"Ridicule" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and distress must come to this task. The stern, uncompromising militarist will not be moved from his determinations by our horror and hostility. These things will but "brace" him. He has a more vulnerable side. The ultimate lethal weapon for every form of stupidity is ridicule, and against the high silliness of the militarist it is particularly effective. It is the laughter of wholesome men that will finally end war. The stern, strong, silent man will cease to trouble us only when we have stripped him of his last rag of pretension ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... wives and daughters in America, the most intelligent and upright and pure- minded women in the land, loaded down with their hopes, wet with their tears—if they turned their hearts', prayers and deepest desires into ridicule, throwed 'em round under their feet, they wouldn't pay no attention to Dorlesky's errents, they wouldn't notice one little vegitable widow, humbly at that, and sort o' disagreeable." And says I, "I don't want Dorlesky's errents throwed round under foot, and she made fun of: she has went through ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... business-college training is of very little account in enabling one to fight the battle of life, and that college-bred men have a great advantage even in fields where mere education is a secondary matter. We are accustomed to seeing ridicule thrown upon the questions sometimes asked of candidates for the civil service because the questions refer to subjects of which a knowledge is not essential. The reply to all criticisms of this kind is that ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... himself in The Duke of Buckingham's Letter to the unknown author of a short answer to the Duke of Buckingham's Paper (1685). In hopes of converting him to Roman Catholicism James sent him a priest, but Buckingham turned his arguments into ridicule. He died on the 16th of April 1687, from a chill caught while hunting, in the house of a tenant at Kirkby Moorside in Yorkshire, expressing great repentance and feeling himself "despised by my country and I fear forsaken by my God."[3] The miserable ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... beard promptly, for the man needed comfort, not ridicule: but the concession to his superstition did none of ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... beginning with silent h. Among young clergymen there is a growing habit (derived I suppose from Walker, or other such sources) of indulging in the Heapian dialect. I think Mr. Dickens will have done us more good by his ridicule, than will ever be effected by serious arguments; and I feel as much obliged to him as to E. H. To show how dangerous it is to be bound by a mere grammarian authority, a disciple of Vaugelas or Restaut (no insignificant names ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... the underlying principle of which is audacity. He knows very well that the weak spot in the armor of nearly all politicians of the old school is their assumption of superiority, a sort of mask of benignant political venerability. They dread satire. They shrink from ridicule. A well-directed critical outburst freezes them. Such has been the Harvey method of approach. Having reduced his subjects to a state of terror, he flatters them, cajoles them, and finally makes terms with them; but he always remains a more or less unstable and uncertain ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... and sound its shallows, and know it as the high-road I travel on. Yes," he continued, pacing the deck with animation, "I am no longer that commiserated mortal, whose musing gait marks him out for the mingled ridicule and, compassion of all observers; who burns with a passion for fame which renders him at once the most solitary and the most dependent of men. Me—I belong to the multitude—I am one of themselves. They ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... and promiscuous company, and demanded, in German French, to be taken to some private apartment. We heard that she and her maid had come in the coupe, and, probably from pride, poor young lady! she had avoided all association with her fellow-passengers, thereby exciting their dislike and ridicule. All these little pieces of hearsay had a significance to us afterwards, though, at the time, the only remark made that bore upon the future was Amante's whisper to me that the young lady's hair was exactly the colour of mine, which she had cut off and burnt in the stove ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... services were attached were exceptionally healthy, as Royal families go; and he was seldom in more than merely formal attendance, so that he had ample time and opportunity to pursue those deeper forms of physiological study which had excited the wrath and ridicule of his contemporaries, as well as to continue the writing of a book which he intended should make a stir in the world, and which he had entitled "The Moral ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... positive, superior, laconic to the last, attributed its silence to a "loose screw!" But, for us, the screw was never tightened; Kimberley had indeed heard the last of Long Tom. Our scepticism, however, remained robust, and would not permit us to treat with aught but ridicule the vaunted wonders with which the ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... women ready to assist; and, if I proceeded not, as ready to ridicule me; what had I left me, but to pursue the concerted scheme, and to seek a pretence to quarrel with her, in order to revoke my promised permission, and to convince her that I would not be upbraided as the most ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... false concept of freedom responsible for the failure of his very acute inquiry. All previous writers on the passions have either derided, or bewailed, or condemned them, instead of investigating their nature. Spinoza will neither denounce nor ridicule human actions and appetites, but endeavor to comprehend them on the basis of natural laws, and to consider them as though the question concerned lines, surfaces, and bodies. He aims not to look on hate, anger, and the rest ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... few yards, Pomerantseff warned him that they were about to ascend a staircase, and up many shallow steps they went, the Abbe regretting every instant more and more that he had allowed his vulgar curiosity to lead him into an adventure which could be productive of nothing but ridicule and shattered nerves. When at length they had reached the top of the stairs, the Prince guided him by the arm through what the Abbe imagined to be a hall, opened a door, closed and locked it after them, walked on again, opened another door, which he closed and locked likewise, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... will reasonably be asked,—May not the head-master of Rugby write a weak and foolish Essay on a subject which he evidently does not understand, without incurring so much not only of public ridicule, but of public obloquy also? If his own sixth-form boys do not laugh at him, need the Church feel aggrieved at what he has written? Where is the special irreligion in ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... views are so evidently correct that they will inevitably prevail unless their supporters can be driven away. This is an ingenious policy, for guns certainly cannot be served if the gunners are dispersed. Men shrink from ridicule and ludicrous publicity. However conscious of rectitude a man may be, it is exceedingly disagreeable for him to see the dead-walls and pavements covered with posters proclaiming that he is a liar and a fool. If ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... her attention, he always got out of her sight as quickly as possible, lest his ill-fitting, shabby garments and miserable old pony should excite a laugh at his expense; for he was very sensitive, this poor young nobleman, and could not have borne the least approach to ridicule from the fair object of his secret and passionate admiration. He had tried his utmost to stifle the ardent emotions that filled his heart whenever his thoughts strayed to the beautiful Yolande, realizing how far above his reach she was, and he believed ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... have a joy in which they do not share,—they will unite with your foes to drag you down from your height of Paradise. The powers of the coarse and commonplace will be arrayed against you—shafts of disdain and ridicule will be hurled at your tenderest feelings,—venomous lies and cruel calumnies will be circulated around you,—all to try and draw you from the circle of light into darkness and chaos. If you would stand firm, you must stand within the whirlwind; if you would maintain the centre-poise of your Soul, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... mistake. He knew who it was. His mates did not see the smile of irony, of sly ridicule, which stirred his lips as he bowed to the passer. Immediately his rather handsome effeminate face ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... there was but one person with whom Jacob felt completely at ease—but one who never joined in the general habit of making his name the butt of ridicule or contempt. This was Mrs. Ann Pardon, the hearty, active wife of Farmer Robert Pardon, who lived nearly a mile farther down the brook. Jacob had won her good-will by some neighborly services, something so trifling, indeed, that the thought of a favor conferred ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... about the beginning of your career. He said that if only the spirit of your first days could come back—" Her tone grew quicker, as though she feared ridicule in Loder's silence. "He asked me to use my influence. I know that I have little—none, perhaps—but I couldn't tell him that, and so—so ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... would have had little chance of success; but young Forbes had already raised another issue by his anti-sign speech at the school-house, and Hopkins intended to force that issue and so defeat Kenneth because of the ridicule the latter's position had already brought ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... he kept the chutes open and filled his interested auditor with all the latest brands of misrepresentation and ridicule. He explained why it was that the farmers' effort was nothing but a joke and how foolish it would be for any farmer to send business to it. He was a good salesman, this traveller, and he was sure he had "sold" this rather intelligent hayseed when he got to the end of his talk and his station ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... between Honor and Flossie occasionally rose to the level of a miniature war. The latter never lost any opportunity of flinging ridicule and contempt on all things Irish, and Honor, who resented a slur on her native land more than a personal injury, could not keep her hot temper within bounds. It was, of course, very foolish to take any notice of Flossie's taunts, and ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... distance like a fifteen-year-old pine preserve. I am sitting here at your desk, a crackling fire behind me, and Odin, rolled into a knot, by my side. * * * Mamsell received me in pink, with a black dancing-jacket; the children in the village ridicule her swaggering about her noble and rich relations. She has cooked well again today, but, as to the feeding of the cattle, Bellin laments bitterly that she understands nothing about it, and pays no attention ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Percy Roden's lights were not brilliant, and his love was not a very high form of that little-known passion. It lacked, for instance, unselfishness, and love that lacks unselfishness is, at its best, a sorry business. He was afraid of ridicule. His vanity would not allow him to risk a rebuff. His was that faintness of heart which is all too common, and owes its ignoble existence to a sullen vanity. He wanted to be sure that Mrs. Vansittart ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... pack. "Big bear, but cold trail. Called them off," was all he said. We mounted and rode across the mouth of Horton Thicket round to the juniper slopes, which I had occasion to remember. I even saw the pine tree which I had so ignominiously climbed. How we ridicule and scorn some of our perfectly natural actions—afterwards! Edd had brought three of the pups that day, two-year-olds as full of mischief as pups could be. They jumped a bunch of deer and chased them out on the hard red cedar covered ridges. We had a merry chase ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... priests and the prophets he had almost expiated with his blood the blasphemies he had uttered against the popular belief; but he did not suffer himself to be driven from his course. Even when the times had grown quiet again, he persisted, at the risk of his life and under universal reproach and ridicule, in his work as a prophet of evil. Moments of despair sometimes came to him; but that he had correctly estimated the true value of the great conversion of the nation was speedily proved by the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... man with a desire for the latter, no taste for the second, and some partiality for the first, and he cannot do better than ride in the manner I am describing. He may be sure that he will not find himself alone; and he may be sure also that he will incur none of that ridicule which the non-hunting man is disposed to think must be attached to such a pursuit. But the man who hunts and never jumps, who deliberately makes up his mind that he will amuse himself after that fashion, must always ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... to the object of your devotion should not make you rude or uncivil to other women. Every woman is her sister, and should be treated with becoming respect and attention. Your special attentions to her in society should not be such as to make her or you the subject of ridicule. Make no public exhibition ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... under some disadvantages. They had been charged with fanaticism. But what had Mr. Long said, when he addressed himself to those planters, who were desirous of attempting improvements on their estates? He advised them "not to be diverted by partial views, vulgar prejudices, or the ridicule which might spring from weak minds, from a benevolent attention to the public good." But neither by these nor by other charges were he or his friends to be diverted from the prosecution of their purpose. They were convinced of the rectitude and high importance of their object; and ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... gave to the less careful of the Dozen was his fondness for carrying a cane, a practice which the rest of the boys, being boys, did not affect. But Pretty was not to be dissuaded from this, nor from any of his other foibles, by ridicule, and the others finally gave him ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... cast aside comfort and happiness, health and good repute—and go out into the world and cry out the pain of my spirit! Therefore I am not to be silenced by poverty and sickness, not by hatred and obloquy, by threats and ridicule—not by prison and persecution, if they should come—not by any power that is upon the earth or above the earth, that was, or is, or ever can be created. If I fail tonight, I can only try tomorrow; knowing that the fault must be mine—that if ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... among all other workmen; and as even fine clothes are not enough of themselves, it is necessary that he should also have fine manners; and not having such advantages of seeing polite society as his neighbour the barber, his gentlemanly manners are always less fine than grotesque. Hence more ridicule of tailors among working men than of any other class of mechanics. And such—if nature has sent them from her hand ordinary men, for the extraordinary rise above all the modifying influences of profession—are the processes through which tailors and hair-dressers put on then distinctive characters ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... is on the western side of the park, and adjoins Sussex Place, whose cupola tops were the signals for critical censure and ridicule among the first structures in this quarter. The artists have, however, profited by the lesson, and the architecture of the Regent's Park bids fair to rank among ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... to observe in the Clouds of Aristophanes that while the main object of the poet is to ridicule Socrates, and through him to expose what he considers the corrupt state of education in Athens, he does not disdain to mingle with his low buffoonery the loftiest flights of the imagination—reminding us of ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... merely nominal are sought and invented, not by governors, but by the lowest of the people, which are found sufficient to hold mankind together in little fraternities and copartnerships: weak ties indeed, and what may afford fund enough for ridicule, if they are absurdly considered as the real principles of that union: but they are in truth merely the occasions, as anything may be of anything, upon which our nature carries us on according to its own previous bent and bias; which occasions therefore would be nothing at all were there not ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... the first time in his life, was honored with a seat in the highest pulpit of the Church among the general authorities. And Russell was pursued by the ridicule of the Mormon community, the persecution of the Church that he had served, the contempt of the man who had wronged him, and the anger of the woman whom he had loved. One of the reporters of the Deseret News, the Church's newspaper, subsequently ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... of the dissolute manners of those times, that an audience, to whom matrimonial infidelity was nightly held out, not only as the most venial of trespasses, but as a matter of triumphant applause, were unable to brook any ridicule, upon the mere transitory connection formed betwixt the keeper and his mistress. Dryden had spared neither kind of union; and accordingly his opponents exclaimed, "That he lampooned the court, to oblige his friends in the city, and ridiculed the city, to secure a ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... himself that either of these results was more than possible. In that case, there remained only one resource; and it was of so terrible a nature that the curate positively shuddered at its contemplation. But it might even come to that; and better even that, he told himself, than the exposure, the ridicule, and the professional ruin that must ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... frequently makes us delighted to find even the most estimable characters in a ridiculous position. The above anecdote is perhaps exaggerated, but it is here recorded as a moral warning to those who yearn like Sancho Panza for a government, and not from a desire to cast ridicule upon one who was universally respected and esteemed, for the quiet decorum of his life, his high principles, his strict impartiality, and the conscientious discharge of all the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... to be correcting our faults and failings, instead of attending to your own. You are beholden to any lad in the school who will do your sums, and write your exercises for you, and then you take upon yourself to ridicule us if we cannot pronounce our well learnt lessons to your fancy! You saucy imp, who don't know what labour and good conduct are, and who have nothing to boast of, but the powers which a monkey possesses to ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... love to God and man, while at the same time perpetually inflicting severe wounds on the peace and happiness of those who are nearest and dearest to her. Worse than all, she is, by such conduct, wounding the Saviour "in the house of his friends,"[25] bringing disgrace and ridicule upon the Holy Name by which she ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... was distraction. She plucked out handfuls of her pale gold hair, the pretty blonde hair which had been almost as famous in Paris as Beaufort's or Madame de Longueville's yellow locks. The thought of De Malfort's ridicule cut her like a whalebone whip. She had fancied herself his Beatrice, his Laura, his Stella—a being to be worshipped as reverently as the stars, to make her lover happy with smiles and kindly words, to stand ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... easy for me to see that in all, the ridicule expended on the subject of this woman, on my unreasonable passion for her, was premeditated. To say that she deserved severest censure, that she had perhaps committed worse sins than those with which she was charged, that was to make me feel that I had been ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... soon be dry and warm," Dick called backward over his shoulder. The four who had been badly wet ran heavily now, yet afraid of ridicule if they fell out. They were having their first taste of High School sports, which made no ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... a priori, are we to ridicule and condemn it? I know of none. We admit Vitruvius, Inigo Jones, Gibbs, and Chambers, into our libraries: and why not Mr. Hope's book? Is decoration to be confined only to the exterior? and, if so, are works, which ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... phenomenon which is the cause of a great deal of trouble, and the result of a very ill-tended machine. It is a phenomenon impossible to ignore, and yet, so shameful is it, so degrading, so shocking, so miserable, that I hesitate to mention it. For one class of reader is certain to ridicule me, loftily saying: 'One really doesn't expect to find this sort of thing in print nowadays!' And another class of reader is certain to get angry. Nevertheless, as one of my main objects in the present book is to discuss matters which 'people ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... as he sat there, engaged in seven plots in Cromwell's time; and, as he proudly added, with some of the tallest men of England. The matchless look and air with which Sir Geoffrey made this vaunt, set all a-laughing, and increased the ridicule with which the whole trial began to be received; so that it was amidst shaking sides and watery eyes that a general verdict of Not Guilty was pronounced, and the prisoners dismissed from ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... little and mean, whereas Cecilia was ready to accept her sister-in-law as great and noble. Miss Altifiorla was not therefore spoken of in the highest terms, and the mode of her coming to Durton Lodge without an invitation was subjected to some little ridicule. ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... plainte est ridicule et lache. Comme l'enfant de Sparte ayant sous ses habits Un renard furieux qui le mord sans relache, Ne laisse plus rien ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... spirit which prompted you to call this subject to the light of investigation will not forsake you when you have heard all I have to say and you sit in judgment thereon. Sufficient time has now elapsed since the first promulgation of the subject for the shafts of ridicule to be well nigh spent (which is the common logic used to crush out all new ideas), and it is to be expected that gentlemen will look upon it with all the charity of a learned body, and not be too hasty to condemn ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... cross-examination! But he reckoned "without his host." He did not know Cap! He, too, "caught a Tartar." And before the cross-examination was concluded, Capitola's apt and cutting replies had overwhelmed him with ridicule and confusion, and done more for the cause of her friend than all ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... jokes and ridicule are quite usual occurrences. I expect he is still here. But we may ask. Leond Fydoritch, ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... he think that it is absolutely necessary that the firm friend of Austrian despotism should be the malignant assailant of the Government and people of the United States? The man is consistent in nothing but his spiteful vindictiveness and love of mischief. He is now the general object of deserved ridicule and contempt for his flunkyistic attendance at the Tuileries. At the time of Louis Napoleon's visit to London, Roebuck raved and ranted about his "perjured lips having kissed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... impressiveness of his oratory. The presence of this extraordinary stranger could not remain long unknown to the Athenian literati; but, when they entered into conversation with him, some of them were disposed to ridicule him as an idle talker, whilst others seemed inclined to denounce him as a dangerous innovator. "Certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him; and some said—What will this babbler say? other some—He ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... bedsteads were soon uncorded and carried off, as were the beds and bedding. There was scarcely any crockery, pewter and tin being its substitutes; and as for chairs there was only one, and that had rockers: a practice of New England that has gradually diffused itself over the whole country, looking down ridicule, the drilling of boarding-schools, the comments of elderly ladies of the old school, the sneers of nurses, and, in a word, all that venerable ideas of decorum could suggest, until this appliance of domestic ease has not only fairly planted itself in nearly every American dwelling, but in a ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... bench with the humble people, over the entrance way of the kashim or assembly house. The other people thought he was foolish, and he was despised and ill-treated by everyone. After the shamans had tried very hard to bring back the sun and moon and had failed, the boy began to ridicule them. ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... advanced his countrymen from the nice weighing of words by the Precieuses and the grammarians, and by the French Academy, child of the intercourse between those ladies and gentlemen. He brought ridicule on the inane politeness of a style then in its decrepitude, and bade the writers of his time find models in the Latin writers who, like Virgil and Horace, had brought natural thought and speech to their perfection. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Dante was a prophet of the next. [Sidenote: Boccaccio, 1313-1375] Too simple-minded deliberately to criticize doctrine, he was instinctively opposed to ecclesiastical professions. Devoting himself to celebrating the pleasures and the pomp of life, he took especial delight in heaping ridicule on ecclesiastics, representing them as the quintessence of all impurity and hypocrisy. The first story in his famous Decameron is of a scoundrel who comes to be reputed as a saint, invoked as such and performing miracles {48} after death. The second story is of a Jew who was converted to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Walpole, who was present. "The moment was so well timed, the importance of the man and his services, the languor of his emaciated countenance, and the study bestowed on his dress were circumstances that struck solemnity into a patriot mind, and did a little furnish ridicule to the hardened and insensible. He was dressed in black velvet, his legs and thighs wrapped in flannel, his feet covered with buskins of black cloth, and his hands with thick gloves." Not for the first time, he was utilizing ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... fun. A guide is a trifle handicapped in handling such people, in that his civilized inhibitions restrain him from pushing them off the cliffs or entombing them in a crevasse. I was too small to do them physical violence anyway, so I had to resort to more subtle weapons, the most effective being ridicule. If a joke could be turned on the disturber he generally subsided. The rest of the crowd were profuse in their expressions of gratitude to me ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... miserable about it," was Susan's smiling rejoinder; "and if the girls in your day couldn't be happy without admiration, they must have been silly creatures. I've a life of my own to live, and I'm not going to let my happiness depend on how many times a man looks at me." In the clear light of her ridicule, the spectre of spinsterhood, which was still an object of dread in the Dinwiddie of the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... that the bible is a book written by ignorance—by the instigation of fear! Think of the man who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no parson too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn, and the contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... contempt on an aged woman who has been walking for years in a fiery furnace upheld and comforted by God? Is it sport to ridicule an unfortunate boy who has a continual warfare with pain to ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... been blamed because he used the weapon of ridicule. Hypocrisy has always hated laughter, and always will. Absurdity detests humor and stupidity despises wit. Voltaire was the master of ridicule. He ridiculed the absurd, the impossible. He ridiculed the mythologies and the miracles, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... from that hour. It was perhaps a pity. Had he but talked - talked freely - let himself gush out in words (the way youth loves to do and should), there might have been no tale to write upon the Weirs of Hermiston. But the shadow of a threat of ridicule sufficed; in the slight tartness of these words he read a prohibition; and it is likely that Glenalmond meant ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drunkenness and vice and crime, of physical and mental and moral decay. He knew, and none could dispute him! Therefore he must nerve himself for the struggle; he must deliver that message, and pound home that truth. He must keep on and on—in defiance of authority, in the face of all the obloquy and ridicule that the prostitute powers of civilization could heap upon him. He must live for that work, and die for it—to make real to the thinking world the infamies and the horrors ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... could at least turn his talents to account with little delay, and that was the most pressing consideration. By one schoolmaster he was rejected on the ground that his infirmities would excite the ridicule of the boys. Under another he passed some months of "complicated misery," and could never think of the school without horror and aversion. Finding this situation intolerable, he settled in Birmingham, in 1733, to be near an old ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... I'm prepared for all that—ridicule, abuse. "Chilvers's Bill for the Better Regulation of Mrs. Chilvers," they'll call it. I can hear their laughter. Yours ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... of their fellow-creatures into circumstances by which they are not only deprived of property, but almost of every species of right. Fortune, perhaps, never produced a situation more calculated to ridicule a liberal hypothesis, or to show how little the conduct of men is at the bottom directed by any philosophical principles." It is a great honour to the University of Glasgow, that it should have produced, before any public agitation of this question, three professors[A], ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... hurried intelligence, of her being actually what he had named her in moments of playful vision—slippery, a serpent, a winding hare; with the fear that she might slip from him, betray, deny him, deliver him to ridicule, after he had won his way to her over every barrier. During his proudest exaltations in success, when his eyes were sparkling, there was a wry twitch inward upon his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the face back of them is that of a friend to me now. We'll shake again. Good-by;" and I went home feeling as if I had solid ground under my feet. At supper I went over the whole scene, taking off the man in humorous pantomime, not ridicule, and even my wife grew hilarious over her disappointed hopes of the "new-fangled truck." I managed, however, that the children should not lose the lesson that a rough diamond is better than a smooth paste stone, and that people often do themselves ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... this point the President's description of Louisiana became less confident, as reliable sources of information failed him. His credulity, however, led him to make one amazing statement, which provoked the ridicule of his political opponents, always ready to pounce upon the slips of this philosopher-president. "One extraordinary fact relative to salt must not be omitted," he wrote in all seriousness. "There exists, ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... Meyerbeer. Scribe, it is said, wished to introduce a bevy of sea-nymphs, carrying golden oars, as the tempters of Robert; but the composer would not have them, and insisted upon the famous scene of the nuns, as it now stands, though these were afterwards made the butt of almost endless ridicule. Mendelssohn himself, who was in Paris at this time, writes: "I cannot imagine how any music could be composed on such a cold, formal extravaganza as this." The story runs as follows: The scene is laid ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... character, which if left to his natural destiny would have either worn out his life early in the world, or carried him to the obscure shelter of a convent. In the novelty of the secular life, and temptations of all kinds, dread of ridicule, and the flood of excitements which came with reviving health, that very sensitiveness led him astray; and the elevated aims fell with a heavier fall when diverted from heavenly palaces to earthly ones. Self-reproach ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as they slew their oppressors.) He hoped through the pieces played at the theatres and through his censored, subsidized press to bring the Belgians round to a reasonable frame of mind, to a toleration of existence under the German Empire. But his efforts brought down on him the unsparing ridicule of the Parisian-minded Bruxellois. They were prompt to detect his attempts to modify the text of French operettas so that these, while delighting the lovers of light music, need not at the same time excite a military spirit or convey the least allusion of an impertinent or ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... from Carpenter's Hall, after slavery-loving planters of the South and money-loving ship-owners of the North had, as they thought, made it neutral, and we all, North and South, recognize in it the boldest anti-slavery document extant. Why else do Northern demagogues ridicule it, and Southern demagogues revile it? Yet Jefferson made it far stronger and sharper against negro slavery than it is now. Look closely at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... descended upon them, and crowns of martyrdom numerous and shining. He had even thought with a thrill that had he never met Della it would be glorious to join this lion-hearted band, whose symbol was the ever-upborne Cross! But there had avalanched down upon this temporary glow such a storm of ridicule against Transubstantiation, worship of the Blessed Virgin and of dead men's bones and cast-off garments, and the putrified corruptions of the Man of Sin generally, that the one generous, struggling spark was extinguished. Of the great ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... not desire to hold up to ridicule the rites of that religion in which I was born and bred. Neither would I disparage its ancient usages, nor its far more modern laws. All religions, as I know, have their peculiarities, all nations their contradictions, but I must be suffered to complain of the abuse sometimes made in our country ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Matilda eternally at work over her ridiculous task, surrounded with simple ladies equally blind to art and nature. It is only too easy to let humour play about the ill-drawn figures. They must be taken grandly serious, or ridicule will thrust tongue in cheek. It is to these French plays of 1804 that we owe the firmness of the tradition that Queen Matilda in 1066 worked ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... a good deal of fun, never having succeeded in making himself the standardized type who escapes the shafts of ridicule. It was kindly fun, which, while viewing him as a white swan in a flock of black ones, recognized him as a swan, and this was as much as he could expect. To pass in the crowd was all he asked for, even when he only passed ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... [De Nat. Deor. lib. i.], in opposition to the Epicureans, cannot justly claim any worship or adoration, with whatever imaginary perfections you may suppose them endowed. They are totally useless and inactive. Even the Egyptians, whom you so much ridicule, never consecrated any animal but on account of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... his week night lectures, Beecher was speaking about the building and equipping of new churches. After a few satirical touches about church architects and their work, he went on to ridicule the usual style of pulpit—the "sacred mahogany tub"—"plastered up against some pillar like a barn-swallow's nest." Then he passed on to the erection of the organ, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... victim, I solicited very hard for her life; but the murderers made no reply till they had stuck both their spears through her body, and transfixed her to the ground. They then looked me sternly in the face, and began to ridicule me by asking if I wanted an Eskimo wife; and paid not the smallest regard to the shrieks and agony of the poor wretch, who was twining round their spears like ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... moment. Yet, singular as it may seem, neither conflicted with the other. My enjoyment of the visions was complete and absolute, undisturbed by the faintest doubt of their reality, while, in some other chamber of my brain, Reason sat coolly watching them, and heaping the liveliest ridicule on their fantastic features. One set of nerves was thrilled with the bliss of the gods, while another was convulsed with unquenchable laughter at that very bliss. My highest ecstacies could not bear down and silence the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... clearly what the new day would bring. I should have to face Cassion, and in what spirit could I meet him best? Thus far I had been fortunate in escaping his denunciation, but I realized the reason which had compelled his silence—pride, the fear of ridicule, had sealed his lips. I was legally his wife, given to him by Holy Church, yet for weeks, months, during all our long wilderness journey, I had held aloof from him, mocking his efforts, and making light of his endeavors. It had been maddening, ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... that it was not to be addressed to Carp: it was a poisonous regret to Mr. Casaubon that he had once addressed a dedication to Carp in which he had numbered that member of the animal kingdom among the viros nullo aevo perituros, a mistake which would infallibly lay the dedicator open to ridicule in the next age, and might even be chuckled over by Pike and Tench ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... accorded to "The Descent of Man" was more excited than that of "The Origin of Species." The first large edition was quickly exhausted, and discussion or ridicule of the book was the fashionable recreation. Mr. Punch, week after week, reflected passing opinion. One of his Darwinian ballads on our ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Benedict, who early in his career shall have carried his friends with considerable self-applause through half a dozen nurseries, and at the end of twelve years shall still be the father of one rickety baby, will incur a certain amount of ridicule. It is very well to be prepared for good fortune, but one should limit one's preparation within a reasonable scope. Two miles by one might, perhaps, have done for the skeleton sketch of a new city. Less ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... The Kings Cabinet unlocked, wherein all the chaste and endearing expressions, in the letters that passed betwixt his Majesty King Charles I. and his Royal Consort are by these painful labourers in the Devil's vineyard turned into burlesque and ridicule. Their books were answered with as much calmness and genteelness of expression, and as much learning and honesty, b. the Rev. Mr. Symonds, then a deprived clergyman, as theirs was stuffed with ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... who write with no higher motive than to please the prevailing taste, must beware of touching upon topics which are likely to rouse the hostile feelings of self-importance, and to disgust would-be statesmen and intuitive divines. Ridicule will never disprove those opinions which were held by the wisest and most illustrious persons that England ever produced. Should I be so unfortunate as to provoke hostility where I look for co-operation; ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... will expose the most important or interesting letter to the severest sarcasm and ridicule. However perfect in all other respects, no epistle that is badly spelled will be regarded as the work of an educated gentleman or lady. Carelessness will never be considered, and to be ignorant of spelling is to expose ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... "Monsieur de Bragelonne," she said, "that which your friends have refused to do, I will do for you, whom I like and esteem very much. I will be your friend on this occasion. You hold your head high, as a man of honor should; and I deeply regret that you may have to bow before ridicule, and in a few days, it ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... simple, we are not to suppose that Harold, while rejecting the superstitions of one class, was so far beyond his time as to reject those of another. No son of fortune, no man placing himself and the world in antagonism, can ever escape from some belief in the Invisible. Caesar could ridicule and profane the mystic rites of Roman mythology, but he must still believe in his fortune, as in a god. And Harold, in his very studies, seeing the freest and boldest minds of antiquity subjected to influences akin to those of his Saxon forefathers, felt less shame in ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not seem to have occurred to anyone that the floor might be braced; instead, the pedestal was set up outside, facing the building, and the statue hoisted into place. It speedily became the butt of public ridicule. Once the fashion started, no one looked at ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... disposition to credit the founder of the Samedis with many of the affectations which brought such deserved ridicule upon their bourgeois imitators, and to trace in her the original of Moliere's "Madelon." But Cousin has relieved her of such reproach, and does ample justice to the truth and sincerity of her character, the purity of ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... government, political and administrative, be established, though by special request of General Primo de Rivera these conditions were not insisted on in the drawing up of the Treaty, the General contending that such concessions would subject the Spanish Government to severe criticism and even ridicule. ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy
... outward changes the real feeling between the races—the mutual dislike of Oriental and Occidental—had continued to grow. Of the nine or ten English papers published in the open ports, the majority expressed, day after day, one side of this dislike, in the language of ridicule or contempt; and a powerful native press retorted in kind, with dangerous effectiveness. If the "anti-Japanese" newspapers did not actually represent—as I believe they did—an absolute majority in sentiment, they represented at least the weight of foreign capital, and the preponderant influences ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... earnings, Mr. Ellsler asked me why I had not come the week before. I told him I preferred to wait because it would seem so much more if I got both weeks' salary all at one time. He nodded gravely, and said, 'It was rather a large sum to have in hand at one time,' and though I was very sensitive to ridicule, I did not suspect him of making fun of me. ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Creator and lord of all beings, it is thou that shouldst confer boons on me! If, O god, I give thee this coat of mail and ear-rings, then I am sure to meet with destruction, and thou shalt also undergo ridicule! Therefore, O Sakra, take my earrings and excellent mail in exchange for something conferred by thee on me! Otherwise, I will not bestow them on thee!' Thereupon Sakra replied, 'Even before I had come to thee, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American. Nothing, in these latter days, has so dampened the faith of thinking Negroes in recent educational movements, as the fact that such movements have been accompanied by ridicule and denouncement and decrying of those very institutions of higher training which made the Negro public school possible, and make Negro industrial schools thinkable. It was Fisk, Atlanta, Howard and Straight, those colleges born of ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... underestimation; depreciation &c. (detraction) 934; pessimism, pessimist; undervaluing &c. v.; modesty &c. 881. V. underrate, underestimate, undervalue, underreckon[obs3]; depreciate; disparage &c. (detract) 934; not do justice to; misprize, disprize; ridicule &c. 856; slight &c. (despise) 930; neglect &c. 460; slur over. make light of, make little of, make nothing of, make no account of; belittle; minimize, think nothing of; set no store by, set at naught; shake off as dewdrops from the lion's mane. Adj. depreciating, depreciated ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... relative state of cultivation in France and in England. My opinion being asked, I said, that though the climate of France was much superior to that of England, I believed that agriculture had arrived at a greater state of perfection with us than in France. Most of the Frenchmen treated the idea with ridicule; upon which I said, let us refer to Monsieur Las Cases, who has lived several years in England. "You are right," said he; "there can be no doubt, that agriculture has arrived to much greater perfection in England than in France; but what I admire most in England, are the country-seats ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... statesman than otherwise, although he was considered in the wrong on that one point, and the reflexions which he flung upon England would have passed away as unmerited, and soon sunk into oblivion, had not a portion of the English press so indulged in abuse and ridicule of the French at that period, who often remark that they were subdued by the allies combined, but that it is only the English press which is as it were triumphing over and insulting them, by pretending such a superiority in their troops and seamen as to place those of France in ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... made a great impression at home and abroad, in spite of the attacks and ridicule with which the Spaniards tried to discredit it. On that eventful day Bolvar saw his dream of a great nation, Colombia, take shape, even though it were in danger of ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... and his wife, to sell their daughter against her better sense, are about as far from virtue as the worst purposes of Sir John; though, to be sure, their sins are of a more respectable kind than to expose them to ridicule. But we are the more willing to forget their unhandsome practices therein, because of their good-natured efforts at last to make Falstaff forget his sad miscarriages, and to compose, in a well-crowned cup of social merriment, whatever vexations and disquietudes still remain.—Anne Page is but ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... to warn the managers and staff against the common tendency to ridicule bank customs and establishments. Some of our employes have gone so far as to criticize head office indiscriminately in the matter of salaries, etc. We think it only fair that instances of disaffection should be reported to us, so that we ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... style which was that of Montesquieu and Voltaire, and superseded the broad, sustained, balanced, harmonious, and measured style of the majority of the writers of the eighteenth century. In the field of ridicule, wherein he sowed copiously, more so even than Moliere, the comic poets of the eighteenth century came to glean copiously, which did them less credit (for it is better to observe than to read) than it conferred on the wise and ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... hearers, she had never been known to betray any correspondent feelings on her own; yet her features were finely formed, marked, and expressive; and, in spite of her ridiculous dress and eccentric manners, an air of dignity was diffused over her whole person, that screened her from the ridicule to which she must otherwise have been exposed. Amazement at the uncouth garb and singular address of Lady Maclaughlan was seldom unmixed with terror at the stern imperious manner that accompanied all her actions. Such were the feelings of Lady Juliana ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Salvation Yeo, for the very purpose of holding up to ridicule that time-honored melody, had put into it the true nasal twang, and rung it out as merrily as he had done perhaps twelve years before, when he got up John Oxenham's anchor in Plymouth Sound. And it befell also that Ayacanora, as she stood by Amyas's ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... intense heat, it was a pleasant life when I grew more used to my work, and less conscious and afraid of ridicule. I had my servants, who were very obedient and servile, but not at all attentive. I was too easy with them, Barton said, and he told me that a good kicking would do them good. Certainly his men flew to obey every word, and shrank ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... vain to overcome his pertinacity. She represented that although Philip was not aware of the application or the appointment, he was certain to regard it as an agreeable surprise. She urged, moreover, that his temporary refusal would be misconstrued at Rome, where it would certainly excite ridicule, and very possibly give offence in the highest quarter. The Bishop was inexorable. He feared, says his panegyrist, that he might one day be on worse terms than at present with the Duchess, and that then she might reproach him with her former benefits. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it vas droo," repeated the Dane, in no way discomposed by the other's ridicule. "I vas ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... unless you have the soldiers with you. You look as if your mothers didn't know you were out." And at this a yell of approval went up all along the line, while the badgered sailors growled and tried to make sharp retorts to the stinging ridicule of the landsmen. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the Lilliputian alligator eat you up. But it is different in society, where you cannot mistake the character of those you converse with, or suffer your fancy to exaggerate their qualities, good or bad, without exposing yourself not only to ridicule, but to great and serious inconveniences. Keep guard, therefore, on your imagination, my dear Darsie; and let your old friend assure you, it is the point of your character most pregnant with peril to its good and generous owner. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... read these comments as well as what had gone before, and was ready with her magnanimity. It was this which constituted her a truly able tactician. She shifted her tack before the shout of malicious exultation and ridicule could have been raised at her discomfiture. By a dexterous sleight of hand, she shuffled her cards and altered her suit. In a moment Mrs. Spottiswoode was winking and nodding with the matrons interested in the news of the night. She arrested a good-humoured yeoman, and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... dearth of the kind of bravery that will enable either man or woman to face a laugh in defense of a principle, or succor a losing cause despite a sneer. How the best of us will retreat trailing our banner in the dust, when the hot shot of ridicule confronts us from the enemy's camp, or when some merry sentinel challenges us with the opprobrious epithet, "crank." Why, I believe there is hardly a man or woman to-day who would have the courage to march up to a half-grown boy and knock the cigarette out of his mouth, ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... don't see why either of us should be afraid to go to the General's house. Go? Of course, we will. But you make me laugh when you say that if you were only as good-looking as I am. Let me tell you something." I briefly told him the uneventful story of my life, that ridicule had found me while yet I was a toddler and had held me up as its target. "You might have grown too fast," he remarked when I had concluded, "but you have caught up with yourself. To tell you the truth, you would be picked out from among a thousand men. Where did you get all ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... the deepest mortification was reserved. They had been the cause of it all. It was their vivid imaginations which had conjured up out of nothing a terrible wild beast, which had kept them prisoners there for hours in loneliness and hunger, and which had thrown ridicule upon the population of Albano, by drawing them forth to do battle with one ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... could get no further. I have said some strong things, and endeavoured to lay bare some hard facts relating to Gipsy life in the preceding part of this book, with a view to enlist help and sympathy for the poor children, and not to submit the Gipsy fathers to insult and ridicule. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... near the baths of Diocletian, has a fine statue of Moses striking the rock, by Prospero da Brescia, who is said to have died of mortification at the ridicule excited by the figure of the great lawgiver, in which a slight uncouthness is certainly perceptible. The figures of Aaron and Gideon have been added to the group by other artists. This fountain was celebrated by Tasso under the name of the Fontana di Termini. ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... sixty years old at this time, and his hopes for the "new method" were still high. He had met opposition, ridicule and indifference, and had spent most of his little fortune in the fight, but he was still at it and resolved to ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... party was a sensation that he had experienced only a few times in his life. Pinkey had warned him that at the first openly hostile act he would "blab" the story of the Skull Creek episode far and wide. He had hit Canby in his most vulnerable spot, for ridicule was something which he found it impossible to endure, and he could well appreciate the glee with which his many enemies would listen to the tale, taking good care that ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart |
