"Ridicule" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foreign element mincing their "pidgin" English have given the Bowery an unenviable reputation, but there are just as good speakers of the vernacular on the Bowery as elsewhere in the greater city. Yet every inexperienced newspaper reporter thinks that it is incumbent on him to hold the Bowery up to ridicule and laughter, so he sits down, and out of his circumscribed brain, mutilates the English tongue (he can rarely coin a word), and blames the ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... made in so noble a spirit certainly does not deserve the ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished upon it. Curiously, indeed, one of the most contemptuous of these criticisms has been recently made by one of the most strenuous defenders of orthodoxy. No less eminent a standard-bearer of the faith than the Rev. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... bundle; astonishment, anger, and self-ridicule made an emotion too strong to stand under. So this was all his Machiavellian scheming had achieved—to bring about the very marriage it was meant to avert! He had dug a pit and fallen into it himself. All this would indeed amuse Rozenoffski and ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... dejected Virtue nobly rise Above the towering pitch of splendid Vice; To make pale Vice, abash'd, her head hang down, And, trembling, crouch at Virtue's awful frown. Now arm'd with wrath, she bids eternal shame, 320 With strictest justice, brand the villain's name; Now in the milder garb of ridicule She sports, and pleases while she wounds the fool. Her shape is often varied; but her aim, To prop the cause of Virtue, still the same. In praise of Mercy let the guilty bawl; When Vice and Folly for correction call, Silence the mark of weakness justly ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... of a science there is no speculation so absurd as not to merit examination. The most remote and fanciful explanations of facts have often been found the true ones; and opinions which have in one century been objects of ridicule, have in the next been admitted among the elements of our knowledge. The physical world teems with wonders, and the various forms of matter exhibit to us properties and relations far more extraordinary than the wildest fancy could have conceived. Human reason stands appalled before this ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... summer school of (so-called) philosophy still meets at Concord in July—the last survival of the speculative ignorance of the dark ages, and the worship of Greek literature. The copious ridicule of the press has no effect upon this serious gathering. Its verbose platitudes and pretentious inanities continue to be repeated, furnishing almost as good an antithesis to science and philosophy as Mrs. Eddy and her disciples. There is no lack of fluency and ingenuity in the use of language, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... Mr. Minns, what is it? The defendant knows that the cause in which he is engaged, by a strange revulsion of public feeling, is unpopular. It is unprofitable, and whatever is unprofitable is unpopular. It is not genteel, and persons doubtful of their gentility ridicule it. Now Mr. Davis being engaged in this unpopular cause, Byrnes makes a remark which Mr. Minns thought was intended to irritate ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... expenditure was applied, he refused to pay his town tax, and was put in jail. A friend paid the tax for him, and he was released. The like annoyance was threatened the next year. But, as his friends paid the tax, notwithstanding his protest, I believe he ceased to resist. No opposition or ridicule had any weight with him. He coldly and fully stated his opinion without affecting to believe that it was the opinion of the company. It was of no consequence, if every one present held the opposite opinion. On one occasion he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... insanity?" Then Sophy, feeling her impotence between the tongues of her two enemies, would rise and go away, more or less angrily or sadly, followed through the hall and half-way upstairs by the snickering, confidential laughter of their common ridicule. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... Sonoma Hills, on the other side of the Straits, we were so hopelessly outdistanced that Charley told me to slack off the sheet, and we squared away for Benicia. The fishermen on Steamboat Wharf showered us with ridicule when we returned and tied up. Charley and I got out and walked away, feeling rather sheepish, for it is a sore stroke to one's pride when he thinks he has a good boat and knows how to sail it, and another man comes ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... meet with so much opposition as was at first supposed. All sensible men in the army, of all parties, after a little thought, say that it is the best thing that can be done, and surely those at home who are not brave or patriotic enough to enlist should not ridicule or throw obstacles in the way of men who are going to fight for them. There is a great prejudice against it, but now that it has become a government matter, that will probably wear away. At any rate I sha'n't be frightened out of it by its unpopularity. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... and said, "Why that is just the same as I read in our Bible; there certainly can be no bad in that. But maybe they only printed that so as to ridicule it farther on in the book; anyway, I wonder what Jesus Christ meant, when he said, 'therefore I say unto you, what things whatsoever ye desire when ye pray, believe ye shall receive them and ye shall have ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... they are afraid of each other. They are afraid the richer slaves, who are able to comply with the demands will laugh at them and ridicule them, and that is why they strain every nerve to follow the god's wishes. A slave, whether she is rich or poor, grows more cringing year by year, until at last she loses all her individuality, and becomes a mere ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... property—it doesn't matter whether it be wives, houses, money, or reputation—is his hall-mark."—"Ah!" murmured Bosinney. "You should patent the word."—"I should like," said young Jolyon, "to lecture on it: 'Properties and quality of a Forsyte': This little animal, disturbed by the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his motions by the laughter of strange creatures (you or I). Hereditarily disposed to myopia, he recognises only the persons of his own species, amongst which he passes an ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of John Galsworthy • John Galsworthy
... they were mere presumptions; why should they not NOW, when they were admitted facts? He was conscious of no change in himself since the funeral! Yet the criticism went on. Presently it took the milder but more contagious form of ridicule. In his own hotel, built with his own money, and in his own presence, he had heard a reckless frequenter of the bar-room decline some proffered refreshment on the ground that "he only drank with his titled relatives." A local humorist, amidst the applause of an admiring ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... case is reversed; we are surprised, not at the unintelligibility of popular belief, but at its simplicity, and at the frequency with which we can discern the natural process of unsystematic conjecture. Such judgments are not to be treated with derision, as subjects of ridicule, but to be seriously examined, as revealing the natural procedure of intelligence limited to a ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... further ceremony, and in spite of the general expostulations of those around, and the respectful opposition of the Nubian himself, the King of England applied his lips to the wound of the black slave, treating with ridicule all remonstrances, and overpowering all resistance. He had no sooner intermitted his singular occupation, than the Nubian started from him, and casting a scarf over his arm, intimated by gestures, as firm in purpose as they were respectful in manner, his determination not to permit ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... the so-called irrational animals 62 with man, although it is needless to do so, for in truth we do not refuse to hold up to ridicule the conceited and bragging Dogmatics, after having given the practical arguments. Now most 63 of our number were accustomed to compare all the irrational animals together with man, but because the ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... ain't right; but—" Then, in despair, she turned to ridicule: "Folks'll say you're marryin' him 'cause you expect he'll make money on ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... laid ourselves down to sleep, the elder Tahitian fell on his knees, and with closed eyes repeated a long prayer in his native tongue. He prayed as a Christian should do, with fitting reverence, and without the fear of ridicule or any ostentation of piety. At our meals neither of the men would taste food, without saying beforehand a short grace. Those travellers who think that a Tahitian prays only when the eyes of the missionary are fixed on him, should have slept with ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... neighbors who were, many of them of the basest of men, and had fled from the face of civilized society, to the frontier country to escape the hand of justice in their midnight revels, their Sabbath breaking, horse racing, and gambling, they commenced at first to ridicule, then to persecute, and finally an organized mob assembled and burned our houses, tarred and feathered, and whipped many of our brethren and finally drove them from their habitations; who, houseless, ...
— The Wentworth Letter • Joseph Smith
... Montholon, those complaints were of the most vexatious order. "It is very hard," said Sir Hudson, "that I who take so much care to avoid doing what is disagreeable, should be constantly made the victim of calumnies; that I should be presented as an object of ridicule to the eyes of the European powers; that the commissioners of the great powers should say to me themselves, that Count Bertrand had declared to them that I was a fool; that I could not be sure that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... famous a satirist should mar his work by ridicule of people with long noses—who are ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... fashion somewhat to belittle Puritanism. It is easy to emphasize its absurdities, to ridicule the almost fanatical fervor which goaded men to harshness and inconsistency. The fact remains that a tremendous selective force was needed to tear the Puritans away from the mother church and the mother country and fortify ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... were secured, and but one of these received any benefit from the tutor; and this benefit came, according to the scholar, from the master's supplying an excellent object for ridicule. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... meantime, for my systematic hatred of D'Arc is this: There was a story current in France before the Revolution, framed to ridicule the pauper aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and short rent rolls: viz., that a head of such a house, dating from the Crusades, was overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis, "Chevalier, as-tu donn au cochon manger?" Now, it is clearly made ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... mind of the new case-keeper there was but one thought—Roy must be broken. Humiliation, disgrace, ruin, ridicule were to be his. If he should be downed, discredited, and discouraged, then, perhaps, he would turn to her as he had in the by-gone days. He was slipping away from her—this was her last chance. She began her duties easily, and her alertness stimulated Bronco ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... the pathetic and ridicule in mirthful satire are occasioned by an enthusiasm which the ideal has excited; and thus also sadness should issue from the same source in elegy. It is this, and this only, that gives poetic value to elegy, and any other ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of Rome and the games? Here a whole people, millions of them, were given the opportunity to indulge in sadistic spectacles to their heart's desire. How many of them stayed home from the games?" She laughed in ridicule. ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... homely Maria, whose home had rung with laughter by the taunt and ridicule of those who made fun of her ugliness, [94] now graced her house with sweet smiles and engaging features, which drew scores of visitors to her home. Juan confessed his sins, and underwent penance for his wickedness; and the two lived together in peace and ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... given Me commandment, so'—no more, no less, no otherwise—'so I speak.' Think of a man whose inspiring principle was, consciously to himself, 'not My will, but Thine be done'; and who could say that it was so, and not be met by universal ridicule. There followed in Jesus the moral perfectness that comes from such uninterrupted and complete consecration of self to God. 'Thy servant David,'—what about Bathsheba, David? What about a great many other things in your life? The poet-king, with the poet-nature so sensitive to all the delights ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Berkeley, I am quite aware that when you have once made up your mind to do a thing which your ideas of honor and justice require you to do, argument and reason are (for the time being,) wasted upon you—yes, and ridicule; persuasion, supplication, and command as well. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... though he brazenly hinted he would like to stop in there; but I feared the gibes of the boisterous gang. This bum of mine was such grotesque horror that the drunken wits of the house would not, I knew, fail to seize the chance to ridicule me upon my choice of a chum. Besides it was clothes not ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... It may be that Horatio, yes, and Julius also, would be less apt to clothe anything along a mysterious nature with ghostly attributes, after learning how common-sense and investigation will, in nearly all cases, turn suspicion into ridicule. But while the country folks, of course, also learned how the phantom of the quarry had turned out to be just a crazy man who had escaped from his confinement at home and gone back to primeval ways of living, few of them would ever muster up the courage ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... The woman's mad!" exclaims the King. And all the courtiers exhibited by their countenances and expressions, marks of surprise, or ridicule, or incredulity, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which she had learned in her younger days, greatly to the annoyance of the whole neighborhood—to Fleet in particular, who was a man fond of quiet. It was in vain he exhausted his shafts of wit and ridicule, and every expedient he could devise: it was of no use—the old lady was not thus to be put down; so, like others similarly situated, he was obliged to submit. His shrewdness, however, did not forsake him; from this seeming evil he contrived to educe some good; he conceived the idea of collecting ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies - Without Addition or Abridgement • Munroe and Francis
... in Germany, a crime to criticise or ridicule any proposition uttered by the sacred lips ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... was so opposed to the very idea of such an action, that, with a degree of irritation unusual in him, he had more than once given Werther to understand that he doubted the seriousness of his threats, and not only turned them into ridicule, but caused Charlotte to share his feelings of incredulity. Her heart was thus tranquillised when she felt disposed to view the melancholy subject in a serious point of view, though she never communicated to her husband the apprehensions ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... fact nevertheless remains that such family prayers nurtured and developed these spiritual resources to which the prosperity of the nation is due. The custom of family prayers should be revived along with many other good New England customs which some modern radicals may ridicule, but to which they owe ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... distinguished; and their most intimate friends often failed to recognise which was which when apart, and sometimes even when they were together, until the talismanic syllables gave to each her individuality. The peculiarity gave rise to a little good-humoured ridicule; but for our part, we thought it quite wonderful how well they played their part in conversation with so small a stock of words. There is much pliability of meaning, however, in an interjection; and in company, where there are always several persons who are anxious to be heard, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... "privileges and immunities" contrary to the "law of the land" clause of the State Constitution, and impaired the obligation of contracts. The last contention stirred Woodward's attorneys, Bartlett and Sullivan, to ridicule. "By the same reasoning," said the latter, "every law must be considered in the nature of a contract, until the Legislature would find themselves in such a labyrinth of contracts, with the United States Constitution over their ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... tongues and actions be what they will, your business is to have honour and honesty in your view. Let them rail, revile, censure, and condemn, or make you the subject of their scorn and ridicule, what does it all signify? You have one certain remedy against all their malice and folly, and that is, to live so that nobody ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... puffed-up conceit is not dignity, and that snarling at the little pleasures they were once glad to enjoy, because they would rather forget the times when they were of lower station, renders them objects of contempt and ridicule. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... and back was over the fresh moor. He lectured Ethel herself on opening the window, now that she could; and advised Norman to go and spend an hour in the school, that he might learn how pleasant peat- smoke was—a speech Norman did not like at all. The real touchstone of temper is ridicule on a point where we do not choose to own ourselves fastidious, and if it and been from any one but his father, Norman would not have so entirely kept ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... "you have no more imagination than a turnip-top! You must possess the taste of a Goth or Vandal, to turn such noble lines into your low ridicule!" ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... itself, or to be attended with evil, neither popular applause nor popular fury can make them follow it, but they think it right to bear their testimony against it by its disuse, and to run the hazard of all the ridicule, censure, or persecution, which may ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the front cinch of my saddle, and that my spirit soared into enthusiasm at the mere sight of so ordinary an animal as a white-tailed deer, she let me rush about with my firearms and made no further effort to stave off the ridicule that my blunders perpetually earned from the ranch hands, her own humorous husband, and any chance visitor who stopped for a meal or ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... injury to him. The prosecutor was an original. He had been an old-field school-master, and was as conceited and pedantic a fellow as could be found in a summer's day, even in that profession. It was thought the policy of the defense to make as light of the case as possible, and to cast as much ridicule on the affair as they could. J.E. and W.M. led the defense, and, although the talents of the former were rather adapted to grave discussion than pleasantry, he agreed to doff his heavy armor for the lighter weapons of wit and ridicule. M. was in his element. He was at all times and on all occasions ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... was not sensitive to ridicule. He had something to say, and he was there to say it. Fixing his fish-like eyes on a spot high up the tent wall, he kept them pinned to it, while he mouthed out blood-and-thunder invectives. He was, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the ridicule of some, it effectually raised more malicious suggestions in many. The Squire's portrait being found united with ours, was an honour too great to escape envy. Scandalous whispers began to circulate at our expense, and our tranquillity was continually ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... religion and heterodoxy in medicine"; James Russell Lowell, essayist and poet, apt to live by his essays rather than by his poetry; Longfellow, whose "Psalm of Life" and "Hiawatha" have lived through as much parody and ridicule as any two bits of literature extant, and have lived because they are predestined to live; Thoreau, whose Walden may show, as Lowell said, how much can be done on little capital, but which has the real literary tang to it; and Whittier, ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... consciousness of great powers and the assurance of a great future inspired a youth with perfect and on the whole well-warranted fearlessness of ridicule it has ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... growing older had sought a little sympathy, she gave him ridicule. The many hours that she could spare from the ordering of her small house she devoted to what she called the home-training of Dick Heldar. Her religion, manufactured in the main by her own intelligence and a keen study of the Scriptures, was an aid to her in this matter. At such times as she ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... would present her with his sword, on which were to be inscribed the following words: "Sword of M..., who dared strike La Gabrielli." Through the intervention of friends, however, this heavy penalty was never imposed, and the Frenchman was spared the ridicule which would have surely followed. Catarina, after a long and somewhat reckless career, passed her last years in Bologna, where she died, in 1796, at the age of sixty-six, after having won general esteem and admiration by her charities and by her steadiness of ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... neither party. With other independents like him, he repeated what he heard on both sides and Vinet made the most of it. The lawyer's spiteful tongue put venom into Madame Tiphaine's speeches, and by showing Rogron and Sylvie the ridicule they had brought upon themselves he roused an undying spirit of hatred in those bitter natures, which needed an ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... to make his boat go by pushing against the mast. He is like a drowning man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair of his own head. Christ held up this method almost to ridicule when He said: "Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?" The one redeeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this—that those who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the goal. The Changed ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... boards, and trees fantastically shaped with the shears into an exhibition as full of incongruities as the wildest dream, have deservedly gone out of fashion in England. Poets and prose writers have agreed to ridicule all verdant sculpture on a large scale. Here is a description of the ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... my humble request, that I may be sent to my uncle Harlowe's, instead of my uncle Antony's. I mean not by this any disrespect to my uncle Antony: but his moat, with his bridge threatened to be drawn up, and perhaps the chapel there, terrify me beyond expression, notwithstanding your witty ridicule upon ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... rope was less than his dread of the ridicule of the men, for Bannon saw him preparing to come down after the next load. He took a long time getting ready, but at last they started him. He was the color of a handful of waste when he reached the ground, and he staggered as he walked ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... the barbarians could be exceedingly foppish after their fashion. The man who was not tattooed among them was not respected." It was the same in Samoa. Until a young man was tattooed, he was considered in his minority. He could not think of marriage, and he was constantly exposed to taunts and ridicule, as being poor and of low birth, and as having no right to speak in the society of men. But as soon as he was tattooed he passed into his majority, and considered himself entitled to the respect and ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... the Great of Prussia. She claimed that "The King of Prussia is certainly a bad prince who has no fear of God before his eyes; he turns holy things into ridicule, and he never goes to church." The real reason was that Frederick had expressed his opinion about Elizabeth's private life, and she was not the woman to forgive his remarks. Then again, Frederick had an excellent army of 200,000 men; Elizabeth's chancellor, on that account, called Prussia "the most ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... hear, insulted the good Muck," said he with a very serious tone. "I will tell thee the history of this Muck, and then I am sure thou wilt ridicule him no more. But first, thou shalt receive thy allowance." The allowance was five-and-twenty lashes, which he took care to count only too honestly. He thereupon took a long pipe-stem, unscrewed the amber mouthpiece, and beat me more severely than ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... sincere, and allowing his gift for facetiousness to betray him. The device of inventing a simple-minded young enthusiast, and making him ask perpetual questions to the undoing of all those who accept blindly the beliefs which Mr. LYONS is out to ridicule—well, there was nothing specially enlivening in that. Briefly, young Simon Honeyball in his parents' home threatened to weary me. But later, when he had migrated with his money and his extraordinary collection of proteges to Silverside, E., and there set up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... was difficult to judge, for sometimes she would agree with the gloomiest thing that was said, at other times she refused to listen, and rammed Helen's theories down her throat with laughter, chatter, ridicule of the wildest, and fierce bursts of anger even at what she called the "croaking of a raven ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... appeared, it was considered by some as made up of fictions and extravagances, and Vossius assures us that even after the death of Marco Polo he continued to be a subject of ridicule among the light and unthinking, insomuch that he was frequently personated at masquerades by some wit or droll, who, in his feigned character, related all kinds of extravagant fables and adventures. His work, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... meant to ridicule the poets of his time. He calls the Secchia Rapita 'an absurd caprice, written to burlesque the modern poets.' His genius was nothing if not critical, and literature afforded him plenty of material for fun. Romance-writers with their ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... offered in the spirit of ridicule. The Uitlander question is too serious for joking. They are reproduced to enable those who have no knowledge of the Boer—his petty tyrannies and annoying and irritating habits, and the vexatious regulations from which the Uitlander continually suffered—to ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... would no doubt excite ridicule and amazement when published sixty years ago. The farmers of that day might well be excused for incredulity when perusing a passage like the following:—"The present system of conveyance," says Mr. Gray, "affords but tolerable accommodation ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... qualities which he prided himself on eschewing, and sometimes by ladies and gentlemen who have denied themselves the privilege of reading his work. But if a man be sensitive to this wild praise, we must suppose him equally alive to that which often accompanies and always follows it—wild ridicule. A man may have done well for years, and then he may fail; he will hear of his failure. Or he may have done well for years, and still do well, but the critics may have tired of praising him, or there may have sprung up some new idol of the instant, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Alas! It is woman's word never used by men; and foreigners must be most careful of this distinction under pain of incurring something worse than ridicule. I remember an officer in the Bombay Army who, having learned Hindostani from women, always spoke of himself in the feminine ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... pass." When Gizeric heard this, he expressed approval and decided to send the envoys away with nothing accomplished. Now at that time both he himself and the man who had given the advice were judged worthy of ridicule by all the Vandals, as foreseeing the impossible. But when these things which have been told took place, the Vandals learned to take a different view of the nature of human affairs and realized that the saying was ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... attention on me, not for the sake of my person, which she certainly did not regard, but for the reputation of wit which I had acquired, and which might have rendered me convenient to her predominant inclination. She had a very lively passion for ridicule, and loved to write songs and lampoons on those who displeased her: had she found me possessed of sufficient talents to aid the fabrication of her verses, and complaisance enough to do so, we should presently have turned Chambery upside down; these ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... and their children to mingle in company whose influence is the most detrimental to the interests of pure and undefiled religion? Can they reflect upon their daughters for forming improper attachments and alliances? Can they wonder if their sons become desperadoes, and ridicule the religion of their parents? No! They permitted them to dally with the fangs of a viper which found a ready admittance into their parlor; and upon them, therefore, will rest the responsibility,—yea, the deep and eternal curse! Woe unto thee, thou unfaithful parent; ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... almost wholly of menacing looks and other silent demonstrations of rage, which are ever extremely difficult to bring out in words with their original effect, amounted to so little that the prisoner's counsel attempted to turn it into ridicule with considerable show of success. Testimony in relation to the canoe of the Elwoods, recently found washed up among the rapids, which was next introduced, was found, when tested in the same way, in despite of the opinions ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... comprehended clearly what the new day would bring. I should have to face Cassion, and in what spirit could I meet him best? Thus far I had been fortunate in escaping his denunciation, but I realized the reason which had compelled his silence—pride, the fear of ridicule, had sealed his lips. I was legally his wife, given to him by Holy Church, yet for weeks, months, during all our long wilderness journey, I had held aloof from him, mocking his efforts, and making light of his endeavors. It had ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... was an intimate friend of Count Godensky's. If he had suspected anything the day he met me coming out of the Foreign Office he might, of course, have hinted his suspicions to one of those men (though all along I'd believed him too shrewd to risk the consequences, the ridicule and humiliation of a mistake): but if he had spoken, it would be beyond his power to prevent matters from taking their own course, independent of my decisions and ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... comedy by Caecilius Statius, of whose works only a few fragments, like this, are extant. Next to the braggart soldier, a credulous old man-generally a father-who could have all manner of tricks played upon him without detecting their import, was the favorite butt for ridicule in ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... "the historical council at Salamanca; Dominican monks support Columbus, but Cardinal Talavera and other priests ridicule him." Columbus, to disprove their accusations of heresy on his part, quotes "sentence after sentence of the Bible in defense of ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Leicestershire, and in 1650 was imprisoned at Derby for speaking "publickly" in a church after Divine Service, and bidding the congregation to "tremble at the Word of God." This expression was turned into one of ridicule, and caused the Society of Friends all over the kingdom to be known as "Quakers." Fox preached throughout the country, and even visited America. When he came to Ulverston, he preached at Swartmoor Hall, where he converted Judge Fell and his wife, after which meetings at the Hall ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... obscure field, but by saturating himself in facts about it, he has developed an interest in it amounting to passionate absorption, which manifests itself in "absent-mindedness" of such profundity as to make him often an object of wonder and ridicule. ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... girl of ingenious ideas, would not have attempted to recall her to life; for ridicule kills ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... expecting to read a veritable account of the exploits of their ancestors, were puzzled by the indirection of its commendation; and several excellent old ladies of New York and Albany were in blazing indignation at the ridicule put upon the old Dutch people, and minded to ostracize the irreverent author from all social recognition. As late as 1818, in an address before the Historical Society, Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, Irving's friend, showed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... are not matters for ridicule, however absurd they may appear to be. On the contrary, they deserve, and should receive, the careful consideration of the physician, for much is to be learned from them, both in preventing and in treating diseases. In psychiatrical medicine they are especially to be inquired for. It is not safe ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... results of the bargain do not (January, 1836) reach Mr. Buxton's anticipations.... Still, aside from this false step, Mr. Buxton deserves universal admiration and gratitude for his long-continued, able and disinterested efforts, amidst severe ridicule and malignant opposition, to break every yoke ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... arguments have not been overthrown. While arguing on a political question, an intercollegiate debater once laid considerable stress on an opinion expressed by Woodrow Wilson, "President," as he stated, "of Harvard University." His opponent, of course, might have held this statement up to ridicule, but such an exposure would have been impolitic, in that it would have in no wise impaired the value of Mr. Wilson's opinion as evidence. Another debater, not so wise, once spent considerable time in correcting an opponent ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... remarked long afterward, "had a streak of intelligent acceptance of facts, and as long as he did not publicly lose caste or incur ridicule by backing down, he did not intend to run risk without adequate object. He did not expect his bluff to be called; and when it was, he had to make up his ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... ten heads of Ravan have provoked much ridicule from European critics. It should be remembered that Spenser tells us of "two brethren giants, the one of which had two heads, the other three;" and Milton speaks of the "four-fold visaged Four," the four Cherubic shapes each of whom had ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... of her professional debut in a role that would not have survived the ridicule of even Flora Bankhead's easy standards. Many a time, together at matinees, they had giggled and munched chocolates over acts that hardly rivaled hers for sentimental appeal of about one dimension. Plenty of length and ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... particularly alarming in the present conjuncture. There is hardly a man, in or out of power, who holds any other language. That Government is at once dreaded and contemned; that the laws are despoiled of all their respected and salutary terrors; that their inaction is a subject of ridicule, and their exertion of abhorrence; that rank, and office, and title, and all the solemn plausibilities of the world, have lost their reverence and effect; that our foreign politics are as much deranged as ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... not likely that danger would come from within. It could not. The place was too well guarded on all sides. Besides, if he fired and gave an alarm that turned out to be false, there would be a severe reprimand from the officers, and a long course of ridicule ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... of myself in the singular, this implies a confidential talk with the reader; he can examine the statement, discuss it, doubt and even ridicule it; but when I arm myself with the formidable WE, I become the professor and demand submission."— Brillat-Savarin, Preface ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... preferred to wait because it would seem so much more if I got both weeks' salary all at one time. He nodded gravely, and said, 'It was rather a large sum to have in hand at one time,' and though I was very sensitive to ridicule, I did not suspect him of making fun of me. ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... from the grass roots. It has grown from the soil of the people's hard necessities. It has the vitality of the people's strong convictions. The people have work to be done and our party is here to do that work. Abuse will only strengthen it, ridicule only hasten its growth, falsehood only speed its victory. For years this party has been forming. Parties exist for the people; not the people for parties. Yet for years the politicians have made the people do the work of the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... quite forgotten his existence. But at the same time he will before all things endeavour by secret machination carefully to deprive those advantages of any opportunity of showing themselves and becoming known. Then out of his dark corner he will attack these qualities with censure, mockery, ridicule and calumny, like the toad which spurts its poison from a hole. No less will he enthusiastically praise unimportant people, or even indifferent or bad performances in the same sphere. In short, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... age it seemed a little ridiculous to put on the uniform of a student[A], but he did not fear ridicule. His Spartan education had at all events been so far useful, inasmuch as it had developed in him a contempt for the world's gossiping. So he donned a student's uniform without being disconcerted, enrolling himself in the ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... his displeasure. Perhaps his vexation was increased by his consciousness that there was some mixture of truth in their sarcasms. He was sensible that his mother, in some points—her manners, for instance—was obvious to ridicule and satire. In Lady Clonbrony's address there was a mixture of constraint, affectation, and indecision, unusual in a person of her birth, rank, and knowledge of the world. A natural and unnatural manner seemed struggling in all her gestures, and in every syllable that she articulated—a naturally ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... of playing the dupe, so giving up the business he returned to Porto Rico on the 5th of October, leaving Perez de Ortubia and the pilot Antonio de Alaminos to continue the search. Pere Charlevoix says, "He was the object of great ridicule when he returned in much suffering, and looking older than ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... that the only road to her reason lay through her vanity, and he fancied that if she could be made to see Van Degen as an object of ridicule she might give up the idea of the Sorceress of her own accord. But her will hardened slowly under his joking opposition, and she became no less formidable as she grew more calm. He was used to women who, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... positive about the firearms, and thought he heard the bullets whistling past his ears, but could not swear to it. At this stage the defendants' lawyer, who had been harrowing the witnesses with many questions and heaping ridicule upon their devoted heads, called for the prisoners' arms to be produced, and the sight of the toy pistols with their mutton-boned barrels provoked yells of laughter in the court, which were presently ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... observation, plenty of caustic common sense. Yet the position into which he had drifted threatened him with ridiculous extremes of self-consciousness. Even in his personal carriage, he was not quite safe against ridicule; and he felt it. This must come ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... qualities. He seems to have been a little deficient in humour, and his portrait—crowned with a singularly stiff laurel, throated with a stiffer ruff, and clothed, as to the bust, with a doublet so stiff that it looks like textile armour—is not calculated to diminish the popular ridicule. Yet is Sylvester not at all ridiculous. He was certainly a Kentish man, and probably the son of a London clothier. His birth is guessed, on good grounds, at 1563; and he was educated at Southampton under ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... perfectly justified in referring to the tenth or twelfth century before our era, may some day or other dwindle down from their high estate, and those who have believed in their extreme antiquity will then be held up to blame or ridicule, like Sir W. Jones or Colonel Wilford. This cannot be avoided, for science is progressive, and does not acknowledge, even in the most distinguished scholars, any claims to infallibility. One lesson only may we learn from ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... should be turned to would be ridicule, and that is a wonderful lowerer of the consequence ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... of irreverence, who glory in their atheism, and talk of infidelity as if it were a cardinal virtue. Whenever there is foul work to be done, they are almost always to the fore; whenever holy things are to be held up to ridicule, they are the men to do it. These are deliberate apostates; men who with their eyes open prefer darkness to light, who of set purpose deny the truth and embrace error. Happily the world contains but few such. To the honour of human nature, fallen though it be, it may ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... San Francisco. But although successful and the bearer of the treasure, it is doubtful if he approached this end of his journey with the temerity he had shown on entering the robbers' valley. A consciousness that the methods he had employed might excite the ridicule, if not the censure, of his principals, or that he might have compromised them in his meeting with Snapshot Harry, considerably modified his youthful exultation. It is possible that Flora's reproach, which still rankled in ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... own me, after safely bringing you over those weary hills?' But the pride and emulation which had made her what she was would not permit her, as the most lovely woman there, to take upon her own shoulders the ridicule that had already been cast upon the ass. Had he been young and gaily caparisoned, she might have done it; but his age, the clumsy trappings of rustic make, and his needy woful look of hard servitude, were too much ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... accumulated injuries. With as much elasticity of mind as stiffness of neck, every step he takes but the last is as firm as the earth he treads upon. Nothing can daunt, nothing disconcert him; remonstrance cannot move, ridicule cannot touch, obloquy cannot exasperate him: when he has not provoked them, he has been forced to bear them; and now that he does provoke them, he is hardened against them. In a word, he may be broken; he ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... to Fred's departure in a way that turned it into ridicule. While playing a game of 'boston' he whispered into Jacqueline's ear something about the old-fashionedness and stupidity of Paul and Virginia, and his opinion of "calf-love," as the English call an early attachment, and something about the right ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... bluff cordiality with O'Mara only made him the more ashamed of his suspicion, and yet the next morning at table he attempted, covertly, to sound Sarah for an opinion, too. She invariably solved his perplexities or relegated them to the limbo of gentle ridicule. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... period make frequent references to this belief, but nearly always by way of ridicule. It is hardly to be expected that they would share in the grosser opinions held by the common people in those times—common, whether king or clown. In "The Virgin Martyr," Harpax is made ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... age of the earth are of interest only to Geologists; and all may criticise with impunity the career of Moses—provided that they do not employ the shafts of ridicule too freely. Marlowe's strictures on the New Testament—grossly exaggerated by the creature who penned the charges—were made from the literary point of view. We should blame nobody to-day for saying that the language of Revelations is poor and thin when compared with the language of ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Decay. 'L'ecole decadent' was a phrase invented as a jest in 1886, I believe by Monsieur Bourde, a journalist in Paris. It was eagerly adopted by the Parisians, and soon floated across the Channel. Used as a term of reproach, it was accepted by the group of poets it was intended to ridicule. I need not remind you that the master of that school was Paul Verlaine, the immortal poet who enlarged the scope of French verse—the poet who achieved for French poetry what I am told the so-called ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... measure in which these lines are written the wits of Queen Anne's days contemptuously gave the name of Namby-Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who has used it in some instances, as in the lines on Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very deliciously; but Wither, whose darling measure it seems to have been, may show, that in skilful hands it is capable of expressing the subtilest movements of passion. ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... who was her spiritual director. It is, however, true, that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were not all employed about the care of her soul. Afterward, to ridicule her yet more, King Albert sent her a hone to sharpen her needles, and swore not to put on his nightcap until she had yielded to him. But under perilous circumstances Margaret was never at a loss ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... lodgings in the town. The squires, it seems, knowing that the knights and nobles generally disliked Sir Miles, were encouraged to be very bold and insolent to him in expressing their ill-will, and when the archers came up they were following him with taunts, and ridicule, and abuse, while Sir Miles was making the best of his way toward ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... not out of any desire to spare Madame de Montespan that the King proceeded in this manner; he was concerned only to spare himself and his royal dignity. He feared above all things the scandal and ridicule which must touch him as a result of publicity, and because he feared it so much, he could impose no ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... is just as bitter against Mr. Tryan as her husband is, I understand,' said Rebecca. 'Her heart is very much set against the truth, for I understand she bought Mr. Tryan's sermons on purpose to ridicule ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... had resumed its normal tone. Garry's merry laugh and good-natured ridicule had helped, so had the discovery that none of his friends had had anything to do with Gilbert's fall. After all, he said to himself, as he strode up the street beside his friend, it was "none of his funeral," none of his business, really. ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... right?" answered Gladys, without taking any notice of Kate's taunts. "It's the right of being ashamed to hold a girl up to ridicule for what she couldn't help, and a girl like Marion Parke. I hoped you could say you didn't mean to; but I see you can't." Then Gladys, without another word, left the room, leaving behind her a set of girls who, to say the least, were not in a mood to congratulate themselves on the ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... kind to praise my house to me, and to ridicule it to other people. You do not say, 'Hang what it ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... inutile pour moi; de plus j'en ai scrupule." But other friends had more appreciation of her niceties. Voiture thanks her for her melons, and assures her that they are better than those of yesterday; Madame de Choisy hopes that her ridicule of Jansenism will not provoke Madame de Sable to refuse her the receipt for salad; and La Rochefoucauld writes: "You cannot do me a greater charity than to permit the bearer of this letter to enter into the mysteries of your marmalade and your genuine preserves, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... were not for the public benefit, especially for that of the professors and practitioners of the art of midwifery, I would refrain from treating the secrets of Nature, because they may be turned to ridicule by lascivious and lewd people. But as it is absolutely necessary that they should be known for the public good, I will not omit them because some may make a wrong use of them. Those parts which can be seen at the lowest part of the stomach are the fissure magna, or the great ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... in prison. He drove away from the jail in a cab with Doctor Waram, and when the crowd saw that he was wearing the old symbol—a yellow chrysanthemum—a hiss went up that was like a geyser of contempt and ridicule. Grimshaw's pallid face flushed. But he lifted his hat and smiled into the host of faces ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... in appearance and branded over with the broad-arrow and with his prison number. In this garb it is impossible for a man to preserve his sense of self-respect. If he should not be amenable to the prison discipline he may be held up to ridicule by being compelled to wear a parti-coloured uniform. However can a man be expected to reform who is held up to the ridicule of felons? It matters not from which class of life he is drawn, what his age is, or the nature of his offence, ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... No. 13—21) is supported by the evidence of Aristophanes, his scholiast, and Pollux. * Note: Nothing more is known of this ceremony; nevertheless we find that already in his own days Gaius turned it into ridicule. He says, (lib. iii. et p. 192, Sections 293,) prohibiti actio quadrupli ex edicto praetoris introducta est; lex autem eo nomine nullam poenam constituit. Hoc solum praecepit, ut qui quaerere velit, nudus quaerat, linteo ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... "Qu'as-tu?" il rpondait en sanglotant: "Je n'ai rien." Et, le plus curieux, c'est qu'il n'avait rien. Il pleurait comme on se mouche, plus souvent, voila tout. Quelquefois M. Eyssette, exaspr, disait ma mre: "Cet enfant est ridicule, regardez-le!... c'est un fleuve." A quoi Mme Eyssette rpondait de sa voix douce: "Que veux-tu, mon ami? cela passera en grandissant; son ge, j'tais comme lui." En attendant, Jacques grandissait; il grandissait beaucoup mme, et cela ne lui passait pas. Tout au contraire, la singulire ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... writer who mentions customs that belong especially to chivalry. The Crusades, of Geoffrey's century and of the one following, gave much opportunity for its growth and practice; but in the fifteenth century chivalrous fashions and fancies began to seem absurd, and later, perhaps partly through the ridicule of that old-time book "Don Quixote," chivalry was finally ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... ridicule implied in these words urged me to a still more reckless defiance, and affecting a ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... had not put a stop to anything. He had become an object of ridicule, and everyone ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... appealing to his mother for sympathy. At the end of two, he was drinking and in open rebellion. He had learned to detest his wife. Her wastefulness and cruelty revolted him. The ignorance and the fatuous conceit which lay behind her grimacing mask of slang and ridicule humiliated him so deeply that he became absolutely reckless. Her grace was only an uneasy wriggle, her audacity was the result of insolence and envy, and her wit was restless spite. As her personal mannerisms grew more and more odious to him, he began to dull his ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... it appeared to him that there was something in the law which seemed to stick to his opponent, Mr. Freeman. He complains that the Jaw is dull—that it is trash—a bugbear, and heaps other similar epithets upon it, and yet he appears to make considerable noise about it, and why should he attempt to ridicule me, in connection with the law. Every man in this state knows that Mr. Green himself could not pass the law without the aid of the legislature. He (Mr. Freeman) goes on to take many other positions which he (the speaker) could not understand, and therefore would not further allude to them. He thought ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... neither received them from nor communicated them to any other nation. Ages ago they became known to us accidentally through their instrumentality; but, as we were not at that time prepared for the adoption of such useful discoveries, their mention in a book then read all over Europe excited only ridicule and unbelief. As soon as the Western mind mastered them of itself, they became straightway of immense importance, and gave rise, we may say, to all that we call modern civilization. But in the hands of the Chinese ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... interrupt him, or in any way to ridicule him; and I was very glad that neither Paddy Doyle nor Tommy saw him, for I was very sure that they would not have refrained from doing so. I therefore crept away without letting the poor savage know that I had seen him. He at length came ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... the order of wit because they are pretty and diverting fancies. But by the 1690's there had been a clear tendency to associate wit with mirth, and often with satire. By 1726 James Arbuckle could write (A Collection of Letters, 1729, II, 72): "... Satire and Ridicule, which are the main Provocatives to Laughter, still keep their ground among us, and are reckoned the chief Embellishments of Discourse by all who aim ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... would have been the wisest thing which we could have done; but Hastings said, that if we went back we should be laughed at, and the idea of being laughed at made us all agree that we would not. Bear this in mind, William, and never let the fear of ridicule induce you to do what is wrong; or if you have done wrong, prevent you from returning to what is ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... of his week night lectures, Beecher was speaking about the building and equipping of new churches. After a few satirical touches about church architects and their work, he went on to ridicule the usual style of pulpit—the "sacred mahogany tub"—"plastered up against some pillar like a barn-swallow's nest." Then he passed on to the erection of the organ, and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... see danger where there is none. These people do not pass such peaceable lives as the first; but there is this to be remembered: the same nature which is so alive to fear will also be easily touched by praise, or blame, or ridicule, and eager therefore to do its very best. It is what we call a 'sensitive' nature, and it is of such stuff very often, that great ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... had reason on his side, but as I knew his wonderful cure had been due to a singular coincidence, I had no desire to expose myself to public ridicule. I therefore told him that I did not wish to become a public character, and that he must tell Madame d'Urfe that I would have the honour of calling on her in strict privacy only, and that she might tell me the day and hour on which I should kneel ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Probably the original of Napoleon's celebrated mot, "Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... hearers by the force and impressiveness of his oratory. The presence of this extraordinary stranger could not remain long unknown to the Athenian literati; but, when they entered into conversation with him, some of them were disposed to ridicule him as an idle talker, whilst others seemed inclined to denounce him as a dangerous innovator. "Certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him; and some said—What will this babbler say? other some—He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Simson with generosity. "It's only natural. It's a fight to the finish between me and the Bourgeois. I cover them with ridicule and contempt and they hit back at me in ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... played a fine joke, and accused her of running home when they were waiting for her. Faith had resolved not to quarrel with them, but apparently the sisters meant to force her into trouble, if sneering words and ridicule could do it. ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... materials and methods of the romances Mrs. Haywood was but following the lead of the French romancieres, who had successfully invaded the field of prose fiction when the passing of the precieuse fashion and Boileau's influential ridicule[1] had discredited the romance in the eyes of writers with classical predilections. Mme de La Fayette far outshines her rivals, but a host of obscure women, headed by Hortense Desjardins, better known as Mme de Villedieu, hastened to supply the popular demand for romantic stories. In drawing their ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... to rise from so low and miserable a condition, if not to supreme eminence, at least to a rank in which he might have the means of life. For this reason he never took heed of cold, of hunger, of hardship, of discomfort, of fatigue, or of ridicule, if only he might one day live in ease and repose; ever saying, as it were by way of proverb, that after bad weather there must come the good, and that during the good men build the houses that are to shelter ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... exclaimed, dashing aside the letter and feeling conscious of a pang as he remembered the bright, airy little beauty in whom he had once been strongly interested, even if he did call her frivolous and ridicule ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... for drawing from him those famous letters to the States in which he was made to approve the Five Points and to admit the possibility of salvation under them. These epistles had brought much ridicule upon James, who was not amused by finding his theological discussions a laughing-stock. He was still more incensed by the biting criticisms made upon the cheap surrender of the cautionary towns, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cutting and sewing cloth, were partially or completely lost. The tailor is not the familiar figure in Hindu social life that he is, for example, in England. Here he is traditionally an object or butt for ridicule as in the saying, 'Nine tailors make a man,' and so on; and his weakness is no doubt supposed to be due to the fact that he pursues a sedentary indoor occupation and one more adapted to women than men, the needle being essentially a feminine ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... New York, Gaine, wishing to keep up his trade, dropped the "Crown" from his sign. Among the enthusiastic patriots this ruse had scant success. In Freneau's political satire of the bookseller, the first verse gives a strong suggestion of the ridicule ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... representative of a nation it may almost be said of him that he has no skin at all. Any touch comes at once upon the net-work of his nerves and puts in operation all his organs of feeling with the violence of a blow. And for this peculiarity he has been made the mark of much ridicule. It shows itself in two ways: either by extreme displeasure when anything is said disrespectful of his country, or by the strong eulogy with which he is accustomed to speak of his own institutions and of those of his countrymen whom at the moment he may chance to hold in high esteem. ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... of thousands and tens of thousands of the best mothers and wives and daughters in America, the most intelligent and upright and pure- minded women in the land, loaded down with their hopes, wet with their tears—if they turned their hearts', prayers and deepest desires into ridicule, throwed 'em round under their feet, they wouldn't pay no attention to Dorlesky's errents, they wouldn't notice one little vegitable widow, humbly at that, and sort o' disagreeable." And says I, "I don't want Dorlesky's errents throwed round ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... received with amusement. Most Americans were unaware that the Pentagon had been receiving disk reports as early as January. The news and radio comments on Arnold's report brought several other incidents to light, which observers had kept to themselves for fear of ridicule. ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... of my age. No; if she pitied, but did not love me, when, eighteen years ago, we parted under yonder beech-tree, I should be a dotard to dream that woman's pity mellows into love as our locks become grey, and Youth turns our vows into ridicule. It is not pride that speaks here; it is rather humility, Dick. But we must not now talk of old age and bygones. Youth and marriage-bells, Dick! Know that, I have been for hours pondering how to reconcile with my old-fashioned notions dear Lionel's happiness. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stated in the following plain language: "The people"—I seek to translate as literally as possible—"do not respect the clergy, but persecute them with derision and reproaches, and feel them to be a burden. In nearly all the popular comic stories the priest, his wife, or his labourer is held up to ridicule, and in all the proverbs and popular sayings where the clergy are mentioned it is always with derision. The people shun the clergy, and have recourse to them not from the inner impulse of conscience, but from necessity. . . . And why do the people not respect the clergy? Because it forms ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... herself as a reality. The world in which she had lived had taught her to laugh at romance, to laugh at it even while she liked its beauty; and she would tell herself that for such a one as her to do such a thing as this, would be to insure for herself the ridicule of all who knew her name. What would Sir Hugh say, and her sister? What Count Pateroff and the faithful Sophie? What all the Ongar tribe, who would reap the rich harvest of her insanity? These latter would offer to provide ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... action to-day, to-morrow, and every day until the work has been completed. Let no obstacle stand in the way now, no matter what it may be. You will save your people from poverty and free principles from a more desperate combat than they have yet witnessed. Ridicule may be used in this chamber, calumny may prevail through the country, and murder may be a common occurrence South to those who stand firmly thus and who advocate such measures. Let it be so; for greater will be the crowning glory of those who are not found wanting in the day of ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... countries he might discover, together with other important concessions. The Spanish councillors deemed his demands too high to be granted, as too considerable even in the event of success; and, in case of disappointment, they thought it would reflect ridicule and the imputation of folly upon the court to have conceded such high titles. Owing to these considerations the business ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... That yoke of Jesus Christ many of us slip our necks out of. If He has witnessed, you have to confess. But some of you carry your Christianity in secret, and button your coats over the cockade that should tell whose soldiers you are, and are ashamed, or too shy, or too nervous, or too afraid of ridicule, or not sufficiently sure of your own grip of the Master, to confess Him before men. I beseech you remember that a Christian man is no Christian unless 'with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,' as well as 'with the heart' belief is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
