"Cynically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Francesca cynically. "Poets see everything by the light that never was on sea or land; still I won't deny that they help the blind, and I should rather like to know if there are still any Nora Creinas and Sweet Peggies and Pretty Girls ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... warmest friendship prevented jealousy between men," Stephen Strong said, a little cynically—he had suffered a ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... signs of apprehension on the part of Miss Wickham's disagreeable relatives as they noted their aunt's doting fondness for her hired companion. And while she felt that they richly deserved this little punishment, it was humiliating to be so cynically made use of. ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... shall be very glad to have you keep me in countenance. We will discourse cynically upon the follies of the day and young ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... deaf, answered in a forensic bellow, so that Addington, passing the brick wall in its goings to and fro, heard, and communicated to those at home that Jeffrey Blake, dear fellow, was going back to the land. Jeffrey did, as he had cynically foreseen, become a cause. All persons of social significance came to call, and were, without qualification, kind. Sometimes he would not see them, but Anne one day told him how wrong he was. If ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... This invective might be paralleled from one ot Masuccio's Novelle (ed. Napoli, pp. 389, 390), in which he almost cynically exposes the inconvenience of self-respect and delicacy. The situation of two friends, who agree that honor is a nuisance and share their wives in common, is a favorite of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... scramble," he kept breaking out Of silence to say. "I don't blame the boys, but it's plain to me they see that my going will let them move up one. Mason cynically voiced the whole thing today: 'I can say, "Sorry to see you go, Bloom," because your going doesn't concern me. I'm not in line of succession, but some of the other boys don't feel so. There's no divinity doth hedge an editor; nothing but law prevents ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... vengeance. Also, do you remember my strong, old, rooted belief that I shall die by drowning? I don't want that to come true, though it is an easy death; but it occurs to me oddly, with these long chances in front. I cannot say why I like the sea; no man is more cynically and constantly alive to its perils; I regard it as the highest form of gambling; and yet I love the sea as much as I hate gambling. Fine, clean emotions; a world all and always beautiful; air better than wine; interest unflagging; there is upon the whole ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plot was as doubtful as the love; we might then have stayed comfortably in Valmy," answered Commines cynically, and La Mothe's eyes twinkled as he thought how much better he had read the King in his single hour than Commines had in all his ten years of intimacy. "The woman," he went on, "must be Ursula de Vesc, and if so you can spend your hour or two's walk from Chateau-Renaud ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Hadley cynically; "surely you don't anticipate anything of that sort. Girls don't refuse ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... in the extent of his learning, Pierre gloated in a freedom of speech, the which no man dared deny him. He turned to eye his companion cynically for a second time, and contempt was patent in his gaze. Willard appeared slender and pallid in his furs, though his clear-cut features spoke a certain strength ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... RICHARD (eyeing him cynically). The magic of property, Pastor! Are even YOU civil to me now that I have succeeded to my ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... inaugurate, what is it but a stationary and decrepit world,—a world which would soon decay, and drop into the abyss of nothingness, were it not for the rejuvenating vitality poured into it by the youth it cynically despises? True wisdom, indeed, springs from the wide brain which is fed from the deep heart; and it is only when age warms its withering conceptions at the memory of its youthful fire, when it makes experience serve aspiration, and knowledge illumine the difficult paths through which thoughts thread ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... man provoked him to extraordinary exertions in cases wherein he fancied he might win for himself the glory of strengthening and verifying matters which in themselves perhaps lacked almost the elements of existence. "Spiritual truths," he once cynically remarked to Sainte-Beuve, whom, by the way, he detested, "will take care of themselves; it is the nursing of spiritual falsehood which needs all the care of the clergy." On the Sunday in question he had surpassed himself. With biting irony he had annihilated ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... something in the historic romance as such, in a book like his own Chronicle of Charles the Ninth, was always welcome to Merimee; it was part of the machinery of his rooted habit of intellectual reserve. A master of irony also, in Madame Lucrezia he seems to wish to expose his own method cynically; to explain his art—how he takes you in—as a clever, confident conjuror might do. So properly were the readers of La Guzla taken in that he followed up his success in that line by the Theatre of Clara Gazul, purporting to be from a rare Spanish original, the work [30] of a nun, who, under tame, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... But, besides that the sort of acquaintance which they had formed during dinner, rendered him unwilling to be directly uncivil towards a person of gentleman-like manners, he had also to consider that he might very possibly be mistaken in this man's character and purpose; in which case, the cynically refusing the society of a sound Protestant, would afford as pregnant matter of suspicion, as travelling in company ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... society and humanity by a large proportion of our population," he would have cynically observed to any caviller, "is by dying ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... a person who is evidently suffering and has need of aid, if he does not recognize in him, or her, one of his own tribe he will pass on with indifference and grumble out cynically: "All the worse for them". But if the same person were to make an appeal to his charity on the threshold of his rude home, he or she would receive hospitality without being known, and in the event of an accident or any other misfortune which has occasioned ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... could do to keep from exclaiming aloud, as it burst upon her astonished senses that this poor, huddled creature was none other than the grande dame of the railway carriage, the haughtily indifferent, cynically amused personage who had seemed so supremely superior to the agitations of the common ruck! Strange what changes a few hours' conflict with the forces ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... below the surface of things than the practical question, Is it likely to prove wholly futile? But now, instead of imagining the question, What do you mean by explaining a property of matter? to be put cynically, and letting ourselves be irritated by it, suppose we give to the questioner credit for being sympathetic, and condescend to try and answer his question. We find it not very easy to do so. All the properties of matter are so connected that we can scarcely imagine one thoroughly explained ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... the child develops he will, we may hope, remember his multiplication table, and forget his fragments of the Athanasian Creed. Let the wheat and tares be planted together, and trust to the superior vitality of the more valuable plant. The sentiment might be expressed sentimentally as easily as cynically. We may urge, like many sceptics of the last century, that Christianity should be kept "for the use of the poor," and renounced in the esoteric creed of the educated. Or we may urge the literary and aesthetic ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... analyse man's love for woman, to explain it, or explain it away, belittle it, nay, even resent and befoul it, it remains an unaccountable phenomenon, a "mystery we make darker with a name." Biology, cynically pointing at certain of its processes, makes the miracle rather more miraculous than otherwise. Musical instruments are no explanation of music. "Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?" ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... ever called him anything else), was a splendid companion. He had an enormous repertoire of anecdotes which he was never tired of telling, and every one finished in exactly the same way: "Believe me, Caruthers, some rag." Oh, a great man, forsooth, was Archie! He had cynically examined every master with whom he had anything to do, picked him to pieces, found out his faults, and then played on his weaknesses. Sometimes, however, he went a little too far. On one occasion he was doing chemistry ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... paying compliments, Miss Mortimer," he said cynically. "Twelve years in prison have rusted all my ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... "I guess in a good many cases it wouldn't do to be too curious," she said cynically. "If you believe the stories you read and the movies you see everybody who has committed a crime anywhere from petty larceny to murder skips out ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... pretended levity turned it into a joke. At one time she invited the old Spanish bishop to marry her to Dudley, and next day said she would never marry at all. But she never ceased to flirt with Dudley, who, when his intrigue with Spain fell through, cynically appealed to the French Protestants for support. They were in no position to help him, and by January 1562, he was cringing to Spain, and pretending to be Catholic. But English Catholics hated him, and he was now no fit instrument ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Brook had hitherto managed to keep clear of any entanglement which could hamper his life, probably by virtue of that hardness which he had shown to poor Lady Fan, and which had so strongly prejudiced Clare Bowring against him. His father said cynically that the lad was canny. Hitherto he had certainly shown that he could be selfish; and perhaps there is less difference between the meanings of the Scotch and English words ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... rode in order that it might be strong and in good health. When the caravan came into the country of the Touaregs he rode near her day by day, and at night lay as close to her tent as he dared. Sometimes he noticed that Stanton eyed him cynically when he performed unostentatious services for Sanda, but outwardly the only two white men were on civil terms. Stanton even seemed glad of Max's companionship, and discussed routes and prospects with him, asking his advice sometimes; and once, when the explorer was attacked by a Soudanese ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... things, since the beginning, have men said of women, though neither so many nor so bitter, as the witty Frenchman cynically remarks, as the things women have said of one another. Poor Eve has paid very dear for that apple: the only wonder is, that she was not made responsible also for the Flood: but we have not got the whole of that story: Noah's wife may have dropped ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... with the same queer smile, he answered. 'Come, now, you're a grave-digger, my fine fellow,' he continued, accosting the sexton cynically; 'how long do you suppose that ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Berkley and discovered in her room by her landlady after her departure. A perusal of them is sufficient to leave no doubt concerning the character of this young woman—who, apparently, neglected by the fellow, Berkley, pleaded piteously with him for an interview, and was, as you see, cynically rebuffed. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... and the Government was approached with respectful petitions praying for redress of the most glaring causes of discontent; but those were invariably either disdainfully rejected or ignored, or, if some matter was relieved, other more exasperating enactments were defiantly substituted. They were cynically told that they had come to their (the Boer's) country unasked, and were at liberty, and in fact invited, to leave it if the laws did not please them. This was said, well knowing that to leave would involve ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... laugh again suddenly and cynically—the bitter laugh of a man who hides his soul; and Larpent leaned back in his chair again, as if he recognized that the discussion ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... her cynically. "Couldn't be. I'm willing to believe you don't know who your father was. Some women should keep books. But that ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... was black as night. His great hands trembled and twitched convulsively. Was ever blackguard so cynically candid in his avowal of the basest crimes as this fine-spoken specimen of the culture of Pall Mall in his open confession of that disgusting insult to a young girl's innocence? Gilbert Gildersleeve, who was at heart an honest man, loathed and ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... and, when he rises and goes forth in the morning, there sure enough are the blue hills, only now they have changed places with him, and smile across to him, distant as ever, from the old home whence he has come. Such a story might have been very cynically treated; but it is not so done, the whole tone is kindly and consolatory, and the disenchanted man submissively takes the lesson, and understands that things far away are to be loved for their own sake, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mrs. Billy laughed cynically. "What could you expect?" she said. "They know there's nothing to them but their money. When that's gone, they're gone—they ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... else if you permit yourself to sink without an effort?' said the doctor, rather cynically; 'but if you cannot gain strength from Christianity, then be a Stoic, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... right," said the doctor cynically. "Your cotton goods will always cost more than ours, and that is ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... stare in amazement at such practices when by any chance we observe them in southern countries, the custom was so strikingly prevalent in England that travellers noticed it as one of the strange sights of the land; grave Erasmus cynically calls it one of its attractions. "This custom," says he, "will never be praised enough."[56] The above-named Nicander Nucius, of Corcyra, who came to England some fifty years later, notices the same habit as a great local curiosity. According to him, the English ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... pilgrim discloses to her that he it is who is the King of Gaul, and Cordelia marries him. Instead of this scene, Lear, according to Shakespeare, offers Cordelia's two suitors to take her without dowry, and one cynically refuses, while the other, one does not know why, accepts her. After this, in the old drama, as in Shakespeare's, Leir undergoes the insults of Goneril, into whose house he has removed, but he bears these insults in a very different way from that represented by Shakespeare: he feels ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... appearances in Paris as a pianist in concerts of chamber music; and he has even resorted—one wonders how desperately?—to the writing of music criticism for various journals and reviews. "Artists," he has somewhat cynically observed, "struggle long enough to win their place in the market; once the sale of their productions is assured, they quickly go backward." There is as yet no sign that he himself is fulfilling this prediction; ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... cynically as he looked down toward the tent. He could not, of course, distinguish the figures as plainly as Jimmie could with the glass, but he knew from the excited manner of the boys that ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Thus cynically writes Schmidt of the woman who for a score of years occupied Haydn's affections. And all of the biographers are inclined to heap upon her more or less contempt; but as you shall see a little later, the genial ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... attentive and deliberate. With Tanner and Tanner's friends his manner is not in the least deferential, but cool and reticent, keeping them quite effectually at a distance whilst giving them no excuse for complaining of him. Nevertheless he has a vigilant eye on them always, and that, too, rather cynically, like a man who knows the world well from its seamy side. He speaks slowly and with a touch of sarcasm; and as he does not at all affect the gentleman in his speech, it may be inferred that his smart appearance is a mark of ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... from the documents he compiled so laboriously. Stopping from time to time to shape a quill pen to his liking, he would write a few lines carefully, kill a number of flies, take a peep at Alban from beneath his shaggy brows and then resume the cycle of his labors. Alban pitied him cynically. This labor of docketing scarred backs seemed wretchedly monotonous. He was really glad when the fellow spoke to him, in as amazing a combination of tongues ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... Solomon's final condition, But he stands on the page of this history, a sad, enigmatical figure, a warning to all young people to take heed that the attrition of the world does not rub off the bloom of early religion, or make them cynically ashamed of the unselfishness of their early desires. There is no sadder sight than an old man whose youthful enthusiasm for goodness and belief in the super-excellency of wisdom have withered, leaving him a hard worldling or a gross sensualist. Better the early days, when he was obscure ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... squealing was an ambition to be able to meet Auriole Craven's eyes squarely when she came to see him and say "I'm afraid your friends haven't got my strength just yet." She would shake her head at that and reply cynically—"It's only a matter of time, Anthony." But at the back of her eyes was a light that seemed ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... the road to Alfredston now. It stared him cynically in the face. The wayside objects reminded him so much of his courtship of his wife that, to keep them out of his eyes, he read whenever he could as he walked to and from his work. Yet he sometimes felt that by caring for books he was not escaping ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... this happened?" Claude demanded at last with a voice hoarse and guttural with abhorrence; and the advocate shrugging his shoulders cynically replied: ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... satisfied his conscience by the performance of what no doubt seemed to him sacred duties, Caius at once set to work to build up his new constitution. It is commonly represented that in order to gain over the people to his side he cynically bribed them by his Lex Frumentaria. Now if this were true, and Caius were as clear-sighted as the same writers who insist on the badness of the law describe him to have been, it is hard to see how they can in the same breath eulogise his goodness ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... between his teeth, raised himself slowly on his legs, and shading his eyes with his hand from the severe perspective of six feet, gazed admiringly down upon his work. Rupert, with his hands in his pockets and his back to the window, cynically assisted at the inspection. ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... girls, talked French very loud—though sometimes with some oddity of accent—as if to show they were saying nothing improper. Pemberton wondered how the princes could ever propose in that tone and so publicly: he took for granted cynically that this was what was desired of them. Then he recognised that even for the chance of such an advantage Mrs. Moreen would never allow Paula and Amy to receive alone. These young ladies were not at all timid, but it was just the safeguards that made them so candidly free. ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... moved him and he told her somewhat doggedly, but not unkindly, to cease. "Do you know what the bells are ringing for?" he asked cynically, after a ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... fireplace and poked the fire into a blaze. Then, throwing my hat on the table and lighting a cigarette, I regarded Julian cynically. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... took the outrage against justice as a fresh starting-point for new attacks. He assailed bitterly and fearlessly the countless abuses of the time, until at last he was recognized as a dangerous opponent by the heretofore cynically amused higher criminals. Many rumors of plots against King's life are to be found in the detailed history of the day. Whether his final assassination was the result of one of these plots, or simply the outcome of a burst of passion, matters little. Ultimately it had ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... already, Stephen asked himself cynically, that it was not her foot but her ankle? His suspicions returned while he looked at her blooming face, and he hoped earnestly that she would not feel impelled to relate any irrelevant details of the adventure. Like Gideon Vetch on the platform she seemed incapable of withholding ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... able to indulge in day-dreams now. I shall not grow old cynically. There are unselfish, true-hearted, valiant women. There are women who will not marry men for position, name, fame, power, money; no, nor for anything but love. How do I know? Because you don't love me, my dear. But ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Bolshevik rule in Russia. In their determination to secure Southern Albania for themselves, the Greeks apparently adopted the policy followed with such success in Armenia by the Turks, who asserted cynically that "one cannot make a ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... attend this great Congress as delegates, and that the thousands of workers who will watch its work, should understand why the resolutions arrived at by the Paris, Brussels, and Zurich International Congresses with regard to the Anarchists should be enforced. The Anarchists who cynically declare Workers' Congresses "absurd, motiveless, and senseless" must be taught once and for all, that they cannot be allowed to make the Congresses of the Revolutionary Socialists of the whole world a playground ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... indeed that early on that afternoon I felt the drama of the whole affair so heavily that I saw in every soldier who passed me a messenger of fate. They called me to a meal. Eat! Now! How absurd it seemed! Semyonov watched me cynically: ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... men, unromantic, often this-worldly and smug, yet varying the type, making room for such an idealist as Crawley as well as for sleek bishops and ecclesiastical wire-pullers. Neither his young women nor his holy men are overdrawn a jot: they have the continence of Nature. But they are not cynically presented. You like them and take pleasure in their society; they are so beautifully true! The inspiration of these studies came to him as he walked under the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral; and one is never far away from the influence of the cathedral class. The life ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... of materialism. Force was the prime minister, self -gratification the supreme legislator. Exaggerated superstition was balanced by decaying faith. It was a time of coordinately high mental activity, an intellectuality that cynically rejoiced at its own failure to solve the riddle of the universe, maliciously suggested new difficulties, raised barriers against its own research, and prostrating itself in the name of mere brutism, ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... my neighbors; to my mind life did not swing on this hinge. I had my occupations—there were a goodly number of needy folk to be looked after; there was my reading; my music; my friends, and other pleasures, and altogether I felt I was very well off. Not that I was cynically opposed to marriage; I intended to marry, if the right man called, but if he did not I was content to end life as I had ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... Beachcombing is a nicely adjusted, if not quite an exact art. Not once but several times has the libertine Neptune scandalously seduced punts and dinghies from the respectable precincts of Brammo Bay, and having philandered with them for a while, cynically abandoned them with a bump on the mainland beach, and only once has he sent a punt in return—a poor, soiled, tar-besmirched, disorderly waif that was reported to the police ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... all this business for? Why were such men as Thurston in existence? Why couldn't life be simple and straightforward with people like his father and himself and that girl Maggie alone somewhere with nothing to interfere? Life was never just as you wanted it, always a little askew, a little twisted, cynically cocking its eye at you before it vanished round the corner? He didn't seem to be able to manage it. Anyway, he wasn't going to have that fellow Thurston ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... of France fallen so low that it sends its women to intercede for the lives of its men? But, perhaps," he added cynically, "it had not far ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... time," he answered a trifle cynically. "Not many Rhodesians to-day have time to care for any but the treasures that they can work for and grasp and carry away. The time for natural beauties to be appreciated is not yet. Why, we do not even pay a native half-a-crown a week to keep the caves free from the baboons and bats that ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... the top of the chest. There was certainly a space between the visible depths of the interior and the back wall. He rapped loudly, but the wood and the stuff with which it was covered were too thick; there was no answering ring. He recalled the night when he had cynically examined the fragments of the broken cabinet at Rhyd-Alwyn. He felt anything but cynical now; indeed, he was conscious of a restless eagerness and a dogged determination with which curiosity had little to do. He would find those papers if he ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... something," said the mountaineer. "He has ears like a rat for hearing. What a pretty picture!" cynically. "All the world loves ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... mesa-like foothills to a point overlooking the leopard's kill. We lay here looking the place over inch by inch through our glasses, when an ejaculation of disgust from Kongoni called our attention. There at another spot that confounded beast sat like a house cat watching us cynically. Either we had come too soon, or she had heard us and retired to what she considered a safe distance. There was of course no chance of getting nearer; so I sat down, for a steadier hold, and tried her anyway. At the shot she leaped high in the ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... with grieving'? With what difficulty was he induced, nay, compelled, to speak the truth against the lieutenant! Another man might have felt a touch of satisfaction at the thought that the post he had coveted was now vacant; but Iago not only comforted Cassio, talking to him cynically about reputation, just to help him over his shame, but he set his wits to work and at once perceived that the right plan for Cassio to get his post again was to ask Desdemona to intercede. So troubled was he at his ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Woodburn, with his idiotic talk about patriarchal slavery, is the man on horseback to Dryfoos's muddy imagination. He'd listen to him abjectly, and he'd do whatever Woodburn told him to do." Beaton smiled cynically. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Chief Inspector cynically. "You will be preached to, no doubt, before they put you into the dock. And in the end you may yet get let in for a sentence that will surprise you. I wouldn't trust too much the gentleman who's been talking ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... tiny box-office where Ryan had stood two hours before and cynically waited for his sport to begin. It was empty now, offering a perfect refuge. Varney followed and stood with his hand on the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... coarseness of language is, to say the least, unfit and inexpedient; that if it be wrong to do certain things, it is also, on the whole, right not to talk of them; that even certain things which are right and blessed and holy lose their sanctity by being dragged cynically to the light of day, instead of being left in the mystery in which God has wisely shrouded them. On the whole, one is inclined to suspect the defence of coarseness as insincere. Certainly, in our day, it will not hold. If any ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... that his wife has ceased to love him as she has discarded her "white wimples," which, if she marries this inferior person, she may long for once again! And he adds, rather cynically, for a blessed soul in Purgatory, that through her ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... weather had been trying. He has blue, honest, direct-gazing eyes with small humour wrinkles at the corners. I never knew a man with fewer theories, or with a simpler devotion to the thing at hand, whatever it may be. At everything else he smiles, not cynically, for he is too modest in his regard for his own knowledge; he smiles at everything else because it doesn't seem ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... somewhat cynically and perhaps not in the best of taste. But, his rejoicing over its appearance notwithstanding, he did not do much justice to the dinner when it arrived. Indeed, it would be charitable to make allowances for this young man at that period of his ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... middle, and so is the beginning, as well as the end," returned Laronde cynically; "why, then, are you so perplexed and anxious about these if the end is, as you seem to think, so sure? Why don't ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... I say this of the new voices, I hope that no one will imagine that I speak cynically or even in sympathetic irony. It may well be that those who use the phrase "Life-Urge" in reality mean very nearly what I mean when I speak of "the Grace of Heaven." They, indeed, may be more honest and more ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... talking. I don't agree with Grant much more than you do. But you're a lot of old hens, cackling around here because Grant Adams invades the roost to air his views. Let him talk. Let 'em all talk. Talk is cheap; otherwise we wouldn't have free speech." He grinned cynically as he asked, "Haven't you any faith in the Constitution of the fathers? They were smart enough to know that free speech was a safety valve; let 'em blow off. Then go down and organize and vote 'em afterwards ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... asked, yet feeling an immense relief come over me as I heard. But I asked in ignorance, not cynically. Frances would know. She knew all this kind ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... help that," replied the ruffian, cynically. "I've got to get to Cologne some time to-day, and there seems no other way of doing it that I ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... your own way, then," said Mick, cynically; "it's nothin' to me if you've a mind to thry a taste ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... you to decide, captain," said he cynically; "but this one will make no deeference. Yes, I would take him. It will not be far," he added, in a tone that was not the less ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... is a devil of a laugh, mostly made of chuckles that seem to bubble off a Bell-brew of disillusionment, and you get the impression that he is laughing at himself—cynically laying bare the vanity and fallibility of his ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... mankind in general, with himself, and with the judge—principally with the judge—who was to make a foolish target of himself in the morning. He was going to give the man who had wrecked his life a chance to take it as well. Mahaffy's cold logic dealt cynically with the preposterous situation ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... absolved the poor wretched woman of any slightest blame for his behaviour. His brother, in a biography, completely frank up to this point, now grows reticent, except to release the wife of all blame. So you must satisfy your curiosity by imagining some abnormal state of mind, which you will regard cynically or pityingly, as ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... grew afraid to ride openly among the discontented crowds of Paris; the peasants saluted him sullenly; the treasury was empty; the monarchy was tottering. Yet Louis XV felt neither responsibility nor care. "It will surely last as long as I," he cynically affirmed; "my successor ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... taunts; I could not give in to them with the ignoble readiness with which they gave in to one another. I hated them from the first, and shut myself away from everyone in timid, wounded and disproportionate pride. Their coarseness revolted me. They laughed cynically at my face, at my clumsy figure; and yet what stupid faces they had themselves. In our school the boys' faces seemed in a special way to degenerate and grow stupider. How many fine-looking boys came to us! In a few years they became repulsive. Even at sixteen ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... they infinitely preferred to tea, while a vivid note of colour was added to the scene by the picturesque uniforms of a couple of officers of an Algerian regiment who were consuming unlimited cigarettes and Turkish coffee, and commenting cynically in fluent French on the paucity of pretty women to be observed in the streets ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... blade of grass beneath, his feet, tumbled off and gave vent to his feelings in a belated "chirr." Overhead somewhere a raven croaked dismally and cynically at intervals. Ralph's ears heard these things as he waited, with every sense on the alert, at ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... no less true that the pagan vices spread themselves out cynically under the protecting shadow of religion. Popular souses of eating and drinking were the obligatory accompaniments of the festivals and sacrifices. A religious festival meant a carouse, loads of victuals, barrels of wine broached in the street. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... farther into the forest, ardently believing in themselves; they are not hypocrites. The somewhat bedraggled figure of Joanna follows them, and the nightingale resumes his love-song. 'That's all you know, you bird!' thinks Joanna cynically. The nightingale, however, is not singing for them nor for her, but for another pair he has espied below. They are racing, the prize to be for the one who first finds the spot where the easel was put up last night. The hobbledehoy is sure to be the winner, for she ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... are. Don't yu reckon they kin hit a blue shirt at two hundred?" Skinny cynically inquired. "Got one that time," he announced ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... passed and repassed me, and my glance rested on her idly, even cynically. For she seemed so happy, and at that time happiness won my languid wonder, if ingenuously exhibited. To be happy seemed almost to be mindless. But by degrees I found myself watching this girl, and more closely. Another dance began. She joined it with another partner. But she seemed ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... real thing," observed Fleetwood cynically, "all this Fourth Avenue antique business; dingy, cumbersome, depressing. Good God! I see myself standing it. ... Look at that old grinny-bags in a pig-tail over there! To the cellar for his, if this were my house. ... We've got ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... always think that," he told her cynically. "Some day, when you're older and wiser than you are now, you'll find yourself looking at the L. s. d. side of ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... her hands until the nails almost pressed into the skin of her palms. She could not bear it. She had made Osborn burst into a big, harsh laugh one day when she had hinted to him that there were occult things to be done which might prevent ill luck. He had laughed first and scowled afterwards, cynically saying that she might as well ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... translated by the interpreter to Caesar, the Roman laughed cynically, while his officers partook of the gaiety of their general. Caesar continued to empty cup after cup, fixing his eyes more and more ardently on Albinik's wife. He said a few words to the interpreter, who commenced to question the two prisoners, conveying as he proceeded, their ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... might find an opportunity to force rearrangements. Such an alliance might temporarily suspend, but it would not end, the individual ambitions of each governing clique. The idea may not have presented itself so cynically to the man who first conceived it, but that was the spirit in which it was later on acceded to by the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... cynically, and was justified ten minutes later, when Herbert's conscience, troubled and apologetic, reminded him about that guinea he ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... police agents, who were arresting her in a marketplace of old time, in a strangely costumed crowd, which was clamouring violently. The poor bridegroom was being held back by his friends; a handsome young man in knee-breeches and a cocked hat watched the proceedings cynically in the right-hand corner, whilst on the left a big fat man frantically endeavoured to recover his wig, that had been lost in the melee. The advertisement was headed, 'Morton and Cox's Operatic Company,' and concluded with the announcement that Madame Angot ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... it was that the fame of this new singer went quickly through England, and foreign journals spoke of it half-wonderingly, half- cynically, as usual; for Continentals never have any faith in English art, or in the power which any Englishman may have to interpret art. The leading French journals conjectured that the "Prometheus" was of a religious character, and therefore Puritanical; and consequently for that reason was ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... home. The fresh air, after Natalie's flower-scented, overheated room, made her more rational. She knew where she stood, anyhow. She was in love with Clayton Spencer. She had, she reflected cynically, been in love before. A number of times before. She almost laughed aloud. She had called those things love, those sickly romances, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... devil of a good match," interposed Craven cynically, moving from his chair to the padded fireguard. Gillian was sitting on the arm of Miss Craven's chair, sorting the patience cards into a leather case. She looked up quickly. "I thought that in England all girls choose their own husbands, that they marry ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... he after a moment cynically suggested, "that she isn't getting much good of me now. Will she report to Milly on this?" And then as Kate seemed to wonder what "this" might be: "On our present disregard ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... cent. at least, is not made for that unknown quantity—woman. Third: it is beneficial to remember that one man rarely knows everything. Other morals will doubtless present themselves, and at the end the cynically-inclined person may reflect upon the adage about the ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some acquaintance, and the first remark would be, "Did you ever hear of anything to beat this?" and according to his kind the man would smile cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... man ought, who makes his dependance on gleams of sunshine," said Mr. Thorn, rather cynically. "I cannot say I was thinking of brightness, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... now," returned Horace cynically. "It's nothing to her discredit, far from it. You remember the night you suggested that she might live by the sale of her pictures, and I scoffed at you and said that all the pretty little pictures she could paint in a year wouldn't keep her in gowns? Well, you were nearer right ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the world was grey. He could survey himself cynically and wonder why he had been such a fool as to be in a fluster overnight. Faith, it was a grand exploit to dabble in conspiracies and come out with your head still (for a while) on your shoulders. And that only by a turn of the luck, not any wit of his. Well! Neither winners nor losers would want ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... scornfully, and cynically, and sorely; but I will make you change your note before ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... of property, and declaring England a republic. "You would never have burned your capital," he said to O'Meara at St. Helena; "you are too rich and fond of money." The London mob, he believed, would have joined him, for, as he cynically argued, "the canaille of all nations are ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... their writer, Thomas Mann), and that the right of German might is above everything. Then, in the second place, when they discovered that in the world outside them there was something known as a "moral conscience," not understood by them, but still to be reckoned with, they cynically denied the charges. Finally, when they were driven from this second trench, when simple negation became impossible, they had perforce ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... Percival mentally apostrophised the missing Brian Luttrell. "One would think that she was glad of what I told her." He was thoroughly put out by this reflection, and munched his breakfast in sulky silence, listening cynically to his step-mother's idle utterances and Kitty's vivacious replies. He was conscious of some disinclination to meet Elizabeth's tranquil glance, of which he bitterly resented the tranquillity. And she scarcely ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... himself wrote, while under the spell of Maturin's "great allegorical figure." Here the unhappy being succeeds in his purpose. The story takes place in mocking, careless Paris, "that branch establishment of hell"; a cashier, on the eve of embezzlement and detection, cynically accedes to Melmoth's terms, and accepts his help—with what unlooked-for ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the officer to start railing at the culprit, while the crowd listened as silently and attentively as though he had been saying something worthy to be heard and heeded, rather than foully and cynically ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... woman, with a cloud of fluffy, artificially blonde hair and large, innocent, absolutely blank blue eyes. A year ago she had resembled, if one might imagine the existence of such a being, a perfectly worldly wise and cynically minded baby, but twelve months of late suppers and many plays had already blighted her rose-leaf skin and sown three fine, nervous little wrinkles between her delicately arched eyebrows. She was very vivacious, but, as Gerty Bridewell had observed, it ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... his own account, and unknown to Mrs. Nightingale and Fenwick, made confidential reference to Scotland Yard, that Yard smiled cynically over the Chicago storekeeper, and expressed the opinion that probably Fenwick's game was a similar game, and that things of this sort were usually some game. The doctor observed that he knew without being told that nine such ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... them in that cruel way," said Dick cynically; while seeing the fun, as they seemed to consider it, Coffee and Chicory each seized his kiri, and began to perform a war-dance round Dinny and ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... motionless, his feet set well apart and his hands thrust into his trousers pockets. The trim, natty figure, the spruce and Summer-like attire, the small, wizened face with its cynically humorous and wide-awake aspect— above all, a certain jauntiness of air and cocksure expression— certainly did not suggest a comedian ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... are! 'Seems to be,' and 'ought to be,'" repeated Leila cynically. "May I ask you, Miss Remson, do you know the signature to the president's letter to you to be by his own hand? I would not hesitate to set a trumped-up letter down ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... good to her?" I asked cynically, out of my knowledge of the poor. But the girl, precocious in many ways, had never had my opportunities of studying the lower classes in the newspapers, fiction, and club talk. She shut one eye, and looking ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... first roused himself with a quick, writhing movement. "We two," said he, smiling half sadly, half cynically,—"we two must not longer waste time in talking sentiment. We know both too well what life, as it has been made for us by our faults or our misfortunes, truly is. And once again, I entreat you to pause ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to Leicester Ralegh's sudden favour on his return from Ireland. A few months before he was, we have seen, soliciting the Earl for a change of employment. His introduction at Court may have been the answer. Sir Henry Wotton, adopting the view, cynically surmised that Leicester wished to 'bestow handsomely upon another some part of the pains, and perhaps of the envy, to which long indulgent fortune is obnoxious.' By others, whom Scott has partly followed, the Earl of Sussex ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... "Friends?" he laughed cynically. "Friends? in that uniform, and you attired in a Rebel cavalry jacket? Friends? that fellow over there?" and he pointed derisively at me with his pistol barrel. "Damn you, but I believe you are all a ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Bill, grinning cynically, "and all in five-thousand-dollar sacks! Did it ever occur to you that it will take some time to carry the gold down to the drain's mouth? It's close by three-quarters of a mile, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... said Griggs cynically. "It must have spoiled the rattle. S'pose it hurts too. Look at him!—That's no good, my beauty. Stone can't feel. Ah, you idiot, you don't belong to the wise serpents we read about. Look at him ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... last in getting the truth told pretty openly and pretty thoroughly. It will break down the barrier between the little governing clique in which the truth is cynically admitted and the bulk of educated men and women who cannot get the truth by word of mouth but depend upon the printed word. We shall, I believe, even within the lifetime of those who have taken part in the struggle; have all ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... a bell and ordered a cocktail. He placed the glass on the little table by his side, and looked at it. What an asinine act, this pouring of poison into the stomach to cure a malady of the soul! He smiled cynically and suddenly recalled something the doctor ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... corpse. "Yes, it is he; I know him well," said Guise, kicking the body as he spoke. "Well done, my men," he continued, "we have made a good beginning. Forward—by the King's command." He mounted his horse and rode out of the court-yard, followed by Nevers, who cynically exclaimed as he looked at the body, "Sic transit gloria mundi." Tosinghi took the chain of gold—the insignia of his office—from the admiral's neck, and Petrucci, a gentleman in the train of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... advantages. The pack, as he cynically thought of them, would have started at the Clark ranch and the cabin. He would get to them, of course, but he meant to start on the outside of the circle and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for he knew that George had made none. Angela, too, tried, like a good girl as she was, to lash herself into enthusiasm about it, though in her heart she went as near hating her cousin, since his attempted indignity towards herself, as her gentle nature would allow. Arthur alone was cynically indifferent; he hated George without ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... man who should approach her, and yet no penalty against herself. And in 1809, after thirty-four years of marriage, and when she must have been nearing fifty, an island Chastelard, of the name of Kanihonui, was found to be her lover, and paid the penalty of life; she cynically surviving. Some twenty years later, one of the missionaries had written home denouncing the misconduct of an English whaler. The whaler got word of the denunciation and, with the complicity of the English consul, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soar. Old men generally shed their wings, and can only manage to crawl. They have done with romance. Enthusiasms are dead. Sometimes they cynically smile at their own past selves and their dreams. And it is a bad sign when an old man does that. But for the most part they are content, unless they have got Christ in their hearts, to keep along the low levels, and their soaring ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... shameful," "I am going to accumulate a large enough fortune so that I can give up conducting entirely and spend all my time composing." But one can be sure that when Strauss soliloquizes, it is a different defense that he makes. One can be sure, then, that he justifies himself cynically, bitterly, grossly, tells himself that the game is not worth the candle, that greatness is a matter of advertisement, that only the values of the commercial world exist, that other success than the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Accordingly there is no fundamental or indispensable portion of an acetylene apparatus which lends itself to the protection of the patent laws; and even the details (it may be said truthfully, if somewhat cynically) stand in patentability in inverse ratio to ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... field now," Graydon had thought, cynically, while at breakfast. "I can scarcely wish him anything worse than success;" and then he looked complacently around the family group to which he belonged, and felicitated himself that Wildmere traits were conspicuously ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... as a lily now was just about as devoid of the goods of the earth. And there were misfortunes, however undeserved, which damaged a man's standing permanently. On the other hand, it was difficult to oppose cynically a noble impulse—not to speak of the great love at the root of it. Ah! Love! And then the lady was quite capable of going off by herself. She was of age, she had money of her own, plenty of pluck too. Moorsom must have concluded that it was more truly paternal, more prudent too, and generally safer ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... to see his friends the Tristrams with a good deal of frequency, though if you had listened to Mrs. Tristram's account of the matter you would have supposed that they had been cynically repudiated for the sake of grander acquaintance. "We were all very well so long as we had no rivals—we were better than nothing. But now that you have become the fashion, and have your pick every day of three invitations to dinner, we are tossed into the ...
— The American • Henry James
... opinion,' said the Puddin' cynically, 'them puddin'-thieves are too clever for you; and, what's more, they're better eaters than you. Why,' said the Puddin', sneering at Bill, 'I'll back one puddin'-thief to eat more in a given time ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... The little thief laughed cynically. "You are right, mon vieux. I would be delighted to have the chance. But this time it is impossible. The stones are too big. They are worth—pouf!—millions of francs, so I must be content to receive my pay, which ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... and John's enemies spoke apart, and John watched them cynically. He knew well what they intended, and that he ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... paused. The word died with a prolonged echo at the end of the hall, the faces regarding him, hopefully, cynically, wearily, were alike arrested, engrossed. Six hundred eyes were turned slightly upward. With an even graceless flow that reminded Anthony of the rolling of bowling balls he launched himself into ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of the ruins of his cabin bore upon him less now that he had put Van Horn actually in jail for the trick. "You can't keep him there long," Tenison had cynically ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... that she was alone, and did not hear the step at the door, nor see the hand which presently pushed back the curtain. There stepped into the room, the tall, somewhat full figure of a lady who stood looking on with eyes at first surprised, then cynically amused. The intruder paused, laughing a low, well-fed, mellow laugh. On the moment she coughed in deprecation. Miss Lady sprang back, as does the wild deer startled in the forest. Her hands went to her cheeks, ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... things are done times without number in England." And I can hear the American, still smarting under the recollection of some needlessly cruel and unfair thrust from the hands of a competitor, smile cynically and say that he would like to tell me certain things that he knows. Of course there are exceptions on either side. It takes, as the American is so fond of saying, "all kinds of men to make a world." It is the same old difficulty of generalising about a nation or drawing ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... have to gallop," Porter was saying. They were close up, and Crane could see that Lucretia had got to the bay colt's head, and he was dying away. He smiled cynically as he watched Westley go to the whip on The Dutchman, with Lucretia half a length in the lead. Most certainly Langdon was an excellent trainer; The Dutchman was just good enough to last into second place, and Lucretia had won handily. What a win ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... a pit for others and falling into it yourself," Millar remarked cynically. "However," he went on, "things are not so bad. I have reliable information that the later crop ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... ruddy and cheerful, quite his old self, in fact. Evidently the sea air and the change had assuaged his grief to a considerable extent, and Giles could not help remarking cynically on his quick recovery. "I thought you were fond ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... tattered scroll royally, reconfirming lands and title to John, the most distinguished of all the Caradocs, who had unfortunately neglected to be born in wedlock, by one of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies of most old families. Yes, it was there, almost cynically hung in a corner; for this incident, though no doubt a burning question in the fifteenth century, was now but staple for an ironical little tale, in view of the fact that descendants of John's 'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was even cynically cool, "I shall stalk you no more. The chase is at an end. I think I have taken all out of you I intended to. Perhaps it was a bad joke and was carried too far. I wanted to prove to you that there were circumstances which might be too much even ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... prepared to taste that most delicate pleasure of the host: making fun of his guests in the relaxation of midnight. As the door closed he yawned voluptuously, chest out, shoulders wriggling, and turned cynically to his wife. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... mapped out his plan of campaign. He reviewed every detail of the interview that had taken place on New Year's Eve—more than a week ago—and it pleased him to re-construct the scene, but without the slightest indignation or excitement, only smiling cynically both at Elena and himself. Why had she come?—Simply because this impromptu tete-a-tete with a former lover, in the well-known place, after a lapse of two years, had tempted a spirit always on the look-out for fresh emotions, had inflamed her imagination and her curiosity. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... had been a man of that former time. What had I done to help on the deliverance whereat I now presumed to rejoice? I who had lived in those cruel, insensate days, what had I done to bring them to an end? I had been every whit as indifferent to the wretchedness of my brothers, as cynically incredulous of better things, as besotted a worshipper of Chaos and Old Night, as any of my fellows. So far as my personal influence went, it had been exerted rather to hinder than to help forward the enfranchisement ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... back to an old shadow of my former vigour and energy. I saw that I would never be good for the Front again, but I minded that the less now in that the events of the summer of 1915 had left me without heart or desire, the merest spectator of life, passive and, I cynically believed, indifferent. I was nothing to any one, nor was any one anything to me. The desire of my heart had slipped like a laughing ghost away from my ken—men of my slow warmth and cautious suspicion do not easily admit a ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole |
