"Cynicism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Miss Winifred, Mr. Flint is ashamed of having played the humanitarian this morning, so he is trying to atone by double cynicism this evening; but don't let him interrupt my story again, under pain of being sent back to the tavern, instead of taken care of in Mrs. White's best bed-room, under the charge of the best doctor (though I ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... der Lieder," the appearance of which created a wide-spread enthusiasm in Germany in 1825 he abandoned the Jewish faith and professed the Christian, but the creed he adopted was that of a sceptic, and he indulged in a cynicism that outraged all propriety, and even common decency; in 1830 he quitted Germany and settled in Paris, and there a few years afterwards married a rich lady, who alleviated the sufferings of his last years; an attack of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... at the nurse. With that clear sight of dying eyes the Colonel understood. A meaner spirit would have been galled at the part those "Louisville Instructions" had been playing, but cheap cynicism was not in the Colonel's line. He knew the awful pinch of life up here, and he thought no less of his comrades for asking that last service of getting them home. But it was the day of the final "clean-up" for the Colonel; he must not ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... been a God. I should have had my way with people then. I could have created a world whose horrors would have remained a consoling flattery to my cynicism." ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... a second letter to the same person deserves to be quoted, as an instance of how a good man may be unable to read aright his own nature, and a wise man to forecast his own future. "I feel a growing tendency to cynicism and suspicion. My intellect remains; and is likely, I sometimes think, to absorb the whole man. I still retain, (not only undiminished, but strengthened by the very events which have deprived me of everything ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... feelings, and indifferent whether he gave pain or pleasure. But now and then a remark escaped him—I say "escaped him," because he evidently preferred to wear the acrid tendencies of his character on the outside—which indicated that there was behind his cynicism a rich fund of human kindness and sympathy. And this was strongly confirmed by his neighbors at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, his home, where on one of my campaigning tours I once spent a day and a night. With them, even with ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... good advice he had given to Pen in former days, how an early wisdom and knowledge of the world had manifested itself in this gifted youth; how a constant course of self-indulgence, such as becomes a gentleman of his means and expectations, ought by right to have increased his cynicism, and made him, with every succeeding day of his life, care less and less for every individual in the world, with the single exception of Mr. Harry Foker, one may wonder that he should fall into the mishap to which most of us are ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... halted him on the perilous edge of sentiment by a similar cynicism, but this time it cut him deeply. For he could not be blind to the fact that she treated him like a mere boy, and in dispelling the illusions of his instincts and beliefs seemed as if intent upon dispelling his illusions of HER; and in her ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... breakfast hours, and he had skipped two luncheons, the requirements of neighborliness and of courtesy had not imposed more than a dozen words of speech upon them. This was very satisfactory to Alan. He was not talkative or communicative of his own free will. There was a certain cynicism back of his love of silence. He was a good listener and a first-rate analyst. Some people, he knew, were born to talk; and others, to trim the balance, were burdened with the necessity of holding their tongues. For him silence was ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious, arrogant,—bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold, repellent cynicism,—his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed in him no moral susceptibility, and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called "ambition," but no apparent ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Stanley,' said Rachel, with a fierce cynicism in her low tones, 'you don't want advice; you have formed your plan, whatever it is, and that plan you will follow, and no other, though men and angels were ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... The shameless cynicism with which the great public plunderers of our day brazen out their infamy, is only equalled by the apathy with which the public permits these robberies, and condone for them by lavishing place and power upon the offenders. ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... eye fell upon them a look of startled cynicism suddenly replaced the smile. Her cynicism was paradoxical, she was so large, and sound and wholesome, and the more ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... commandments" (John xiv. 15, R.V.). "Lovest thou Me ... feed My sheep" (John xxi. 16). "Seeing ye have purified your souls ... love one another from the heart unfeignedly" (1 Pet. i. 22, R.V.). It was with no cynicism, but with a wonderful astonishment, that the heathen used to say, "See how these Christians love one another." When therefore the Apostle prayed for love he was asking that the Philippian Christians might possess and manifest the very finest, truest, most powerful, and most attractive proof of ...
— The Prayers of St. Paul • W. H. Griffith Thomas
... that well-bred cynicism which a new school has not yet succeeded in imitating. They were of the old school, these two; and their worldliness, their cynicism, their conversational attitude, belonged to a bygone period. It was a cleaner period in some ways—a ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... appreciation limited to what came from men. As she grew older, and less and less pleasing to the eye, the men showed more and more clearly how they had deceived themselves in thinking it was her brains that had made them like her. As Henrietta, with mournful cynicism, put it: "Men the world over care little about women beyond their physical charm. To realize it, look at us American women, who can do nothing toward furthering men's ambitions. We've only our physical charms to offer; we ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... Miss Roberta, beneath your cynicism and your assumption of masculinity, you are as sympathetic as a young mother. It would be mean to put over anything like that, and you ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... mixture of camaraderie and brutality, of cruelty and pity and tears; of precocious children and wrecked men—and you smell its perfume, the week before last. But here is the home of Tai Ling, one of the most genial souls to be met in a world of cynicism and dyspepsia: a lovable character, radiating sweetness and a tolerably naughty goodness in this narrow street. Not immoral, for to be immoral you must first subscribe to some conventional morality. Tai Ling ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... learned of her husband's second marriage she had ceased to pray, abandoning herself completely to the cynicism and vindictiveness that overflowed her soul like a wave of Phlegethon; but now the fountain of gratitude was unsealed, and she poured out a vehement, passionate, thanksgiving to God. Alternately praying, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... going to live again, but his disbelief has not yet reconciled him to making the best of this life, or laid ghosts of the beliefs he has outworn. Clear air and sun, but not so much as to paralyse action, have made in France clearer eyes, clearer brains, and touched souls with a sane cynicism. The French do not despise and neglect the means to ends. They face sexual realities. They know that to live well they must eat well, to eat well must cook well, to cook well must cleanly and cleverly cultivate their soil. May France be warned in time by our dismal fate! May she never lose her ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... or public moment had a rarity and a brevity, a sharp intensity, of its own; ruffling all things, as they came, with the morning breath of the Second Empire and making them twinkle back with a light of resigned acceptance, a freshness of cynicism, the force of a great grimacing example. The grimace might have been legibly there in the air, to the young apprehension, and could I but simplify this record enough I should represent everything as ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... was the embodiment of the joy of life, the perfect immoralist. There was no cynicism in his nature, no cruelty, no obliquity, no remorse; nothing but sunshine with a few clouds sailing across the fathomless blue spaces—the sky of Hellas. Nihil humani alienum; and as I listened to those glad ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... up to the calling we share. Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. And this commitment, if we keep it, is a way ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... and complex man. His letters reveal him as remarkably creative, fascinated by the arts, principled, religious and devoted to his father. He had an energetic personality that was almost completely devoid of any cynicism, pessimism or discouragement from creating music. While rumors suggest that he was a lascivious individual, there is no evidence of this at all in his letters. Quite the contrary, the evidence seems overwhelmingly to suggest the opposite, and that Mozart ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... played the same merry game, men who broke hearts for sport and went their careless ways, unheeding, uncomprehending. It was the way of the world, this world of countless tragedies. She had learned, in her piteous cynicism, to look for nothing else. Faithfulness had become to her a myth. Surely all men loved—they called ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... at least has beauty and wit and grace? But he pays just as the Countess pays!" Mrs. Wix, who now rose as she spoke, fairly revealed a latent cynicism. ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... breathes in words like these has often begotten in great rulers a cynical contempt of men and the judgments of men. But cynicism found no echo in the large and sympathetic temper of Alfred. He not only longed for the love of his subjects, but for the remembrance of "generations" to come. Nor did his inner gloom or anxiety check for an instant his vivid and versatile activity. To the scholars he gathered round him he seemed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... again to refer to the charge of cynicism that is levelled against Thackeray. The mistake is, as our critic points out, 'taking a vague word and applying it precisely.' It all depends upon what cynicism really means. 'If it means a war on comfort, then Thackeray was, to his eternal credit, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... her entirely good-natured, even amused and tolerant air of cynicism, "the women of the Zenith Club remember their own papers. You need not have the slightest fear. But Annie, you wonderful little girl, I am so glad you have come to me with this. I have been waiting for ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of what for want of a better word we must call cynicism in the humorous indifference with which the old philosopher is said to have discussed his own burial. Finding, as the story goes, that there was not money enough in the house for the last expenses, he ordered what there was to be ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... granted that no hearer of mine will misinterpret what I have to say as the language of cynicism. The law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the moral development of the race. The practice of it, in spite of popular jests, tends to make good citizens and good men. When I emphasize the difference between law ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... had the Banditti showed signs of revolt against Robert's despotism, and each time he had won them back with ease which sowed the first seeds of cynicism in his mind. It happened to be another of the elder Stonehouse's theories—which he had been known to expound eloquently to his creditors—that children should be taught the use of money, and at such times as the Stonehouse family prospered Robert's pocket bulged with sums that staggered the very ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... indebted to our commercialized newspapers and magazines for our distorted views of human life and for the cynicism that it is the momentary fashion to affect, but that is always disfiguring to the mind that harbors it. Certainly we can get no such views and no such cynicism from our own experience or from personal ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... however, a great orator and a great parliamentary advocate, and, if properly briefed, there was no man who could state a case better or more persuasively than he did. This gift of advocacy, though an advocacy quite untouched by cynicism, was apt to raise doubts in the public mind as to his sincerity,—doubts which were due to ignorance of the man and to nothing else. It is true that he argued as the most convinced and most happy exponent of Free Trade during the first half of his political life and later as ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... demanding equality in externals, equality in responsibility and vocation. But this sham equality is the enemy of the true, for it does not fit man's burden to his strength, it creates overburdened, misused natures, driving the one to scamped work and hypocrisy, and the other to cynicism. Every accidental and inherited advantage must indeed be done away with. But if there is any one who, among men equal in external conditions, in duties and in claims, demands that they should also be equal in mind, in will and in heart—let him ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... long nights and tended the fire with quiet fingers; he learnt from the nurse how to move a pillow tenderly, how to shut a door without any sound. He wearied Doctor Parsons with futile propositions, but the physician's simulated cynicism often broke down in secret before this spectacle of the son's dog-like pertinacity. Blanchard much desired to have a vein opened for his mother, nor was all the practitioner's eloquence equal to convincing him such a ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... "the chap was that smooth-spoken you might think he was after swallyin' a one of his own graisy dipts, on'y he'd liefer be chaitin' some poor body over the sellin' of it"—a perhaps not inexcusable preference. As for Peter, he contemplated humanity with a jovial cynicism, and rather enjoyed the society of the old blacksmith, despite the gruff sarcasms which sometimes made their womenkind turn the conversation apprehensively. He had been heard to say of Felix that "It was aisy work runnin' down other people's ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... ruin us in time. He is deucedly in the way," he continued, in his usual tone of easy cynicism. "We should have let him into our plans from the first, and then if he chose to take no part in them we would at least have had a free hand. As it is now, we have three different people to deceive: this Cabinet of shopkeepers, which seems easy enough; ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... in 1832 of that classic of cynicism, The Domestic Manners of the Americans, by Mrs. Trollope, perhaps nothing has appeared that is more caustic or amusing in its treatment of America and the Americans than the following passages from the letters ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... The Nurse advises her not to sacrifice herself for such a common passion; a remedy there must be: "Men would find it, if women had not found it already". "She needs not words, but the man." Scandalised by this cynicism the Queen bids her be silent; the woman tells her she has potent charms within the house which will rid her of the malady without danger to her good name or her life. Phaedra suspects her plan and absolutely forbids her to speak with ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... the clashes between wills equally consecrated and pure. Conscientious cranks and blunderers are perhaps even more of a nuisance than out-and-out villains; they hurt every good cause they espouse and bring noble ideals into ridicule; they provoke discouragement and cynicism. There is hardly a folly or a crime that has not been committed prayerfully and with a clear conscience; the saint and the criminal are sometimes psychologically indistinguishable indeed, by which name we call a fanatic may depend upon which side we are on. We may discriminate ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... bandeaux over the forehead; the close-fitting white stockings and limbs, revealed it would not be easy to say how, but always at the right moment—all this poetry of vice has fled. The license of question and reply, the public cynicism in keeping with the haunt, is now unknown even at masquerades or the famous public balls. It was an appalling, gay scene. The dazzling white flesh of the women's necks and shoulders stood out in magnificent contrast against the men's almost invariably sombre costumes. The murmur of voices, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... things my manhood overcame my philosophy, and I felt a frantic impulse to be up and doing. I threw my cynicism to one side as a garment which I might don again at leisure, and I rushed wildly to my boat and my sculls. She was a leaky tub, but what then? Was I, who had cast many a wistful, doubtful glance ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rescuer, from Russian into English, or the frequent French, to characterize the event recorded, there were found to be many situations, phrases and expressions that may shock the sensitive reader; in the conceptions of the diarist, however, in his cynicism and degradation he photographs Red Russia and reveals the characteristics necessary to visualize the horror that accompanied the event. A truthful picture of this unique segment of human history can be preserved only in a ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... know the hidden sources of human joy and have neither grown old in cynicism nor gray in utilitarianism, Miss Gale's charming love stories, full of fresh feeling and grace of style, will be a draught from ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... if not in merit. The parent of modern nonsense-writers, he is distinguished from all his followers and imitators by the superior consistency with which he has adhered to his aim,—that of amusing his readers by fantastic absurdities, as void of vulgarity or cynicism as they are incapable of being made to harbor any symbolical meaning. He "never deviates into sense;" but those who appreciate him never feel the need of such deviation. He has a genius for coining absurd names and words, which, even when they are suggested by the exigencies of ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... a fine fellow, Wingate," Phipps said, with a touch of his old cynicism, "if you weren't always sheering off towards the melodramatic. The girl wanted to see life, she attracted me, and I showed it to her. I'd have done the right thing by her if she hadn't behaved like ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... observed, "My dear sir—you see how it fares with me; I just manage to keep hanging on, hanging on." This story is ordinarily told as though the old man did not see the unfavorable significance of his words; but it is probable that, he uttered them wittingly and with, a sneer—in the cynicism and shamelessness ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... prefer to ignore them even to themselves. To pretend that things are not what they are is regarded by Anglo-Saxons as a proof of strength of mind and wholesomeness of disposition; while to admit that things are indeed what they are is deemed to be either weakness or cynicism. The plain man is incapable of being a cynic; he feels, therefore, that he has been guilty of weakness, and this, of ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... him more she wondered why. She liked him for his disposition; to this question as well that seemed the natural answer. When once the impressions of London life began to crowd thickly upon her, she completely forgot her sister's warning about the cynicism of public opinion. It had given her great pain at the moment, but there was no particular reason why she should remember it; it corresponded too little with any sensible reality; and it was disagreeable to Bessie to remember disagreeable ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... business," replied Ashton with all his old cynicism. "I'll not say that H. V. Leslie is crooked, but I never knew of his coming out of ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... good writing instead of bad, delicate worldly wisdom instead of vague sentiment or vague cynicism, and the manners of society instead of an imitation of some remote imitation of those manners. The play is a comedy, and the situations are not allowed to get beyond the control of good manners. The game is after all the thing, and the skill of the game. When the pawns begin to ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... in any favorable disposition to be amused. The Count's glib cynicism had revealed a new aspect of his nature from which we both recoiled. But it was impossible to resist the comical distress of so very large a man at the loss of so very small a mouse. We laughed ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... and sat with her bare feet in the shallow stream. Her head, buried in her arms, rested upon her knees. The slender shoulders now shook convulsively and the sound of a sob escaped her. In the calmness of his cynicism, the man sat down on the rock and placed a strong arm around ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... with a little gasp. He held his throat and looked imploringly towards the bottle. Trent shook his head stonily. There was something pitiful in the man's talk, in that odd mixture of bitter cynicism and passionate earnestness, but there was also something fascinating. As regards the brandy, ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... almost to morbidness, he had had much to put up with in the last two months, and was seeking feverishly for some means of enabling himself to lead a more presentable kind of existence. At home, he now adopted an attitude of absolute cynicism, but he could not keep this up before Nastasia Philipovna, although he had sworn to make her pay after marriage for all he suffered now. He was experiencing a last humiliation, the bitterest of all, at this moment—the humiliation of blushing for ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... put back his head, and stared at her with a scrutiny which was not without a touch of cynicism; but the eager face he met was at once so frank and so honest, that the sneer faded from his lips and gave place to ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of his cynicism will be made bitterer still by the fact that, owing to his being (in all probability) unmusical, inartistic, and unable to amuse himself with any form of handwork, he will have no taste or hobby to distract him from himself. For a time, indeed, the "genial sense of youth" ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... pain, which of course he had not, but which nevertheless seemed to ask for, and I suppose earned him some, sympathy. Dick in his way was an actor, a tragedian of sorts, but with an element of humor, cynicism and insight which saved him from being utterly ridiculous. Like most actors, he was a great poseur. He invariably affected the long, loose flowing tie with a soft white or blue or green or brown linen shirt (would any American imitation of the "Quartier Latin" denizen ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... was paid to him by many different groups of interested people who were rarely at the pains to dissemble their aims. He formed a manner for the reception of these advances, compounded of joviality, cynicism, and frank brutality, which nobody, to his face at least, resented. If women winced under his mocking rudenesses of speech and smile, if men longed to kill him for the cold insolence of his refusal to let them inside his guard, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... life, and once only?" She turned her face aside, slighting by her manner the excessive meaning of her words. "I ask for myself only what I think I have a right to give you—my absolute undivided attention for those first few years. They say it never lasts!" she hastened to add with playful cynicism. ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... anger. But we cannot be quite certain whether his protest is the protest of the first anarchist against government, or whether it is the protest of the last savage against civilization. The cruelty of ages and of political cynicism or necessity has done much to burden the race of which Gorky writes; but time has left them one thing which it has not left to the people ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... Mr Whitlaw, in a tone of cynicism, to which at times he gave pretty free indulgence, "the Crimean war occurred in the nineteenth century, and the American civil war, and the young widows of the Franco-Prussian war are not yet grey-haired, while their children have scarcely reached their ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... be extremely guarded in our description of the interesting objects which this expedition opened to our view. There can be no harm, however, in stating that we were received by the commander of the fortress with a kind of acid good-nature, or mild cynicism, that indicated him to be a humorist, characterized by certain rather pungent peculiarities, yet of no unamiable cast. He is a small, thin old gentleman, set off by a large pair of brilliant epaulets,—the only pair, so far ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... whose sphere of influence is in direct ratio to the peaceful character and ignorance of the people intrusted to their care, and whose excesses and abuses recognize no limits but the natural ones established by the greater or lesser honour of those public servants, their greater or lesser cynicism, and their greater ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... and obliterated one another. She had moods of triviality. She had moods of magnificence. She had moods of intense secret hostility to her urgent little husband, and moods of genial tolerance for everything there was in her life. She had moods, and don't we all have moods?—of scepticism and cynicism, much profounder than the conventions and limitations of novel-writing permit us to tell here. And for hardly any of these moods had she terms ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... property—especially edible property—should be shared. Appetites, she argued, were meant to be appeased, and the preservation of game—or anything else—in the larder was an offence against the community. Now, at the age of five or so, she affected cynicism, pretended temporarily that life had left a bitter taste in her mouth, and ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... all of them I chatted easily a moment or two, expressing the hope that they would be well pleased with their entertainment. I noted while thus engaged that Belknap-Jackson eyed me with frank and superior cynicism, but this affected me quite not at all and I took pains to point my indifference, chatting with increased urbanity with the two cow-persons, Hank and Buck, who had entered rather uncertainly, not in evening dress, ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... namely, a territorial indemnity. Russia's final claims, as will be seen, were open to criticism at several points; but the censure just referred to is puerile. It accords, however, with most of the criticisms passed in London "club-land," which were remarkable for their purblind cynicism. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... need only to remind you of the 'reminiscences' of Andrieux, the former Chief of Police of Paris, in which he brags with the greatest cynicism of how he, by aid of police funds, subsidized extreme Anarchist papers and organized Anarchist assassinations, just to give a thorough scare to rich citizens. And then there is that notorious Police Inspector Melville, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... of the world and having consequently outgrown the cynicism of youth, also knowing women better than this fair Minerva would know them in twenty lifetimes, thought differently, and ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... aloofly, her head in the clouds, her feet on mountain-tops. She had never done anything to arouse discussion in other women. Perhaps such a situation had never confronted her until lately. She had always looked forth upon life through the lenses of mild cynicism. So long as she was rich she might, with impunity, be as indiscreet as she pleased. Her money would plead forgiveness and toleration. . . . Elsa shrugged. But shrugs do not dismiss problems. She could have laughed. To have come all this way to solve a riddle, only to find ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... once before the terror in her eyes; but in those twelve long months of effort, of hope, of balked ambition, of bitter questioning, and of tragic disillusionment, a new quality had developed in his character, and the generous sympathy of youth had hardened at thirty-four to the cautious cynicism of middle-age. It is doubtful if even he himself realized how transient such a state must be to a nature whose hidden springs were moved so easily by the mere action of change—by the effect of any alteration in the objects that surrounded ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... changed. She had known Bobby during many years and had always laughed at him for a solemn, rather-priggish young man—then she fell in love with him and, to his own wild and delirious surprise, married him. The companions of her earlier girlhood missed her cynicism and complained that brilliance had given way to commonplace but you could not find, in the whole of ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... work for mere honour and glory, papa?' asked Urania, with her unpleasant little air of cynicism. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... He has His limitations, His struggles, His defeats, but there is no life unless you believe that He ultimately must win, that this world is going upward, not downward, that the devil is to be beaten,—the devil inside of ourselves, the devil of wilfulness, of waywardness, of cynicism, and the devil that is represented by the overbearing, cruel militarism and ruthless inhumanity of Germany. You are a soldier of the Lord, just as ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... kept myself aloof from my fellow creatures in the hotel, even taking my meals in my own rooms, not wishing to be stared at as the hero of the scandal that convulsed the place. And with regard to Colonel Bunnion shall I be accused of cynicism if I say that I admitted him—not to my confidence—but to my company, because I know that it delighted the honest but boring fellow to prove to himself that he could rise above British prejudice and exhibit tact in dealing ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... a strain of hardness about pretty Annie, whether bred of that cynicism in the air of which May had complained, whether it was an integral part of Annie, or whether, as in the case of some valuable kinds of timber, it was merely an indication of the closer grain, the slower ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... scarcely higher than a five-barred gate. On the ceiling of the great dome was painted a lively and striking picture of Christ, probably done of old time, but in countenance resembling, strangely enough, the accepted portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson—a Christ with a certain amount of cynicism, one who might have smoked upon occasion. No doubt it was painted by a Greek: a Russian would never have ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... she returned, with a note of cynicism breaking through her sham enthusiasm. "Honesty, purity, generosity, loyalty—especially loyalty. I do not think a man who is true to himself, to his word, to his friend, and to his country can ever fall far below the ideal." She took a deep breath. "It is a very ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... century's work will be a product of its university system. Of this we may be sure, the training for strenuous life is not in academic idleness. The development of living ideals is not in an atmosphere of cynicism. The blase, lukewarm, fin-de-siecle young man of the clubs will not represent university culture, nor, on the other hand, will culture be dominated ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... house of Austria was looked upon with dislike and doubt; nor were these, even in the case of the young dauphin's aunt, Madame Adelaide, made a matter of concealment. Thus, at her entrance upon public life, Antoinette was met with cynicism and prejudice, and unfortunately her own conduct rather increased than quieted the insidious voice—the "bruit ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... truth. His guileless nature was beyond ungenerous suspicions and selfish ambitions. He walked calmly upon his way wrapped in the majesty of his great thoughts, oblivious to the vexations of the world's cynicism. Charity and reverence for the indwelling spirit marked all his human relations. Tolerance of the opinions of others, benevolence and tenderness dwelt in his every word and act. Yet his careful consideration of others did not paralyze the strength of his firm will or his power to strike hard ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... his native envelope—the soft looseness, so to say, of his temper and tone, not directly expressive enough, no doubt, to figure an amplitude of folds, but of a quality unmistakable for sensitive feelers. He was still reduced, in fine, to getting his rare moments with himself by feigning a cynicism. His real inability to maintain the pretence, however, had perhaps not often been better instanced than by his acceptance of the inevitable to-day—his acceptance of it on the arrival, at the end of a quarter-of-an hour, of that element of obligation with ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... this into a sore and raw consciousness, said to herself with an embittered instinct for cynicism that she had never heard more euphonious periphrases for selling yourself for money. For that was what it came down to, she had told herself fiercely a great many times during the night. Felix had sold himself for money as outright as ever a woman ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... not often puzzled. His companion struck him as altogether too clever to be likely to indulge in a silly affectation of cynicism. And yet, without this, how could one account for her ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... pirate and the highwayman, was a sort of gentleman-rogue. But now it has become a very ladylike art. The extent of it is almost beyond belief, too. It begins with the steerage and runs right up to the absolute unblushing cynicism of the first cabin. I suppose you know that women, particularly a certain brand of society women, are the worst and most persistent offenders. Why, they even boast of it. Smuggling isn't merely popular, it's aristocratic. But we're going to take some of the flavour ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... confusion between sexual desire and religious fervor as another aspect of general human depravity, extending the satire beyond the crude accusation of hypocrisy or cynicism. He argues that the confusion is a part of the human condition, allowed to go out of control by a religion that puts passion before reason. The Countess of Huntingdon, "cloy'd with carnal Bliss," longs ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... week in his journal, "when a person does not feel well, he should try his temperature, and, if it be abnormally high, he should go to bed, and stay there until it comes down."—"Of course," RYMOND observes, with rare lapse into cynicism, "when the bed comes down, he is bound ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... What cynicism he had was mellowed by a fanciful humor. Whether with steel or with words, he was a master of fence; and if at times some one got under his guard, that some one knew it not. To let your enemy see that he has hit you is to give him confidence. He saw humor where no one else saw it, and tragedy where ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... "Nay, there speaks your cynicism," she chided me. "But even if my ideals be too lofty, would you have me descend from the height of such a pinnacle to the level of the Lord Giovanni—a weak-spirited craven, as witnesses the manner in which he permitted the Borgias to mishandle him; a cruel and unjust tyrant, as witnesses his ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... most heartrending allegations have passed into college jokes, traditional jokes, fated to descend from senior to freshman for happy years to come. The student learns in the give-and-take of communal life to laugh at many things, partly from sheer high spirits, partly from youthful cynicism, and the habit of sharpening her wit against her neighbour's. It is commonly believed that she is an unduly serious young person with an insatiable craving for knowledge; in reality she is often as healthily unresponsive ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... knowledge of dancing girls and their ways, Gungadhura did not believe much more than two per cent. of Patali's account of what had taken place, and he was right, except that he grossly overestimated her truthfulness. And even with his experienced cynicism it never entered his head to suppose that Patali was the individual who warned Yasmini in advance of the preparations being made to poison her by Gungadhura's orders. Yet, as it was Patali's own sister who made the sweetmeats, and tampered with the charcoal for the filter, and put the ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... a leader of armies and a dictator of events. It also shows Napoleon with the still fluid heart of boyhood passing through the lava floods of his first loves, in particular his love for Josephine, into the age of cynicism and calculation. ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... the only wholly stolid and stupid one. Club tradition declared that he had been admitted solely for the beneficent purpose of keeping the more egotistic members in a permanent and pleasing glow of superiority. He was very rich, but otherwise quite harmless. In an access of unappreciated cynicism, Average Jones had once suggested to him, as a device for his newly acquired ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... proceeded with the utmost haste and greatest partiality and passion against the pretended chieftains, authors, protectors and followers of the sacred movement begun in August, 1896; who had, as military prosecutor for the 'Captain General,' exacted with insolent cynicism, and with the knowledge and consent of his superior officers, considerable sums of money from those who wished to be absolved, in order to imprison them again when they did not comply with all his extortions; the same who, with shameless partiality worked and used ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... his fancy; he would not give a thousand farthings to ease the sufferings of his fellows. Yet there were few found to criticize him. He was called original, a crank; there were even some who professed to see merit in his attitude. To both criticism and praise he was alike indifferent. With a cynicism with seemed only to become more bitter he pursued his undeviating ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was just a whimper. Oh, irony of fate! Oh, cynicism incredible in its malignancy! Oh, cumulative touch! To deliver him this his enemy to strike, and to present him for ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... and worldly wise he then thought himself, can never resist a throb of amazement at the entertaining youthfulness of these young monks. How quaintly juvenile they are, and how oddly that assumption of grave superiority sits upon their golden brows! With what an inimitable air of wisdom, cynicism, ancientry, learned aloofness and desire to be observed do they stroll to and fro across the quads, so keenly aware in their inmost bosoms of the presence of visitors and determined to grant an appearance of mingled wisdom, great age, and ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... pensions for three-fourths of our aged poor in the United Kingdom on the basis of 7s. 6d. per head per week."[445] "236,514 blackmailers suck the udder of industry through the convenient teat of what, with audacious cynicism, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... looking at this queer turnout, the little reddish man climbed down from in front and stood watching me. His face was a comic mixture of pleasant drollery and a sort of weather-beaten cynicism. He had a neat little russet beard and a shabby Norfolk jacket. His ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... had hardly the strength to put out her arm and push him away; and, with a cynicism in which all his abominable nature stood revealed, Daubrecq, mingling words of cruelty ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... an unspoiled and gentle creature had paid him the greatest of all compliments by coming to him for advice in the extremity of her soul's misery. He had received her with silly badinage and cheap cynicism. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Country, however, knows there is neither bitterness nor real cynicism in Solon Denney, founder, editor, and proprietor of the Little Arcady Argus; motto, "Hew to the Line, Let the Chips Fall Where they May!" Indeed, we do know Solon. Often enough has the Argus hewn inexorably to the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson |
