"Sardonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the last two or three decades can no doubt furnish abundant opportunities for the jibes of the flippant, and the humour of those who consider they are endowed with a pretty wit. But the exercise of sardonic humour and an excessive sarcasm tends to promote ill-feeling and serves no useful purpose. The right spirit, in my opinion, for any man to regard Japan is as a nation struggling to obtain and assimilate all that is best in the world and aspiring to be ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet," said the pacha. "Mustapha," continued he, turning round to him with a sardonic smile, "may your shadow never he less—but you have swallowed ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the infusion, she realized little by little that for a few moments she must have been nearly hysterical, and she partially resumed possession of herself. The sniffing ceased, her vision cleared; she grew sardonic. All her chest was filled with cold lead. "This truly is the end," she thought. She had thought that Julian's confession must be the end of the violent experiences which had befallen her in Mrs. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... mastery be proven in this other and more personal affair? He set his teeth and redoubled his efforts, intent on proving his own power to himself. Even as Napoleon believed in his star, Gard trusted in his luck, and it was with a smothered laugh of sardonic satisfaction that news of the first move in his campaign came ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... been treated with much respect, and their labour has been repaid with the most sincere marks of gratitude. But I never met with very warm support in carrying on this object, but was often exposed to some sarcastical insinuations or sardonic smiles from those who thought the attempt to ameliorate the condition of the Gipsies, ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... sphere." These ran him down with ceaseless cry, But found it hard to tell you why, Till his own worth and wit supplied Sufficient matter to deride: "'Tis envy's safest, surest rule, To hide her rage in ridicule: The vulgar eye she best beguiles, When all her snakes are deck'd with smiles: Sardonic smiles, by rancour raised! Tormented most when seeming pleased!" Their spite had more than half expired, Had he not wrote what all admired; What morsels had their malice wanted, But that he built, and plann'd, and planted! How had his sense and learning grieved them, But ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... them and gave them a room which had no furniture except a chair and two rickety iron beds. Before he left them he indicated a printed list of the things they were not allowed to do. Harding studied it with a sardonic smile. ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... humiliated him at Hericourt, prepared to invade Switzerland. But Louis, the diabolus ex machina, who had secretly fostered the discord between Burgundy and the Confederates, hastily signed a nine-years' truce with Charles, and remarking with his usual sardonic smile that his "fair cousin did not know his foes," left him and his sister to the tender mercies of the enemies he had arrayed against them. A clause in the treaty which preserved Louis from all ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... inn-yard, where shouting merchants wrestled for porters, and donkeys brayed them down, the narrowed eyes of Olimpia, the sardonic grin of the gaunt Mosca, brought our lovers back into the real world. They faced their foes together with insensible meeting and holding of young hands. Angioletto did his best not to feel a detected schoolboy, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... were going to follow his example and die on his body?" He got up. "Stay here and I'll go and get some water." As he turned away he paused and, looking back, said, "Why didn't you do the fainting? That's more your business than his," gave a sardonic ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... a table, tall, sardonic, and as I approached he put out his hand and said: "You have grown a bit, Henry, my boy, since I saw you last. How did ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... natural enough under the circumstances. At last, however, he mastered his irritation to some degree, and spoke his command briefly. "Well, Smithson, apologize to her. It can't be helped." Then his face lighted with a sardonic amusement. "And, Smithson," he went on with a sort of elephantine playfulness, "I shall take it as a personal favor if you will tactfully advise the lady that the goods at Altman and Stern's are really even ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... a sardonic smile, while I felt his grasp tighten on my shoulder, "the villains have been balked of their prey, have they? We shall see, we shall see. Now, you whelp, look yonder." As he spoke, the pirate uttered a shrill whistle. In a second or two it was answered, and the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... gripping hard the brass rail in front of him, till, the two ships closing, he lost all confidence in himself, and retreating to the chartroom, pulled the door to with a crash. There, his brows knitted, his mouth drawn on one side in sardonic meditation, he sat through many still hours—a sort of Prometheus in the bonds of unholy desire, having his very vitals torn by the beak and claws of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the idea had been brought to him, so that his friends not unnaturally counted it as another of Harry's many happy, but usually impracticable, thoughts. But in this instance Mayhew made his personality felt, for the character of the paper, instead of partaking of that acidulated, sardonic satire which was distinctive of Philipon's journal, on which it was to have been modelled, took its tone from Mayhew's genial temperament, and from the first became, or aimed at becoming, a budget of wit, fun, and kindly humour, and of honest opposition ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... appeased. Happily Jennie's mother (being about to present Jennie with a little brother—she hoped) was not present. Miss Insull had promised to see Jennie home, and it was decided that she should go. Mr. Critchlow, in high sardonic spirits, said that he would go too; the three departed together, heavily charged with Constance's love and apologies. Then all pretended, and said loudly, that what had happened was naught, that such things were always happening at children's ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... if she be political. No male can equal her in refined aggressive cunning. She can circulate a filthy libel by writing a virtuous letter, and never a flaw will appear to trip her into responsibility for it. And her sardonic smile is an inarticulate revelation of all she wishes to convey. It is more than a mere oration. It emits the impression ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... about to cross the High again, on his way home, a butcher's cart dashed down the slope, recklessly driven. He stepped well back on the pavement, and smiled a sardonic smile. He looked to right and to left, carefully gauging the traffic. Some time elapsed before he deemed the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... and consoled him in her motherly arms, asking Buchanan indignantly how he dared to touch the Lord's anointed. The incident is very natural and amusing in its homely simplicity; the child crying, the lady soothing him, the sardonic old master in his furred nightgown and velvet cap, looking on unmoved, bidding her kiss the place to make it well. The Master of Mar no doubt would cry too for sympathy, and the old gentleman take up his big book and move off to seek a quieter place for study. On another occasion, when the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... studied Carmen and planned her training, that whatever instruction he offered her must be without taint of evil, so far as he might prevent. And yet, the thought of any attempt to withhold from her a knowledge of evil brought a sardonic smile to his lips. She had as yet everything to learn of the world about her. Could such learning be imparted to her free from error or hypothesis, and apart from the fiat of the speculative human mind? It must be; for he knew from experience ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... sardonic Quick, after taking note of these demonstrations, "Heavens! what a hero I feel myself to be. And to think that when I got back from the war with them Boers, after being left for dead on Spion Kop with a bullet through my lung and mentioned ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... ill-flavored shed their sweets around, And bitterest roots invade the ungenial ground, Whose gems are crystals from the Epsom mine, Whose vineyards flow with antimonial wine, Whose gates admit no mirthful feature in, Save one gaunt mocker, the Sardonic grin, Whose pangs are real, not the woes of rhyme That blue-eyed misses warble out of time;— Truant, not recreant to thy sacred claim, Older by reckoning, but in heart the same, Freed for a moment from the chains of toil, I tread once more ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a sardonic wraith, snickering somewhat sadly over the fact. His shade, wherever it suffers, is favoured in these days by many such consolations, some of them of much greater horsepower. Think of the facts and arguments, even the underlying theories and attitudes, that have been borrowed from ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... lay on the mantelpiece among cigar-cases and toilet bottles; but these traces of his passage had made no mark on the featureless dulness of the room, its look of being the makeshift setting of innumerable transient collocations. There was something sardonic, almost sinister, in its appearance of having deliberately "made up" for its anonymous part, all in noncommittal drabs and browns, with a carpet and paper that nobody would remember, and chairs and tables as impersonal as ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... her to hear him, but, below his breath, he burst into a sardonic, little laugh and an ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Lamb, do not suppose that he did anything but hide in his clouds of ink. Sir Sidney Colvin thinks that Keats revealed himself in his letters, but I cannot agree with him. Keats is one of the best letter-writers we have; he can be merry, fanciful, witty, thoughtful, even profound. He has a sardonic turn of language hardly to be equalled outside Shakespeare. "Were it in my device, I would reject a Petrarchal coronation—on account of my dying day, and because women have cancers?" Where will you match that but from Hamlet? But ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... the end of the incident, which, since she came of a sporting family, seemed to her slightly ridiculous. Sure enough the little man came pounding behind with his breeches dusty; looked thoroughly annoyed; and was being helped to mount by a policeman when Julia Eliot, with a sardonic smile, turned towards the Marble Arch on her errand of mercy. It was only to visit a sick old lady who had known her mother and perhaps the Duke of Wellington; for Julia shared the love of her sex for the distressed; liked to visit death-beds; threw slippers at weddings; received confidences ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... source of pleasure that brought out a sardonic smile. "He's a slap in the face at ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... at Lady Raikes's side, he alluded to this accomplishment of her husband. "Your husband has not many accomplishments," Vincent said (he is a man of rather a sardonic humor), "but in shying at the sticks he is quite unequalled: he has quite a genius for it. He ought to have the sticks painted on his carriage, as the French marshals have their batons. Hasn't he brought you a pincushion or a jack-in-the-box, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... band of rangers lands from Wolfe's ships and finds the Island of Orleans deserted. On the church door the cure has pinned a note, asking the English not to molest his church; and expressing sardonic regret that the invaders have not come soon enough to enjoy the fresh vegetables ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... little pen we wield! What could that have been out of the sardonic Dean? what other child of that age would have used "beloved" as she does? This power of affection, this faculty of beloving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She periled her all ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... how kind you are!" exclaimed the emperor, with a sardonic smile; "you are so obliging as to give me advice which I did not ask for. I thank you, Mr. Aulic Councillor, but I believe it will be better for me to follow my own understanding. As God Almighty has placed ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... was his. Benedetto continued the work until his death in 1507, when Cronaca, who built the great hall in the Palazzo Vecchio, took it over and added the famous cornice. The iron lantern and other smithwork were by Lorenzo the Magnificent's sardonic friend, "Il Caparro," of the Sign of the Burning Books, of whom I wrote in the chapter ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... valleys and swirling rivers; snow on the black peaks of the North; the riotous colour of eternal summer in the South. Suddenly he uttered a sharp exclamation and swept downward, halting but a mile above the ground. He frowned heavily, then smiled—a long, placid, sardonic smile. There appeared to be but few inhabitants in this country, and those few seemed to live either in great white irregular buildings, surmounted by crosses, in little brown huts near by, in the caves, or in hollowed trees on the ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... circumstances fell in with her inclinations, though she could not help noticing his new habits and peculiarities, she made no protest and very little comment. He saw her rarely, and in time carried himself with a sardonic good humor as surprising to him as inexplicable to her. She seemed as far from him as if she had suddenly turned Eskimo. Once or twice a sense of loathing invaded him, a flame of hatred blazed up, soon suppressed. He was complete master of himself, and his reward was that he could be her judge, with ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... little difficult to continue an enthusiastic conversation, unaffected by his running fire of comment. For in these days he was drifting rapidly toward a sort of altruistic socialism, and so listened to her recital with sardonic smiles, snorts of scorn, and ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... never consent,' he whispered, putting his arm round her waist; 'we must run away quietly, and when we are married can ask his pardon and,' with a sardonic sneer, 'his blessing.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... down his rod on the grassy bank and felt for his snuff-box. As he helped himself to a pinch he slyly regarded the faces of his companions; and his own, contracting its muscles to take the dose, seemed to twist itself in a sardonic smile. ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a slim girl, rather distinguished in appearance, with a slender face, a fine, slightly arched nose, and beautiful grey-blue eyes over which the lids tilted with a very odd, sardonic tilt. The sardonic quality was, however, quite in abeyance. She was ladylike, not vehement at all. In the street her walk had a delicate, lingering motion, her face looked still. In conversation she had rather a quick, hurried manner, with intervals of ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... came that impersonality in what are usually personal relationships, against which even the Parson beat in vain. Through all his passionate sinning James Ruan had held himself aloof from the sharer in his sins. What for him had been the thing by which he lived no one ever knew; his sardonic laughter barred ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... California, and whose blasphemy could not be equalled, either in quantity or quality, by the most profane of any age or nation." In this crisis Colonel Gift's sympathies may be guessed. He watched the scene below him with a sardonic eye. As the armed columns wheeled into place and stood at attention, he turned ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Then with his sardonic smile, taking up the interrupted sentence:—"This place," said he, "at the first glance, appears to cost more than the first; but—the benefit will be, I hope, in proportion with the expense, and Mademoiselle de la Valliere will bring me back more than Mademoiselle de ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... every line of his magnificent head. His choicest curses were for the cowards of his own party before whose blanched faces he shouted out the hidden things until they sank back in helpless silence and dismay. His speech was curt, his humour sardonic, his ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... suddenly, on her way home, cutting black and sinister into the wake of the moon under a sable wing, while to them our sail must have been a vision of white and dazzling radiance. Without altering the course a hair's breadth we slipped by each other within an oar's length. A drawling, sardonic hail came out of her. Instantly, as if by magic, our dozing pilots got on their feet in a body. An incredible babel of bantering shouts burst out, a jocular, passionate, voluble chatter, which lasted till the boats were stern to stern, theirs all bright now, and, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... struck one, and the silent place began to be peopled with many shadows. The scene of the Pope's jubilee returned to Rossi's mind. He saw and heard everything over again. The crowd, the gorgeous procession, the Pope, and last of all his own speech. A sardonic smile crossed his face in the darkness as he thought of ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... the universe" is reported to have been a favorite utterance of our New England transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller; and when some one repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment is said to have been: "Gad! she'd better!" At bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? Shall our protests against certain ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... his feet; eagerness, sardonic delight, sinister anticipation thrilling from him—and my same glance showed Marakinoff, crouched, biting his finger-nails, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... truth, he did not much like the appearance of these two worthies. One of them was a big, smooth, pasty-faced man, with a peculiarly villainous expression of countenance and a prominent tooth that projected in ghastly isolation over his lower lip. The other was a small man, with a sardonic smile, a profusion of black beard and whiskers on his face, and long hair hanging on to his shoulders. Indeed, when he smiled more vigorously than usual, his eyebrows came down and his whiskers advanced, and his moustache went up till there was scarcely any face left, and he looked more like ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... if there was another in the world like it. Indeed, I have a distinct recollection of being told that the child's father had painted in the extraordinary features and had himself decorated the original flaxen locks with singular stripes of red and white and blue, a sardonic tribute to the home land of ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... laughed joyously. "You can search me," he answered, with a shrug. "The gods must have been in a sardonic mood about the time I arrived to gladden this sorrowful sphere. I've never used more of it than I could help, and everybody called me 'Jem' until I went to college, the initials making a shorter and more agreeable name. ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... his skin and bones for the ineffable pleasure of driving a pin into Quasimodo's hump. Again, a young girl, more bold and saucy than was fitting, brushed the priest's black robe, singing in his face the sardonic ditty, "niche, niche, the devil is caught." Sometimes a group of squalid old crones, squatting in a file under the shadow of the steps to a porch, scolded noisily as the archdeacon and the bellringer passed, and tossed them this encouraging ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... of one of the most sardonic of Notre Dame's gargoyles seemed to preside over everything—a terrible figure in such ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... on the dark sardonic face, as the red gleams lighted it, made her start convulsively, as if she would go to him; then controlling herself, she stood silent. He had not seen the movement,—or, if he saw, did not heed ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... he sometimes was called, was past his sixtieth year. For twenty years he had been in command of the army. One had but to look at his strong, sardonic face to know that he was a fearless leader, a savage fighter. His eyes were black, piercing and never quiet; his hair and close-cropped beard were almost snow-white; his voice was heavy and without a vestige of warmth. Since her ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Touch. (with sardonic frankness). No, truly; for the truest politics show the most feigning; and Tories are given to politics; and what they swear, in politics, may be said, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... metallic voice was neither friendly nor hostile. It expressed, more than anything else, a sardonic, bullying self-sufficiency. ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... of Neocles, he was melted with a peculiar sort of joy intermixed with tears,—no man in his right senses would call these true joys or satisfactions. Nay, I will be bold to say that, if such a thing as that they call a sardonic or grinning laughter can happen to the mind, it is to be found in these artificial and crying laughters. But if any will needs have them still called by the name of joys and satisfactions, let him but yet think how far they are exceeded by the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... quietly aside. "You are very kind, Monsieur Gaubert," said he, and his manner now was one of frozen calm—a manner that betrayed none of the frenzy of seething passion underneath. "I think, sir," said he to the stranger, adopting something of that gentleman's sardonic manner, "that it will be a more peaceful world without you. It is that consideration restrains me from apologizing. And yet, if monsieur will express regret for having sought, and with such lack of ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... His smile of sardonic amusement Gray found to be almost insupportable, and although Sir Lucien refrained from looking at Mrs. Irvin whilst he spoke, it was evident enough that his words held some ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... on he ran, and on. His slobbering lips could only cry, "Christine! My Dearest Love! My Wife! Where are you gone? What future is our past? What saturnine, Sardonic devil's jest has bid us live Two years together in a puff of smoke? It was no dream, I swear it! In some star, Or still imprisoned in Time's egg, you give Me love. I feel it. Dearest Dear, this stroke Shall never part us, I will reach to where ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... spirit. In listening to these works with their clumsy blocks of tone, their eternal sunless complaining, their lack of humor where they would be humorous, their lack of passion where they would be profound, their sardonic and monotonous bourdon, one is perforce reminded of the photograph of Reger which his publishers place on the cover of their catalogue of his works, the photograph that shows something that is like a swollen, myopic beetle with ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the most rudimentary sort. She knew nothing, except how to dance, and she knew that exactly as a kitten knows how to play with a ball of string; she dreamed of diamonds and wonderful restaurants and a sardonic hero nine feet tall with a straight nose and a long chin, who would clutch her passionately in his arms (there was no more real passion in her than there is in a soap-bubble) and murmur vows of eternal ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... us yet," muttered Joe, with a sardonic grin. "If they get near us, Dick, keep yer eyes open, an' look out for yer neck, else they'll drop a noose over it; they will, afore ye know they're near, an' haul ye off ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... through the growth of the truly great upon his mature perception that the aging reader finds novel excellences in them. It was only the other day that we picked up Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, and realized in it, from a chance page or two, a sardonic quality of insurpassable subtlety and reach. This was something quite new to us in it. We had known the terrible pathos of the story, its immeasurable tragedy, but that deadly, quiet, pitiless, freezing irony of a witness holding himself aloof from its course, and ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... crossed the brow of the Constable, and Guarine, when he beheld a sardonic smile begin to curl Vidal's lip, could keep silence no longer. "Vidal," ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... infant whose christening we have this evening met to celebrate, may not be removed from the arms of his parents by premature decay (several cambrics were in requisition): that his young and now apparently healthy form, may not be wasted by lingering disease. (Here Dumps cast a sardonic glance around, for a great sensation was manifest among the married ladies.) You, I am sure, will concur with me in wishing that he may live to be a comfort and a blessing to his parents. ("Hear, hear!" and an audible sob from Mr. Kitterbell.) But should he not be what ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then, again, he is so sly, and still so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness, towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter, sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,—that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... sat at a little table at the farthest corner of the room. Caspian looked ready to burst with rage at being "circumvented," and to sink into the floor with shame of his unsuitably clad companions. As for me, I smiled at Jack a sardonic smile which would have made a grand "close up" in the "movie" we had just seen. The most experienced villain ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... punished him for his tricks," said Fred; but almost before he had finished the sentence, a scream of sardonic laughter, in a different direction, ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... as the work progressed, he had seasons of bitter scorn, of infinite self-contempt, of sullen gloom and sardonic gaiety. Keogh, with the patience of a great general, soothed, coaxed, ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... our top-hat out of his way, treading heavily on our toes and wheezing, "Sorry, sorry," as he struggles to his seat, a buzz begins behind the curtain. What the players are saying is not distinguishable, but a merry girlish laugh rings out now and then, followed by the short sardonic chuckle of an obvious man of the world. Then the curtain rises, and it is apparent that we are assisting at an At Home of considerable splendour. Most of the characters seem to be on the stage, and for once we do not ask how they got ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... Lodge was open, and an elderly woman stood upon the steps. She watched us with a sardonic eye as we stepped from ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... studying with strained acuteness the big lymphatic mask of the Director, with sundry sharp glances aside at the Chairman. The nervous changes on his alert, meagre old face showed how intently he followed every phase of their talk. A certain sardonic perception of evil in the air curled on his lip when he saw the Marquis accede with a bow and wave of the hand to Thorpe's proposition. Then he made his bow in turn, and put the best face ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... could not utter a syllable. He stared wildly at those about him, his friends of yesterday, at those seated on the mock judgment bench who, crouching forward, were observing him with sardonic smiles. ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... was the sardonic answer. "I will do that thing. And here is something that may be of interest to you. I happen to know that before we left Remate de Males a swift one-man canoe left Nazareth, and that the man in it was an Indian who is in the German's control. ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... which smelled strongly of leather and tobacco, where two oldish men with grizzled beards were sitting—one in an apron, cobbling shoes on the bench by the one window; the other, evidently a caller, close by the open door, reading something from a newspaper and gesticulating rather wildly. A sardonic gleam flashed across Dan's handsome face as he passed them with a nod, and disappeared in the room beyond. This was his own, where he stinted himself in other ways that he might keep it unshared, thus insuring the strict ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... superiority over the ills of life, such undoubted kingliness, that every one succumbed and rested gladly on so firm a precedent. Mr. St. George in this brief time had accepted much hospitality, had won a thousand friends, and by Christmas had made himself, through his genial strength to-day and his sardonic sarcasm to-morrow, as thoroughly the autocrat of all the region as ever Mr. Erne had been. For all that men want is a master; give them somebody that will lead, and glad enough are they to follow. But Mr. Erne's supremacy had merely been a matter of birth and of kindly feeling; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... produced. Gideon Himes was an old man, pestered, as he himself would have put it, by the mysterious illness of his young wife, fretted by the presence of the children, no doubt in a measure because he felt himself to be doing an ill part by them. His grumpy silence of other days, his sardonic humour, gave place to hypochondriac complainings and outbursts of fierce temper. Pony had hurt his foot in a machine at the factory and it required daily dressing. Johnnie understood from the sounds which greeted her that the sore foot ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females and overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened to Flagg telling his assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there to see him give away a ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... without a moment's delay, and while the wagon was en route made a quick search of his unfortunate cousin's apartment, a sardonic smile of triumph lighting his face. And as he transferred the money to his pocket, a sudden thought rushed through his brain—a thought that for the instant ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... always seemed to us, was the cleverest writer in his way that has ever contributed to the English periodicals. His fugitive lyrics and arabesque romances, half sardonic and half sentimental, published with Hookham Frere's "Whistlecraft" and Macaulay's Roundhead Ballads, in Knight's Quarterly Magazine, and after the suspension of that work, for the most part in the annual souvenirs, are altogether unequaled ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... to relieve the social conditions in Ireland, it must, say Sinn Feiners, find out the cause. So they have pondered on this question: What is the cause of the unemployment in Ireland today? The answer to that question was the one point that the sharp-mustached, sardonic little Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Fein, wanted the American delegates from the Philadelphia Race Convention ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... Copenny burst into sudden sardonic laughter, with wondrous little mirth in the tones, and the other miscreants were obviously disconcerted and disconsolate, while the small schemer, whose craft had failed midway, looked affrighted and marvelling from one to another, at a loss ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... tall, lean youth, sunburned and tough, with a face that looked sardonic. Ramona recognized him now as her father's new foreman, the man she had been introduced to a few days before. Hard on that memory came another. It was this same Jack Roberts who had taken her brother by surprise and beaten ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... promenade passed by her like marionettes, and she like another marionette responded, but there was no feeling in it at all. She might equally well have seen the whole lot of them, herself included, jerked by wires from a sardonic heaven that had no purpose, no plan—only such figures of thought were not within her scope; still the feeling was there, ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... as for the opinions expressed on his books, he cares little for what he hears. There was always present to him a feeling of black care seated behind the horseman,—and would have been equally so had there been no real care present to him. A sardonic melancholy was the characteristic most common to him,—which, however, was relieved by an always present capacity for instant frolic. It was these attributes combined which made him of all satirists the most humorous, and of all humorists the most satirical. It ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... with sardonic anguish, for he felt that his life was aimless if he should have no ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... was carefully waxed. His forehead was low and broad, and his aquiline nose, like his jet-black, almond-shaped eyes, betrayed an Indian ancestor. His face betokened intelligence, conceit, and a keen sense of sardonic humour; still, there was nothing in it positively forbidding. To those whom he took a fancy to, he was doubtless loyal and kind, albeit his temperament was of a fiery and volatile nature. In this he showed the Gallic side of his origin. It was very ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... and moved to Chicago, becoming one of the rebellious writers and cultural bohemians in the group that has since come to be called the "Chicago Renaissance." Anderson soon adopted the posture of a free, liberated spirit, and like many writers of the time, he presented himself as a sardonic critic of American provincialism and materialism. It was in the freedom of the city, in its readiness to put up with deviant styles of life, that Anderson found the strength to settle accounts with—but ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... inner wall and opened up the cellars by destroying 150 square feet of ground-floor: ten people were in the cellars, and none was hurt. Uninjured signs of cafes and shops, such as "The Good Hope," "The Success of the Day," meet your gaze with sardonic calm. ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... this pass unchallenged, submitting with a good grace to his host's low whistle of amusement, and the sardonic enquiry: "Ever do anything with the foils? D'Armillac is what they call ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... with a sardonic laugh, a repetition of the tone in which he had objurgated the ship-master. Such visions were the property of youth, and he was forty-two, forty-two and nothing more than a discredited clerk who had fled across the world from a shadow. But he was right—he had seen ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... up and down the room perturbed, he sometimes wiped tears from his eyes, and then set his teeth and compressed his lips. At last his face grew calm and settled in its expression, his mouth wore a sardonic smile; he came and took the letter, and, folding it leisurely, laid it on the table, and put a heavy paperweight over it, as if to hold it down and bury it. Then drawing to himself some maps of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... destination, two youths emerged from the door of the establishment carrying an iron cylinder, which, with some trouble, they hoisted into a waiting motor-car. An elderly man was at their heels scolding and directing in a creaky, sardonic voice. He turned towards me. There was no mistaking those austere features and that goatee beard. It was my old cross-grained ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... A sardonic glimmer in eyes half visible under heavy lids alone betrayed relish of the situation, the homage commanded and the sensation created by this inopportune and unheralded arrival: deliberately Number One mounted the dais and posed himself ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... eloping with her paramour, wrote to her husband enjoining him to be virtuous if he would be happy. The incongruity struck the prisoner so forcibly that for a moment he was on the verge of another explosion of sardonic laughter. Before leaving the dock he made one last attempt to draw attention to the treatment he had sustained while in prison. By way of heightening the effect of his narration, he informed the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... majesty, behaves like a buffoon, shouting at the Dives and actually attempting to thrust a Soliman from his throne, before she is finally whirled away with her heart aflame. The calm politeness with which the dastardly Barkiaroukh consents to a blood-curdling murder, the sardonic dialogue between Vathek on the edge of the precipice and the Giaour concealed in the abyss, the buoyantly high-spirited description of the plump Indian kicked and pursued like "an invulnerable football," the oppressive horror of the subterranean recesses, the mischievous ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... a silence behind it. The truth that all knew when spoken by her was a kind of shock. The ruffians gaped in breathless attention. Kells looked on with a sardonic grin, but he had grown pale. And upon the face of Cleve shone ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... have been sardonic, were it not for a few lines around the corners of his eyes which belied any sinister suspicion, spread grimly across the big man's face as he stood looking down on Harry King in the dusk of the unlighted ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... my uncle, and this man lives in that town too, and I've seen him ever since, all the time. I know him now. And—" Out of the dimness the clergyman felt, rather than saw, a smile widen—child-like, sardonic—a curious, contagious smile, which bewildered him, almost made him smile back. "You'll think me a pitiful person," she went on, "and I am. But I—almost—hate him. I've promised to marry him and I can't bear to ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... mettle for that!"—and Lysia smiled darkly, while the great eye on her breast flashed forth a sardonic lustre— "Strong as ye all are, and young, ye lack the bravery of the weak old man who, mad as he may be, has at least the courage of his opinions! Who is there here that believes in the Sun as a god, or in Nagaya ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... which he rolled with one hand. He seemed from that farthest point aft to hold in review the appliances, the fabric, the actions, yes, even the very thoughts, of the entire ship. From them he selected that on which he should comment or with which he should play, always with a sardonic, half-serious, quite wearied and indifferent manner. His inner knowledge, viewed by the light of this manner or mannerism, was sometimes uncanny, though perhaps the sources of his information were commonplace ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... from this remark that even the Earl's sardonic temper was ruffled by the girl's outrageous behavior. Nor was it exactly pleasant to him to note how steadily Anstruther advanced in the favor of every officer on the ship. By tacit consent the court-martial was tabooed, at any rate until the Orient ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... schemes, great thoughts, deep meditations stamp on a great man's brow; an olive complexion marbled with red, a square nose, eyes of flame, hollow cheeks, with two long lines, betraying much suffering, a mouth with a sardonic smile, and a small chin, narrow, and too short; crow's feet on his temples; deep-set eyes, moving in their sockets like burning balls; but, in spite of all these indications of a violently passionate nature, his manner was calm, deeply resigned, ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... Sterne to anticipate the knife-grinder's innocent confession, "Story? God bless you! I have none to tell, sir!" in a sardonic paraphrase of half a score of volumes, he actually possessed the narrative faculty in an extraordinary degree. He does not merely show this in his famous inset short stories, accomplished as these are: he achieves a much greater marvel in the way in which ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... contempt and the laugh of exultation and triumph are of a different character. I cannot now discuss them further than to say that they are either genuine or pretended assertions of joy in one's own superior vitality or other superiority. The "sardonic smile" and "sardonic laughter" have been supposed by some learned men to refer to the smiles of the ancient Sardinians when stoning their aged parents. But they have no more to do with Sardinians than they have with sardines or sardonyx. The word "sardonic" ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... escaped; he had helped to free Kelly and Deasy, and did not regret it; he was willing to die for Ireland. Maguire and Condon (he also was reprieved) declared they were not present, but, like Allen, were ready to die for their country. Sentence of death was passed, and, as echo to the sardonic "The Lord have mercy on your souls," rang back from the dock in five clear voices, with never a quiver of fear in them, "God save Ireland!" and the men passed one by one from the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... sent up to the house and you can fit out with another when you go downstairs for clothes. That is, I suppose you will want to keep this as a memento, eh?" and he held out the cowpuncher, sweeping it with a sardonic glance. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... aside, as if it were unknown, the conception of an endless transmutation of matter, in a context where the thought would naturally suggest itself to one who had met with it. Where Hamlet is merely sardonic in the plane of popular or at least exoteric humour, Dr. Tschischwitz credits him with pantheistic philosophy. Where, on the other hand, Hamlet speaks feelingly and ethically of the serious side of drunkenness,[134] Dr. Tschischwitz parallels the speech with a sentence in the BESTIA TRIONFANTE, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... afternoon, gazing up into the pines and talking of the curious personality that was making history for Lake City. In after years, whenever she thought of Levine, Miss Towne's memory brought her two pictures—one of the tall, sardonic faced man clasping the golden haired girl in his arms. The other was of pine boughs, murmuring sadly and persistently above the gentle ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... deeply moved by the disarrangement and bewilderment which she saw around her, but she began to awaken to certain great events and developing powers in the world. She read the sardonic commentators upon modern life—Ibsen, Strindberg, and many others; and if she sometimes passionately repudiated them, at other times she listened as if she were finding the answers to her own inquiries. It moved her to discover that men, more often than women, had been the interpreters ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... a low, mirthless laugh. The picture of the girl he disliked so intensely, writhing in the great hands of the brute opposite him, appealed to the elder's sardonic humor. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... body indicated power, vitality, health. His lean, masterful face, with its clear grey eyes (the suspicion of a sardonic smile in their depths), struck them at once as that of a man who could and would do things in the very teeth of the ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... is a short, thick, rare sort of man, of quick and precise movements, sardonic countenance; and one look from his sharp round set of eyes, tells you at once that you must not trifle with him. Of a temper that must have cost him some pains to keep under control, he hates humbug and all sort of yabber-yabber. His round head of tolerable size, is of German ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... synagogue, and was called up to read in the Law. The elders came to shake him by the hand; a wave of emotion traversed the congregation. Uriel, mentally blinking at all this novel sunshine, had moments of forgetfulness of his sardonic hypocrisy, thrilled to be in touch with humanity again, and moved by its forgiving good-will. The half-circle of almond and lemon trees from Portugal, planted in gaily-painted tubs before the Holy Ark, swelled his breast ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... still and looked at O'Moy. He found something in the bronzed, rugged face that was unusually sardonic. The blue eyes seemed to have become hard, and yet there were wrinkles about their corners suggestive of humour that might be mockery. The Count stiffened; but beyond that he preserved his outward calm whilst confessing that he did not understand ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... uncomfortable, dreading he knew not what. A big, fat, gray squirrel racing noisily across the fallen leaves gave him a shock. A number of birds came to look at him—or so it appeared to him, for in the inquisitive scrutiny of a robin he fancied he divined sardonic meaning, and in the blank yellow stare of a purple grackle, a sinister significance out of all proportion to the size of ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... this single-handed fight he took a sardonic delight in shocking those pillars of society who to him were symbols of the existing order of things. Fiercely he smashed away at idols, however highly placed, however much revered. At all times and in all circumstances ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... twice and then studied the penciled words, "Hello, Panchita! Ain't you the wonder. Your best beau's proud of you." In the dying light he murmured them over as if their sound delighted him and as he murmured a slight, sardonic smile broke out on ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... night." And Miss Parsons was left rejoicing at having said a few words of reproof to that cynical Mr. Robert Brownlow, while Jock tramped away, grinning a sardonic smile at the lady's notions of ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yet he took the one offered, fumbling painfully with thick fingers, blushing to the roots of his hair. Then he looked with his warm blue eyes at the almost sardonic, lidded eyes of the foreigner. The latter sat down beside him, and they began ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... as a very sardonic and disagreeable person by most of the people of Ballybay. His hatchet face seemed appropriate to a man who never seemed to agree with the opinion of anybody else, who sneered, it was thought, all round, who laughed when other ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... exception was Estelle the dancer, with whom Emile allowed her a slight acquaintance. He neither approved of women in general nor of their friendships. Estelle was the bonne amie of the sardonic Manager, who occasionally beat her, after which ceremony it was her custom to drink absinthe. Sometimes, for this reason, she was unable to appear on the stage. She would come into Arithelli's dressing room and weep, and smoke innumerable cigarettes, and when things had been ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... its course, and saw, without seeming to see, the effect it had upon those whom she knew well in the house—saw Mrs. Wolfstein's eager delight in it, Lady Manby's broad amusement, Robin Pierce's carefully-controlled indignation, Mr. Bry's sardonic and always cold gratification, Lady Cardington's surprised, half-tragic wonder—she was oscillating between two courses, one a course of reserve, of stern self-control and abnegation, the other a course of defiance, of reckless indulgence of the strong temper that dwelt within ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... through the second, and from the shades of dreamland in the third. Between the acts he lounged in the lobbies and heard the critics speak with sneering derision of the complimentary notices of the American Nightingale which they were about to write, while they expressed, with sardonic smiles, a longing for the day when they would be "allowed"—such was their singular expression—to "speak the truth about Miss KELLOGG as a prima donna." And while he sat with closed eyes during the third act, wondering whether he should believe the critics in the flesh, or their criticisms ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... result of his reflections, he took from his pocket writing materials, wrote a letter, and inclosed it in an envelope, which he sealed with a bit of moistened bread, and this done, he burst into a sardonic laugh. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... his party approached, the eyes of the ambassador and of Lady Tynemouth were directed towards Ian Stafford. The glance of the former was ironical and a little sardonic. He had lately been deeply engaged in checkmating the singularly skilful and cleverly devised negotiations by which England was to gain a powerful advantage in Europe, the full significance of which even he had not yet pierced. This he knew, but what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is a certain satisfaction in going after a not-so-slowly seventy-one. Every ten scores or so average up, and see what you have. Thus one can chart a sort of glacial movement upwards otherwise imperceptible to one's sardonic estimate of himself as ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... world as through a show; A critic fine in his haphazard way, A sort of mild La Bruyere on half-pay. For comic weaknesses he had an eye Keen as an acid for an alkali, Yet you could feel, through his sardonic tone, He loved them all, unless they were his own. You might have called him, with his humorous twist, A kind of human entomologist; 50 As these bring home, from every walk they take, Their hat-crowns stuck with bugs of curious make, So ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... diapered the snow; the air was strangely mild; The valley's girth was dumb with mirth, the laughter of the wild; The still, sardonic laughter of an ogre o'er ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... pointing out. It perhaps needs pointing out, however, that strong feeling of almost any kind produces this result. It is not a sense of the ludicrous, only, which does it; nor are the various forms of joyous emotion the sole additional causes. We have, besides, the sardonic laughter and the hysterical laughter, which result from mental distress; to which must be added certain sensations, as tickling, and, according to Mr. Bain, cold, and some kinds of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... countless counters, her damp coppers clutched in her rough hands, her eyes staring, a little vacantly, about her. Some may think it is a sordid picture, but I am sure that they cannot know Mrs. Moore very well if they think that. They cannot know her bitter struggles, her silent heroisms, nor her sardonic humour. ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... beauty and it is told with an easy confidence. As for Blood himself, he is a superman, compounded of a sardonic humor, cold nerves, and hot temper. Both the story and the man are masterpieces. A great figure, a great ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... old servant had taken his departure, Henry Blaine picked up the envelope. It was addressed in a firm, unshaken hand, and with a last touch of the sardonic humor characteristic of the dead man, it had been stamped with the seal of the renowned and honored House ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... His sardonic words were interrupted. And I realized that all this parley was a ruse of Miko's to take me alive. He had made a gesture. Hahn, watching from the turret window, doubtless flashed a signal down to the hull-corridors. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... said Basil, glancing indifferently at the folded and sealed paper before he hid it away. 'Having said so much, you must tell me more. Put off that sardonic mask—I know very well what hides beneath it—and look me in the eye. You have surprised ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... out into a sardonic "He, he! Rouncy writes her letters," he said; "every one of 'em; and since they've quarrelled, she don't know how the deuce to get on. Miss Rouncy is an uncommon pretty hand, whereas the old one makes dreadful work of the writing and spelling when Bows ain't by. Rouncy's been settin' her ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the role of the wicked partner of the combination—"in full appreciation of our mediatory activity," (so says the German "White Paper" with sardonic humor,) replied to this proposition that, coming as it did after the opening of hostilities, "it was ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... and determined to make merry. But, heigh-ho! the day of Maypoles was over and gone. From the beginning the jollity and laughter were forced, and the new era of perpetual spring festival soon became an era of brainless indecency. Even the wit of the Restoration was bitter, acid, sardonic (as Charles's own death-bed apology for being an unconscionable time a-dying). Generally it was ill-tempered, and employed to inflict pain. And there was not even wit in most of the plays. It is hard to ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, "you've had three years at these things,—you must be pretty strong in 'em. Hadn't you better take up some line where they'll come ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... his orders, from the contagion of a companionship unfit for innocence. This was to Lucille a frightful blow. Her solitude was now virtually complete. Her own old faithful servant, Marguerite, had been withdrawn; and a tall pale Norman matron, taciturn and sardonic, was now her sole attendant. It was plain, too, that M. Le Prun had gradually removed his establishment from the Chateau des Anges. The gay and gorgeous staff of servants and grooms had disappeared. The salons, halls, and lobbies of the vast mansion were silent ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... called the Tavern Knight laughed an evil laugh—such a laugh as might fall from the lips of Satan in a sardonic moment. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... scorching torrent was enough to wither the face of the corpse. I should not have been surprised if the wet black beard had frizzled and curled and flared up in smoke and flame. But the dead man was unconcerned. He continued to grin with a sardonic humour, with a cynical mockery and defiance. He was ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... of sardonic pleasure in watching her as she viewed with cold disapproval the drowsy maids and her daughter, who although as immaculate and fresh and cool and altogether delightful as the morning promised to be, persisted in yawning from time to time with the utmost abandon. Armitage had never seen a woman ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... would have none of it. He rose in the Assembly and demanded the impeachment of the unworthy judge. With perfect candor and the naked vigor that in the years to come was to become known the world around he said precisely what he meant. Under the genial sardonic advice of the veteran Republican leader, who "wished to give young Mr. Roosevelt time to think about the wisdom of his course," the Assembly voted not to take up his "loose charges." It looked like ignominious defeat. But the next day the young firebrand was back to the attack again, and the next ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... and by I heard the sound of violent hysterical sobbing, accompanied by the noise of hurrying footsteps and the rapid whisking about of female garments. In a few moments the doctor entered with an expression of sardonic amusement on his face. "Yes!" he said in reply to my look of inquiry, "hysterics, lace handkerchiefs, eau-de-Cologne, and attempts at fainting. All very well done! I have assured the lady there is no fear of contagion, as under my orders everything ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... bridge, coming in to town. And then, when he went out, he found the Piazza della Signoria packed with men: but all, all men. And all farmers, land-owners and land-workers. The curious, fine-nosed Tuscan farmers, with their half-sardonic, amber-coloured eyes. Their curious individuality, their clothes worn so easy and reckless, their hats with the personal twist. Their curious full oval cheeks, their tendency to be too fat, to have a belly and heavy limbs. Their close-sitting dark hair. And above all, their sharp, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... any change of facial expression, Mr. Stonor emitted a short, sardonic laugh. It was very impressive, but I didn't see the fun. I looked from one to another. The stranger on the ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... The smallpox had riddled his face with numberless dints, and spoilt the shape of his nose by imparting to it a gimlet-like twist; it was a countenance by no means lacking in character, very evenly tinted with a diffused red, lighted up by a pair of bright little eyes, with a sardonic look in them, while a certain sarcastic twitch of the purpled lips ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... sardonic look upon his daughter, "they're the boys who voted against me the last time because Tom and Dan hired a man in every precinct to spread the story that I was a teetotaler, and that your mother gave a party on Good Friday—and all because Tom and Dan were mad at me for pushing that workingmen's ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Then Chance, that sardonic jester who loves best to thwart the dearest desires of men and warp the destiny of nations, became piqued at the peace and the plenty in the land which lay around the bay. Chance, knowing well how best and quickest to let savagery loose upon the land, plucked ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... injuria—to drive an abstract right to excess is to commit injustice.... Extreme anarchy and extreme despotism lead to one another. Pride comes before a fall. Too much wit outwits itself. Joy brings tears, melancholy a sardonic smile.'[5] To which one well might add that most human institutions, by the purely technical and professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by becoming obstacles to the very purposes which their ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Being outside of the world, presiding over its destinies, ordering all the fates which it contained. And whereas the belief of her husband, which she divined and was often sharply conscious of, moved her to a feeling of irony such as may be felt by a naturally sardonic person when hearing the naive revelations of a child, the faith of Baroudi fascinated her, and moved her almost to a sensation of awe. It was like a fire which burnt her, and like an iron door which ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... his shirt sleeves rolled up beyond his elbow, wiping his hands on a blue gingham apron. He was a little slim man who may have been sixty years old. A glass eye gave him a sardonic, comic or astonished air, according to the way he used his good one, which was constantly moving, at the same time that it ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... touched glasses, wondering how to say what he had to say. Damn it, he couldn't sit here just talking or necking, he'd come to listen but.... A sardonic montage of all the detective shows he had ever seen winked through his mind. The amateur who rushes in and solves the case, heigh-ho. He had never appreciated all ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson |
