stiffly upended bedpoles and curtain rods which nearly filled the room. The clock of a bygone generation stood on the mantel-piece, and the black winding hole in its white face seemed to leer at him like an evil eye as the light of the torch fell on it. But nobody had been in the room. The dust which encrusted the furniture and the floor had not been disturbed ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... there, shouting to all the world to come and help you, for you had caught Black Donald and would die before you would give him up? Ah! you little vampire, how you thirsted for my blood! And you pretended to like me!" said Black Donald, eying her from head to foot, with a sly leer. ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Nothing was said between Blanquette and myself, but she became my sworn sister from that moment. And Narcisse sat at our feet looking down on the crowd, his tongue lolling out mockingly and a satiric leer on his face. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... watering-trough which usually distinguishes the front of the English public-house of the second class, there were three conveniences of that kind, for the use, as the landlord used to say, of the troop-horses when the soldiers came to search his house; while a knowing leer and a nod let you understand what species of troops he was thinking of. A huge ash-tree before the door, which had reared itself to a great size and height, in spite of the blasts from the neighbouring Solway, overshadowed, as usual, the ale-bench, as our ancestors called ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... case will the United States consent to go without its share of the swag. It is delicious. The biggest and proudest government on earth turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and robbing the infant all alone by itself! Dear sir, this is not any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... He turned his head. A gas jet above the wretched little washstand lighted the room but poorly. The door opened slowly. A tall, ungainly woman entered the room—a creature with a sallow, weather-beaten face and a perpetual leer. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the driver, with rather a bold leer. The average lady who descended or ascended Mrs. Popple's steps; was not considered ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... and most conspicuous of these descendants of the Mohawks, the sleek and orderly scholar beheld the childish figure of his son. Nor did Gabriel shrink from his father's eye, stern and scornful as it was, but rather braved the glance with an impudent leer. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the edge of the table pressing against his breast, and in so doing noticed the absence of the paper which he had forgotten in the fight. His face changed instantly, the drunken leer vanished. At first there was merely a puzzled expression, as of an intense effort to remember. He looked swiftly at me. I gave no sign. The two men were gone. His anxiety convinced me of the importance of the papers. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... bout among the officers in one of the German dugouts, the main beverage being champagne. With a drunken leer he informed us that champagne was plentiful on their side and that it did not cost them anything either. About seven that night the conversation had turned to the "contemptible" English, and the Captain had made a wager that he would hang his cap ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... discoloured by personality and merriment is distorted by malevolence.(!) No man who really knows the qualities of Mr. Whistler's best work will imagine that he really believes the highest expression of his art to be realized in reproduction of the grin and glare, the smirk and leer, of Japanese womanhood as represented in its professional types of beauty; but to all appearance he would fain persuade us that ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... you come with horns and tail, With diabolic grin and crafty leer; I say, such bogey-man devices wholly fail To waken in my ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... name to a woman whom one loves, and of whom one is sure? The reason was, that I should be tied to a disfigured, ugly creature with whom I should not venture to be seen in public, as my friends would leer at her with laughter in their eyes, and with pity in their hearts for the man who ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... lifelike portrait of my Sen, Drawn by the hand of Death; each fleshless pate, Cursed with a ghastly grin to eyes unrubbed With love's magnetic ointment, seems to mine To smile an amiable smile like his Whose amiable smile I—I alone Am able to distinguish from his leer! See how the gathering coyotes flit Through the lit spaces, or with burning eyes Star the black shadows with a steadfast gaze! About my feet the poddy toads at play, Bulbously comfortable, try to hop, And tumble clumsily with all their ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... had heard the unseen kobold, laughing in mockery, seat himself near me. The key turned in the door, it opened, and the Forest-master issued forth with papers in his hand. A mist seemed to envelop my head. I looked up, and—horror! the man in the gray coat sat by me, gazing on me with a satanic leer. He had drawn his magic-cap at once over his head and mine; at his feet lay his and my shadow peaceably by each other. He played negligently with the well-known parchment which he held in his hand, and as the Forest-master, busied with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... conversation that I gathered, was night-watchman in the yards. He had one red-rimmed eye. The other was sightless but had a half-closed leer that seemed to express discreet ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... trying to classify people too definitely into types; you will find that all through their youth they will persist annoyingly in jumping from class to class, and by pasting a supercilious label on every one you meet you are merely packing a Jack-in-the-box that will spring up and leer at you when you begin to come into really antagonistic contact with the world. An idealization of some such a man as Leonardo da Vinci would be a more valuable ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... because of England's sea power; because of the unblushing, shameless, gilded corruption of the French court, which cared less for the fate of Canada than the leer of a painted fool behind her fan. But be this remembered,—and here was the hand of overruling Destiny or Providence,—the fall of New France, like the fall of the seed to the ready soil, was the rebirth of a new nation. Henceforth it is not New ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... little shepherdesses danced to their lords and smiled sweet porcelain smiles. It was all very real, this music of the middle century, and it was written for the time, it suited the time, and when the time passed, the music with the men grew stale, sour, and something to be avoided, like the leer of a creaking, senescent beau, like the rouge and grimace of a debile coquette. My advice then is, enjoy the music of your epoch, for there is no such thing as music of the future. It is always music of the present. Schumann has had his day, Wagner ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... a triumphant leer. "And you know what I am going to say. Ah ha! I was sure you did. And you've confessed. Gertie, my dearest girl, I—What! Going? Not until you pay toll. I'm keeper of the gate and you must pay before you pass, you know. If you won't listen you must ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer. 1369 POPE: Prologue to the Satires, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... thee once more that my daughter is very irritable and passionate, and withal so fond of admiration, that nothing in the shape of a leer comes amiss to her. She likes a good squeeze above all things. Evil, and the Father of Evil though I be, I am not so very wicked as to wish thee to marry a woman of that description without thy knowing what kind of treasure ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... leer, ni tan siquiera[78-9] en castellano, que (p79) es lalengua mas clara del mundo; pero el diablo me lleve si esta ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... eyes on the plunging animal to see him leer, for whenever the sidling motion was made it brought to view the tawny horizontal form that seemed to be clinging to the bridle, as if riding for life. Suddenly there arose a cry ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... infirm old man, much bent, though evidently at one time he had been of great stature. His retreating forehead, heavy grey eyebrows, and loose sensual mouth, rendered him no pleasing object at any time, and, as he stood in the doorway now, with a half drunken satyr-like leer on his face, he looked ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... coarseness apart, I think I have met very, very few women who liked the banter of Swift and Fielding. Their simple, tender natures revolt at laughter. Is the satyr always a wicked brute at heart, and are they rightly shocked at his grin, his leer, his horns, hoofs, and ears? Fi donc, le vilain monstre, with his shrieks, and his capering crooked legs! Let him go and get a pair of well-wadded black silk stockings, and pull them over those horrid shanks; put a large ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... do. Shure a man is better than a baste any day; and besides, had I not a frind at my back ridy to help me?" Bryan cast a comical leer at La Roche as he said this, and the poor Frenchman blushed, for he felt that his conduct in the affair had not been very praiseworthy. It is due to La Roche to say, however, that no sooner had he found ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... at the hand and then at Mr Cripps's face. There was the same ugly leer about the latter, into which a spark of anger was infused as the boy still held back ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... reserve? Why should you pretend not to understand? Don't you see," he added, with a cunning leer, "that I can make these medals as perfectly as they can at the Hotel de la Monnaie, our ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... knew who you were, the moment you came in, sir," said he, with a very knowing leer out of his ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... so odd and funny, I cannot resist recording it here.— Methought that the Genius of Matrimony Before me stood with a joyous leer, Leading a husband in each hand, And both for me, which lookt rather queer;— One I could perfectly understand, But why there were two wasn't quite so clear. T'was meant however, I soon could see, To afford me ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... life were spent in prison. Toward the last she was allowed to live in nominal freedom. But despotism, with savage leer and stealthy step, saw that Fenelon was kept far away. In those declining days, when the shadows were lengthening toward the east, her time and talents were given to teaching the simple rudiments of knowledge to the peasantry, to alleviating their material wants and to ministering to the sick. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... advantage of the inner port: it was as useless for the local pilot to look grave and recall dire happenings to Captains who had elected to effect their repairs in the outer harbour—just here, at Port William. Old Jock's square jaw was set firm, his eyes were narrowed to a crafty leer; he looked on everyone with unconcealed suspicion and distrust. He was a shipmaster of the old school, 'looking after his Owners' interest.' He had put in 'in distress' to effect repairs.... He was being called upon to ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... the walls hung the works of Vandyke and Correggio and Raphael and Rubens; but the pure faces of art's creation looked down on statesmen bending low to the beck of adventuresses, old men pawning a noble name for the leer of a Portsmouth, and women vying for the glance ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Merry, gads-bud, I'm serious; I'll give thee five hundred pounds for every inch of him that resembles me; ah, this eye, this left eye! A thousand pounds for this left eye. This has done execution in its time, girl; why, thou hast my leer, hussey, just thy father's leer. Let it be transmitted to the young rogue by the help of imagination; why, 'tis the mark of our family, Thy; our house is distinguished by a languishing eye, as the house of Austria is by a thick lip. Ah! when I was of your age, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... reproduced, feature for feature, line for line. It was as though Nature, for an artistic freak, had set herself the task of fashioning hideousness and beauty from precisely the same materials. Between the leer of the man and the smile of the girl, where lay the difference? It would have puzzled any student of anatomy to point it out. Yet the one sickened, while to gain the other most men would ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... his leer and at his broad way of gratifying her whim. And she was more incensed than ever at his air of being ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... absurd choruses which make things go along as pleasantly as possible. Meanwhile the bottle is returned empty. He takes it, insists upon re-filling your "glass" from it, and tips it up over your cup. Then with a comical leer at you at the idea of attempting to pour wine from an empty bottle, he turns, dives into his cellar and fishes up another. You bid him go on with that capital song, offering to save him the trouble of unsealing ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... your long-winded preachers! But I want my things. I am going before it is too late. Advise you to go too, young man," he hiccoughed, "before you are overlooked. She is a witch! She's the devil's mark on her, I tell you! I'd like to have the finding it!" And with an ugly leer he advanced a step as if he ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... men laughed gruffly at these remarks, and threw leer-eyed looks at me. I asked one who seemed bad, what calibre his gun was. 'Forty-five ha'r trigger,' he answered. I nosed around over their plunder purpose. They had things drying around like Bannock ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... one moment, but firm the next, as the kangaroo, bending downward with the side of its head to him and nearly on a level with the water, which rose in violent ebullitions consequent upon Shanter's struggles, seemed to have a peculiar triumphant leer in its eyes, as if it were saying: "Wait a bit; it is your ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... a group before of maladies, And griefs, and Famine empty as a breeze,— A double monster, with a gloating leer Fix'd on his other half. They drew them near, One after one, led onward by Despair, That like the last of winter glimmer'd there,— A dismal prologue to his brother Death, Which was behind, and, with the horrid breath Of his wide baneful nostrils, plied them on. And often as ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... awoke from his lethargy, and drank a pint of the wine at a draught. The nigger put out a glass with a satisfied leer. The Captain took a bottle and laid his hand on the cork. But there it stayed, for at that moment there came a horrible sound of grating and tearing from the engine-room, and it was succeeded by a moment of dead and ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise, Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And with our sneering teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike, Alike reserved to blame or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend, Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... begins at once, and will be perfected. The bloated look of self-indulgence passes away like the leprosy of Naaman, the cheek grows pure, the lips return to the smile of hope instead of the grin of greed, and the eyes that made innocence shrink and shudder with their yellow leer grow childlike and sweet and faithful. The mammon-eyes, hitherto fixed on the earth, are lifted to meet their kind; the lips that mumbled over figures and sums of gold learn to say words of grace and tenderness. The truculent, repellent, self-satisfied face begins ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... the spring. Ping! Out sprang the Jack-in-the-box, with the same red nose, the same leer, the same roguish eyes which had surprised the children ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... but feminine characters, was without a signature; and when Fox had retired, with a cunning leer upon his sharp features, and Bruin was left alone to meditate upon the singularity of the adventure, that great beast lost himself in conjectures as to the writer, and figured to his imagination a creature very different, no doubt, to the being actually in question. His impatience, however, to ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... leetle too clevaire," said the maid with an evil leer,—"she would rob Madame, would she? She would play the espionne, hein? Eh bien, ma petite, you stay 'ere ontil you say what you lave done wiz ze ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... disconcerted my companions, who were too proud to be protected by a woman. "Dahabo," however, relieved their anxiety by informing us that the Gerad had sent his eldest son Sherwa, as escort. This princess was a gipsy-looking dame, coarsely dressed, about thirty years old, with a gay leer, a jaunty demeanour, and the reputation of being "fast;" she showed little shame-facedness when I saluted her, and received with noisy joy the appropriate present of a new and handsome Tobe. About 4 P.M. returned our second messenger, bearing with him a reproving message from the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... First favoured the court with a fascinating leer, which left no doubt on any one's mind that he ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... no harm comin' to y'u, lady, while I am with y'u," said the fellow, with a hateful leer that made Stella shudder. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... pursued by an angry farmer with a pitchfork. One characteristic of the medival imagination is its fondness for the grotesque. It loved queer beasts, half eagle, half lion, hideous batlike creatures, monsters like nothing on land or sea. They lurk among the foliage on choir screens, leer at you from wall or column, or squat upon the gutters ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... ruffian, interrupting. "There is one," he continues, looking askant at the Indian, with the leer of a demon, "one, I take it, whom the young Tovas chief would wish to retain as an ornament to his court. Pretty creature the nina was, when I last saw her; and I have no doubt still is, unless your Chaco sun has made havoc with her charms. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... with the terror of his helplessness and the crushing weight of the quivering masses of muscle about him, would have fallen but for their dread support. His consciousness fast deserting him, fascinated, he watched the monstrous leer as the head drew farther back, poised. He felt the agonizing pressure as the great muscles steeled for the blow, and in the moment before his senses departed, heard two crashing shots that sounded from behind him. With the smashing reports the poised head thudded to the ground, the folds fell ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... where at the head of a long table sat a lady belonging to the Society of Friends. She was reading aloud to about sixteen women prisoners, who were engaged in needle-work. They all rose on my entrance, curtsied respectfully, and then resumed their seats and employment. Instead of a scowl, leer, or ill-suppressed laugh, I observed upon their countenances an air of self-respect and gravity, a sort of consciousness of their improved character, and the altered position in which they are placed. I afterwards ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each other and jest ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... want to quarrel with him if I can help it, and therefore I softened it down. "You hear me say, Mr. Moss, that I'm an engaged young woman. Knowing that, you oughtn't to speak to me as you do." "Why, what do I say?" You should have seen his grin as he asked me; such a leer of triumph, as though he knew that he were getting the better of me. "Mr. Jones wouldn't approve if he were to see it." "But luckily he don't," said my admirer. Oh, if you knew how willingly I'd stand at a tub and wash your shirts, while the very touch of ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... else become the rival of that degraded being. I will never do it. I will see Luella, and tell her she must decide at once between us, and take a decisive stand in the matter. I saw a sneer upon the licentious mouth and a leer in the bloodshot eye of the reptile as he saw me treated so cavalierly. If I had him here for about five minutes I would settle this matter with him. And then I thought Luella's parting was not as warm as usual. Was it my jealous fears, or has she really been influenced? ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... they parted, weak and wan: And he left the shore; His ship diminished, was low, was gone; And she heard in the waves as the daytide wore, And read in the leer of the sun that shone, ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... convolutions. I saw the other day a little Japanese picture of a boat in a stormy sea, the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate and rigid with terror and misery. Above, through a rent in the clouds, is visible an ugly grotesque figure, with a demoniacal leer on his face, beating upon a number of drums. The picture is entitled "The Thunder-God beats his drums." Well, Carlyle seems to me like that; he has no pity for humanity, he only likes to add to its ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Kazan's head over with the butt of his gun, and the leer of satisfaction in his face gave place to a sudden look of amazement. For the first time he saw ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... climbed story after story without getting sight of the madman. Finally he reached the roof. It was waving like swells on a lake before a breeze. He caught sight of the Mad Musician standing on the street wall, thirty stories from the street, a leer on his devilish visage. He ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... me, Savile. Just tell me one thing," Jasmyn said, with an inquisitive leer. "Is she ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... are these? Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked? Stroke on stroke of pain,—but what slow panic, Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? Ever from their hair and through their hand palms Misery swelters. Surely we have perished Sleeping, and walk hell; but ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... go," cried Hen, with an ugly leer. "I know what you want to do. You want to drive me out to that shanty, so that big fellow will jump on me. Go ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... a poor weak woman," she answered, with a devilish leer. "You hate me, and you are afraid of me without any reason. If not, tell me, good sir, why you were so frightened the first time ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... rhetoric." Captain B—, who had eaten himself black in the face, and, with the napkin under his chin, was no bad representation of Sancho Panza in the suds, with the dishclout about his neck, when the duke's scullions insisted upon shaving him; this sea-wit, turning to the boy, with a waggish leer, "I suppose (said he) you don't understand the figure of amplification so well as Monsieur your father." At that instant, one of the nieces, who knew her uncle to be very ticklish, touched him under the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... I couldn't tell what it was. I decided it was a lactone, and let it go at that. I nodded as I went past the receptionist, and her smile made me feel uncomfortable again, just as it always did; there was too much of a leer in it. I never stopped to tell her where I was going; I just ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... Leather, 'those by the book-stall. That be Mr. Waffles,' continued he, giving his master a touch in the ribs as he jerked his portmanteau into a fly, 'that be Mr. Waffles,' repeated he, with a knowing leer. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a led ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... half-suppressed laughter as he speeds into the trap. The hoary cripple cannot hide his malicious glee, the "stiff blind horse" is as grotesque as he is woeful, the dreary day itself, as it sinks, shoots one grim red leer at the doomed knight as he sets forth; in the penury and inertness of the wasted plain he sees "grimace"; the mountains fight like bulls or doze like dotards; and the Dark Tower itself is "round and squat," built of brown stone, a mere anticlimax to romance; while ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... short and looked at the girl with a half-drunken leer, then wiped his mouth with the ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... where he sat, Came the Scalds and Saga-men; Is it to be wondered at, That they quarrelled now and then, When o'er his beer Began to leer Drunken Thangbrand, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and mouth were drawn and seamed and scarred in a frightful and hideous manner, the teeth protruded and the mouth was drawn to one side in a frightful leer; above that was all the beauty of "My Lady ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... with a wink at you, which sets the wicked part of us on fire: I have known it myself, and I own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of Countess Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness. He has just the same benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are to make a choice, the beggar's breech for decency, I say: I like it vastly in preference to a Nymney, who leads you up to the curtain and agitates it, and bids you to retire on tiptoe. You cannot help being angry with the man for both reasons. But he is the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... one individual lingered near the May-pole. As he was especially active, we may describe him and his employment. He was apparently about fifteen. He had coarse straight white hair—a face that denoted stupidity—but with a cunning leer, which seemed to belie ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... masters. In place of the fine, delicate, low relief of the old school, they adopted a relief which, though very prominent, was soft, round, and feebly modelled. The eyes of their personages have a foolish leer; the nostrils slant upwards; the corners of the mouth, the chin, and indeed all the features, are drawn up as if converging towards a central point, which is stationed in the middle of the ear. Two schools, each independent of the other, have bequeathed their works to us. The least known flourished ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... in the direction of the vast shadowy figure, which to Laurence's eye appeared to turn towards his niche with a leer, as if to say, "Listen to him. What ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... An ugly leer came over the brutal face of the giant; "Oh, I ain't, ain't I? You think I'm drunk. But I ain't, not so mighty much. Jest enough t' perten me up a pepper grain." Then, turning to his companion, who was ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright |
