"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doctor," sayth she, with an unpleasant leer, "that hath given that at first. In time he gets his hand in; and I've had a plenty o' ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... you passed up here, I saw three men on board. Where are the other two?" I answered him briefly that the same crew was still on board. "But," said he, "I see you are doing all the work," and with a leer he added, as he glanced at the mainsail, "hombre valiente." I explained that I did all the work in the day, while the rest of the crew slept, so that they would be fresh to watch for Indians at night. I was interested in the subtle cunning of this savage, ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... every word which had passed, and he saw at once that he would have a field for his diabolical machinations. Could Claude have seen the leer with which the ghastly apparition followed him as he passed, he would have shuddered with a sense of approaching danger. He did not look back, however, and the Man in Green, having requested an audience with De Roberval, was admitted ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... said the obese Turk with a graceful wave of the hand in my direction, "and not you, who has robbed my home of its treasure, unless," he added, and I shall always remember the hideous leer of that pulpy-nosed and small-pox pitted face, "unless Monsieur has relieved you ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... story after story without getting sight of the madman. Finally he reached the roof. It was waving like swells on a lake before a breeze. He caught sight of the Mad Musician standing on the street wall, thirty stories from the street, a leer on his devilish visage. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... late. His name is Gerald Van Alstyne, and he is tall, with curly golden hair, piercing blue eyes and a cleft chin; in short, a veritable Adonis and different, so different, from the traveling salesmen who leer at her across the counter and the loutish youths of San Pasqual who, despairing of her favor, call her by her first name because they know it annoys her. Donna has not the slightest doubt but that this young fellow will come rushing in to the eating-house some day, discover her when he comes ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... his hands on his hips, his head inclined towards his right shoulder, and an insolent leer ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... hierbei wohl manches vorkommen msste, was dem gemeinen Menschen als schdlich, der Geistlichkeit als gefhrlich, dem Staat als unzulssig erschienen mchte, daran hatten wir keinen Zweifel, und wir hofften, dieses Bchlein sollte nicht unwrdig die Feuerprobe bestauden haben. Allein wie hohl und leer ward uns in deiser tristen Atheistischen Halbnacht zu Mute, in welcher die Erde mit allen ihren Gebilden, der Himmel mit allen seinen Gestirnen verschwand! Eine Materie sollte sein von Ewigkeit und von Ewigkeit ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... crouched down on his haunches. Margaret shuddered, for the uneven surface of the sack moved strangely. He opened the mouth of it. The woman in the corner listlessly droned away on the drum, and occasionally uttered a barbaric cry. With a leer and a flash of his bright teeth, the Arab thrust his hand into the sack and rummaged as a man would rummage in a sack of corn. He drew out a long, writhing snake. He placed it on the ground and for a ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise, Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And with our sneering teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike, Alike reserved to blame or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... 'Well, what's the matter with you?' "'Aw,' said the soldier, with a leer, 'I've got de lapsy-palls, and I wanter go to de ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... I'm no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute - and I do - But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can, Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! And I can't ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... dressing table before the glass, and I snatched at it. Great God! as I did so, another arm was thrust forth—not mine, I swear, if I live a thousand years; and as I recoiled, I saw in that glass a fiend step back. Not me, not me!—but a fiend with bloody hands, and a foul leer upon its face, and a fierce, cruel laugh in its glittering eyes. It was he, it was he! It was the devil that had possessed me before, come back again. And as I shuddered and gasped, and turned away, and then looked again into those eyes that pierced me through, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... with his order. Tunis was conscious of a hoarse voice at his elbow. He glanced aside. His neighbor in the next chair was a little, common man, with a little, common face, on which was a little, common leer. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... gentleman was considered the handsomest man, and the most elegant dancer, in the circles of fashion. That he was at once a shallow coxcomb and an encroaching acquaintance, unfortunately did not prevent many young ladies from desiring him as a partner; and when Matilda perceived the leer of envy, and the pause of observation directed towards her, she half gave him her hand, being conscious that her own figure and style of dancing would be superior to any other of the candidates ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... morning we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears and held our leaping hands, but they—did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody jaws: Cease from Crime! The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... England's sea power; because of the unblushing, shameless, gilded corruption of the French court, which cared less for the fate of Canada than the leer of a painted fool behind her fan. But be this remembered,—and here was the hand of overruling Destiny or Providence,—the fall of New France, like the fall of the seed to the ready soil, was the rebirth of a new nation. Henceforth it is not New ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... contaminated him more, Genesis or the loyal Clematis. To his way of thinking, he was part of a dreadful pageant, and he winced pitiably whenever the eye of a respectable passer-by fell upon him. Everybody seemed to stare—nay, to leer! And he felt that the whole world would know ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... walk along the woodland way Strange creatures leer at me with uncouth love, And from the grass reach upward to my breast, And to my mouth lean from the ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... Abschied nahm, als ich Abschied nahm, Waren Kisten und Kasten schwer; 10 Als ich wieder kam, als ich wieder kam, War alles leer." ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... Heck!" Dorsey greeted them hilariously and with a half-leer. "Howdy, Skinny! How's the Cimarron? Don't reckon you've taught Old Quicksilver to run yet, have you?" with a boisterous laugh as he referred to the race in which Thunderbolt had defeated ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... enemy to Napoleon, a fanatic partisan of the Bourbons; he is one of our men. I looked, at him. At every fresh epithet of the Minister the Abbe bowed his head down to his plate with a smile of cheerfulness and self-complacency, and with a sort of leer. I never saw a more ignoble countenance. Fouche explained to me, on leaving the breakfast table, in what manner all these valets of literature were men of his, and while I acknowledged to myself that ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... slept in the house, and this morning as I was standing at the window I saw him go out. He glanced up and caught my eye. It was a loutish figure and a singularly repulsive face that I saw, and he gave me the benefit of a very unpleasant leer. At least, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... a shrewd leer of recognition, and smoking an imaginary pipe, with his head very much on one side and his eyes very much out ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... stolen goods; the "widow who bounced" from one end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Sirs, I manetane that this is infernul nonsense. I manetane that wax figgers is more elevatin than awl the plays ever wroten. Take Shakespeer for instunse. Peple think heze grate things, but I kontend heze quite the reverse to the kontrary. What sort of sense is thare to King Leer, who goze round cussin his darters, chawin hay and throin straw at folks, and larfin like a silly old koot and makin a ass of hisself ginerally? Thare's Mrs. Mackbeth—sheze a nise kind of woomon to have round ain't she, a puttin old Mack, her husband, up to slayin Dunkan with ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... assent with civil leer; And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike; Just hint a ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a study ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... I ain't got no time to fool!" prompted the man, with a leer. "I'm dead onto your lay, and there's a bull comin' along now—half or ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... Now Gunch delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of the women, "Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks aren't looking? Got something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful important to ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... of a waggish leer, thou owest the lad for the venison, I suppose that thou killed, Cousin Duke! Marmaduke! Marmaduke! That was a marvellous tale of thine about the buck! Here, young man, are two dollars for the deer, and Judge Temple can do ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... with a pitchfork. One characteristic of the medival imagination is its fondness for the grotesque. It loved queer beasts, half eagle, half lion, hideous batlike creatures, monsters like nothing on land or sea. They lurk among the foliage on choir screens, leer at you from wall or column, or squat upon the gutters high on ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... pang of that memory remained with Beauty Stanton. She was a part of Benton. She was treading the loose board-walk of the great and vile construction camp. She might draw back from leer and touch, but none the less was she there, a piece of this dark, bold, obscure life. She was a cog in the wheel, a grain of dust in the whirlwind, a morsel of flesh and blood for the hungry maw of a wild and passing ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... set purpose, had crept up behind us so softly that we should not suspect his approach, or else so engrossed were we that our ears had been deafened for the time. He stood there now in his untidy gown of black, and there was a leer of mockery on his long, white face. Slowly he put a lean arm between us, and took the sheet in ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... drew back for another blow at the exposed face. The Major, faint with the terror of his helplessness and the crushing weight of the quivering masses of muscle about him, would have fallen but for their dread support. His consciousness fast deserting him, fascinated, he watched the monstrous leer as the head drew farther back, poised. He felt the agonizing pressure as the great muscles steeled for the blow, and in the moment before his senses departed, heard two crashing shots that sounded from behind him. With the smashing reports the poised head thudded to the ground, the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... nor dreamed of them. These creatures were hardly to be recognized as human beings; they were some new grotesque race of apes. They could not walk, they could only shamble; they could not laugh, they could only leer. I saw a hand-organ playing, and turned away—the things they did in their efforts to dance were not to be watched. And then I went out into the beautiful English country; cultured and charming ladies took me in swift, smooth motor-cars, and I saw the pitiful hovels and the drink-sodden, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... genial warmth of human nature, who could help it? It was an amiable weakness! At this time the profanation of the word "love" rose to its height; the muse of science condescended to seek admission at the saloons of fashion and frivolity, rouged like a harlot and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the annals of guilt could be better forced into the service of virtue than by such a comment on the present paragraph as would be afforded by sentimental correspondence produced in courts of justice, fairly translated ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... hundred angry Italians who were trying to mob a Chinese laundryman. The evening papers said that I had stopped a runaway coach-and-four on Fifth Avenue, that morning, by lassoing the leader. On the coach were Mrs. Aster, Mrs. Fitch, Reggie Vanderbuilt, George Goold, Harry Leer and a passel of other "Among those presents." That night I went to a music-hall—according to the next morning's papers—and broke up the show by throwing a pocketful of solitaires to the chorus girls. The next day ...
— Colonel Crockett's Co-operative Christmas • Rupert Hughes
... to leer at me, because his voice was absolutely dying in his throat. My indignation was boundless. I cried out with the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... neighbouring small Squire, who lived in the doubtful capacity of parlour-boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen. The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the cowardly villain to defend himself, and in another minute knocked the bewildered ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... well-cared-for faces were lean in the wrong place, and puffy under the eyes. In place of courage they flaunted an insolent leer, and the smile intended to convey self-confidence betrayed to a close observer anxiety ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... Bard, enfranchised from his earthly fate, Now soars, from this probationary state To join the seraphs of sublimer tone, Whose harps are vocal round the Almighty throne: On earth his laurels no destruction fear From cold neglect, or envy's blighting leer. Verse, in whose influence the good rejoice, Is sure to echo from the human voice, While praise, as faithful as the mystic dove, Flows from the lips, of gratitude and love. Cowper still lives, to truth's clear optics given, Endear'd to earth, and recompens'd by heaven! ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... back, had lured us into Bezers' power. Since that moment we had not seen him. Now he had wiped off part of the debt, and we looked at him, uncertain whether to reproach him or no. He, however, was not one whit abashed, but returned our regards with a not unkindly leer. ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... are not yourself," he retorted. "What makes you look so pale and worried—and why do you and the old man start if the door cracks, as if the devil was after you? What is the meaning of that?" asked he with a drunken leer. "You had better look out," concluded he; "I'm watching you both, and will find out all your ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... die Welt ist leer, Und weiter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr. Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurueck, Ich habe genossen das irdische Glueck, Ich habe ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... She," he suggested with a leer. "Here is an address. Send a messenger boy whenever you like. Every one thinks I ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... not be informed of your whereabouts at present," said Boris, shortly. "Because," he continued, with a villainous leer, "I am only cruel to be kind. I want to have all the details of our marriage settled as soon as possible. A night of waiting will soften your dear brother's heart, and he will probably listen to reason ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... became aware that St. Auban stood opposite to me, hand on hip, surveying me with a malicious leer. As our eyes met—"So, master meddler," quoth he mockingly, "you crow less ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... short in the middle of the street, with a cunning leer on his face. The change of purpose supported his belief that ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... him. He soon grew so excited that he began to boast of his power, declaring he would come some day and take possession of Asgard, which he would destroy, together with the gods, save only Freya and Sif, upon whom he gazed with an admiring leer. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... on his heel, with military precision. Then he chuckled Dolores under the chin with a leer, to have his hand indignantly pushed aside. As the girl glared at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes, he stalked into the taproom, followed by ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... upon the callers, and many eccentricities, to use no harsher term, are the result. Towards the close of the day, everything is in confusion—the door-bell is never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences of their friends, and stagger into ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... now like the beak of a bird of prey over the face of the drowned man, upon whose eyelids she was placing penny-pieces, to keep them from opening; and her one eye was fixed on her work, its sightless companion showing white in its socket, with an ugly leer. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and gave a leer which, if possible, made her face more hideous than ever. Without thinking Harvey caught her by the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... and everything, especially the eider-down quilt, which rises in slow billows in front of my eyes and threatens to engulf me. When in a paroxysm of fury I suddenly cast it on the floor, it lies there still billowing, and seems to leer at me. There is something fat and sinister and German about that eiderdown. I never noticed it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... menzil, in comparison with the dreary tumble-down place I have just left. My first impression of the officer himself, however, is scarcely so favorable as my impression of the picture in which he is set—the picture as just described; a sinister leer characterizes the expression of his face, and what appears like a nod, with an altogether unnecessary amount of condescension in it, characterizes his greeting. Hopping down to the ground, lamp in hand, he examines the bicycle minutely, and then indirectly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... foul-spoken, foul-tongued, foul-mouthed; slanderous; calumnious, calumniatory[obs3]; sarcastic, sardonic; sarcastic, satirical, cynical. critical &c. 932. Phr. "damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer; and without sneering, teach the rest to sneer" [Pope]; another lie nailed to the counter; "cut men's throats with whisperings" [B. Jonson]; "foul whisperings are abroad" "soft-buzzing slander" [Macbeth][Thomson]; "virtue itself 'scapes not ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... PERCEPTIONS OF LIGHT % 441. Vision. - N. vision, sight, optics, eyesight. view, look, espial[obs3], glance, ken, coup d'oeil[Fr]; glimpse, glint, peep; gaze, stare, leer; perlustration[obs3], contemplation; conspection|, conspectuity|; regard, survey;introspection; reconnaissance, speculation, watch, espionage, espionnage[Fr], autopsy; ocular inspection, ocular demonstration; sight-seeing. point of view; gazebo, loophole, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Slop, That imp of power, is powerless! Ever he dares, And, daring, lands his public neck and crop. Even the many-tortured London ear, The much-enduring, loathes his Speeshul yell, His shriek of Winnur! But his dart and leer And poise are irresistible. PALL MALL Joys in him, and MILE END; for his vocation Is to ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... happy jewelled alien men Worked then but as a little leaven; From some more modest palace then The Soul of Dives stank to Heaven. But when they planned with lisp and leer Their careful war upon the weak, They smote your body on its bier, For surety that you could ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... privilege your beauty bears: Fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing The close enacts and counsels of thy heart! Here's a young lad fram'd of another leer: Look how the black slave smiles upon the father, As who should say 'Old lad, I am thine own.' He is your brother, lords; sensibly fed Of that self-blood that first gave life to you; And from your womb where ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... more clearly, and the large, hazy outlines of Tode's features were beginning to assume the proper proportions. There was a diabolical leer upon Tode's face, unchanged during the five years since Jim had seen him last, except that it had become more evil, more powerful. The enormous and distorted face that Jim had seen had been simply due to the presence of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... he bowed; and gave the company to understand he took this as a polite acknowledgment of respect. But his gesture was accompanied with a disconcerted leer of smothered malice, which I could not misinterpret. It was sardonic; and, to me, who knew what was passing in his ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... begins at once, and will be perfected. The bloated look of self-indulgence passes away like the leprosy of Naaman, the cheek grows pure, the lips return to the smile of hope instead of the grin of greed, and the eyes that made innocence shrink and shudder with their yellow leer grow childlike and sweet and faithful. The mammon-eyes, hitherto fixed on the earth, are lifted to meet their kind; the lips that mumbled over figures and sums of gold learn to say words of grace and tenderness. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Hypocrisy, with holy leer; Soft smiling, and demurely looking down, But hid the dagger underneath the gown: The assassinating wife, the household fiend, And far the blackest ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... muttered Carrie, drawing nearer to Durward, while with a sarcastic leer the captain continued: "Don't refuse before you are asked, Miss Livingstone. I do not aspire to the honor of your hand, but I do ask Miss Rivers to be my wife—here before you all. She shall live like a princess—she and her grandmother both. Come, what do ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... the hand and then at Mr Cripps's face. There was the same ugly leer about the latter, into which a spark of anger was infused as the boy still held back ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... inward, as if to watch the growth of the carbuncle. We are warned against bad judgments; but the Admiral was certainly not sober. He made no attempt to rise when Richard entered, but waved his pipe flightily in the air, and gave a leer of welcome. Esther took as little notice of him as ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he is!" cried one of the sailors, with a leer at the half-drowned man's face. "I'd like to see the lass we'd please in saving him. He's only fit ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... judge's heart,—it is corrupt judges I am speaking of, Gentlemen of the Jury, not of upright and noble men, may it please your Honors! There is great joy in the judge's heart, and great rejoicing amongst his kinsfolk and intimate friends who whinney and neigh over it in the public journals, and leer at the indicted man in the street, lolling out their tongues greedy for his [Transcriber's Note: ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... the same anaconda-like style of progression, until the individual stood revealed. He was a stoutly-built sea-faring man, dressed in a pea jacket and blue trousers and holding his tarpaulin hat in his hand. With a rough scrape and a most unpleasant leer he advanced towards the merchant, a tattoed and hairy hand outstretched in ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to whom the prelate would fain show how little he was to be despised, how far more honored and powerful he was among men. As for Gigadibs, it is to be noticed that Browning quietly makes him do more than leer enviously at his complacent competitor from a tomb-top. The "sudden healthy vehemence" that struck him and made him start to test his first plough in a new world, and read his last chapter of St. John to better purpose than towards self-glorification beyond his fellows, is a parable ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... Dr. Alphonse Mingana for this information. But the philological question is discussed in a learned memoir by the late Professor P. J. Veth, "De Leer der Signatuur," Internationales Archiv fuer Ethnographie, Leiden, Bd. VII, 1894, pp. 75 and 105, and especially the appendix, p. 199 et seq., "De Mandragora, Naschrift op het tweede Hoofdstuk der Verhandeling ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... to succeed in the Navy, sir," Cantor continued, then, seeing the young ensign's face still impassive, he added, with a malicious leer: ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... left of the window, clutching it with her hand; for the dreadful thing had happened-Caracalla's eye had met hers and had even rested on her for a while! And that gaze had nothing bloodthirsty in it, nor the vile leer which had sparkled in the eyes of the drunken rioters she had met last night in the streets; he only looked astonished as at some wonderful thing which he had not expected to see in this place. But presently a fresh attack of pain apparently ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... John, "Came in and look'd askew; "'Twas my red face that set them on, "And then they leer'd at Sue. ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... kept watch for the police. Presently the bricklayer came out, alone. He stood on the footpath, slightly fuddled, his giddiness increased by the fresh air. Immediately Chook lurched forward to meet him, with a drunken leer. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... words a foyn[128] On height; Over your heads my hand I lift, Out go your eyes, fore to do your sight, But yet I must make better shift, And it be right. What, Lord? they sleep hard! that may ye all hear; Was I never a shepherd, but now will I leer[129] If the flock be scared, yet shall I nap near, Who draws hitherward, now mends our cheer, From sorrow: A fat sheep I dare say, A good fleece dare I lay, Eft white when I may, But this ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... upon their cheeks. But Oh! it was so sad to see how soon the manly gait would change to the drunkard's stagger. To see eyes once bright with intelligence growing vacant and confused and giving place to the drunkard's leer. In many cases lassitude supplanted vigor, and sickness overmastered health. But the saddest thing was the fearful power that appetite had gained over its victims, and though nature lifted her signals of distress, and sent her warnings through weakened nerves ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... O'Gorman, with the leer of a satyr, "we'd take moighty good care you didn't do that. If Misther Conyers won't be obligin', why, we'll have to spare him, I s'pose; but we couldn't do widout you, my ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... leer, half cunning half insolent, "if I have hid my rifle near the Sandusky swamp, the last time I ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... label that swung Conspicuous, with letters in some foreign tongue, Which, when freely translated, the same did appear Was the Chinese for saying, "A White Man is here!" And as we drew near, In anger and fear, Bound hand and foot, Johnson Looked down with a leer! ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... divine; but one always wakes with surprise to find that it is all a dream. A few hours before Svidrigailov commits suicide he has an extraordinary dream of the cold, wet, friendless little girl, whom he places tenderly in a warm bed, and whose childish eyes suddenly give him the leer of a French harlot. Both he and the reader are amazed to find that this is only a dream, so terribly real has it seemed. Then Raskolnikov's awful dream, so minutely circumstanced, of the cruel peasants maltreating a horse, their drunken laughter and vicious conversation, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... the sacred rite was done, and the marriage-knot was tied, And Colt withdrew his blushing wife a little way aside; "Let's go," he said, "into my cell; let's go alone, my dear; I fain would shelter that sweet face from the sheriff's odious leer. The jailer and the hangman, they are waiting both for me,— I cannot bear to see them wink so knowingly at thee! Oh, how I loved thee, dearest! They say that I am wild, That a mother dares not trust me with the weasand of her child; They say my bowie-knife is keen to sliver into halves ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... which shifted a little, noiselessly, just beyond the patch of light that streamed through the door. They waited, heavy-breathed, while Harrigan began to recover from the disconcertment into which O'Mara's coming had flung him. Slowly the former's lips twisted into a mocking leer; mockery rose and swam with the hatred in his inflamed eyes. He would have spoken, sparring for time, when Steve's hand leapt in and made of the joking effort only a rattle in his throat. Beneath the stiff red stubble the flesh was livid where those fingers had been, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: the Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. "Ah, master," says the gipsy, "that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing—" The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... hangs a quaint, strong head, Though merely sketched. What a marked, cunning leer Grins on the wide mouth! what a ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... little piece of information, and with his leer an inch from my chin, I answered slowly and calmly that it certainly was. I might add that he spoke Spanish by preference (according to Mexique very bad Spanish); for The Fighting Sheeney had made his home for a number of years in Rio, and his opinion thereof may be loosely translated by ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... ancient Sardes, there is undoubted proof. We find among the prodigious quantity of such relics, collected from all parts of the island, in the Royal Museum at Cagliari, a statuette of this idol, supposed to have been a household god. Its features are appalling: great goggle eyes leer fiercely from their hollow sockets; the broad nostrils seem ready to sniff the fumes of the horrid sacrifice; a wide gaping mouth grins with rabid fury at the supposed victim; dark plumes spring from the forehead, like horns, and expanded wings from each shoulder and knee. The image brandishes ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... occupations are equally unhealthy." As he said this he watched the young man with the inscrutable smile that at moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest had once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but now he detected in it the suavity of the hypocrite and the leer of the criminal. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... pluck has saved your life; but remember, I've not said I won't shoot him or your father, if chance throws them in my way," he added, looking back over his shoulder with a malicious leer, as he left the arbor, then disappearing from sight among ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... stumbles over a stony path after Death, who is his deceitful leader, and who turns back with a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering;—and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, to join ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Botticelli. Now, Botticelli builded on Giorgione, while Burne-Jones builded on Botticelli. Aubrey Beardsley, dead at the age at which Keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where Burne-Jones placed faith and abiding trust. Aubrey Beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in Botticelli's "Spring," I need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... After two hours' dodging and maneuvering the fox came out at the very end of Bellman's Coppice, with nothing near him but Richard Bassett. Pug gave him the white of his eye in an ugly leer, and headed straight as ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... year, until some life-interest should fall in, was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth. It was a good speculation—a very safe one. The old man stowed his pocket-book carefully in the breast of his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of triumph. That will had made him ten years younger ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... she lounge the gag to shule a win; The knowing bench had tipp'd her buzer queer, [8] For Dick had beat the hoof upon the pad, Of Field, or Chick-lane—was the boldest lad That ever mill'd the cly, or roll'd the leer. [9] And with Nell he kept a lock, to fence, and tuz, And while his flaming mot was on the lay, With rolling kiddies, Dick would dive and buz, And cracking kens concluded ev'ry day; [10] But fortune fickle, ever on the wheel, Turn'd up a rubber, for ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... for decorative purposes, the prints of Japan, the landscapes of the modern impressionists, the rugs of the East, or the blankets of the Arizona desert. Free me, then, from the reproach implied in that covert leer at my Early Sienese." Yes, we must, I think, exclude from the ranks of the true zealots all who in any plausible fashion utilise the objects of art they buy. Excess, the craving to possess what he apparently does not need, is the mark of your true collector. Now ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... church was gradually deserted—the appearance of the pastor was no longer a signal for every hat to be lifted from the head; on the contrary, boys of sixteen or seventeen years of age would lean against the church, or the walls of the churchyard, with their hands in both pockets, and a sort of leer upon their faces, as though they defied the pastor on his appearance—and there would they remain outside during the service, meeting, unquailed and without blushing, his eyes, cast upon them as he came out again. Such was the state of things in the ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... old bookseller. "You're as good as they are." He leaned forward from the easy chair, and tapped the clerk's arm with a long, claw-like finger. "I say," he continued, with a smile that was something between a wink and a leer, and suggestive of a pleased satisfaction. "I've had ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... Building, the structures at the Fair were designed to be temporary, and they were superfluous when the occasion which called them into being had passed. The question of disposing of them was summarily solved. One day some boys playing near the Terminal Station saw a sinister leer of flame inside. A high wind soon blew a conflagration, which enveloped the structures, leaving next day naught but ashes, tortured iron work, and here and there an arch, to tell of the regal ...
— Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition • C. D. Arnold
... he chuckled with a drunken leer, "if you're not as crazy over the beggarly scribbler as my young gallant is over the Fenton girl who lives in the Old Bailey—at a coffee house, forsooth! Why, to see the pother you're in one would think the ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce |
