"Scoffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swing that spends all its vicious intent upon the imponderable air. His presence came to be a trial to beginning players, who took no real pleasure in the game until they reached the second tee, beyond the ken of the scoffer. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... back the righteous leaven, the salt that has lost its savor, the innocent who have not even the moral courage to show what they think of the effrontery of impurity,—the serious, who yet timidly succumb before some loud-voiced scoffer,—the heart trembling all over with religious sensibilities that yet suffers itself through false shame to be beaten down into outward and practical acquiescence by ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake. It ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is one of the most startling facts in the whole of history. It stares us full in the face. It arrests the attention of even the least observant. It puzzles the historian. It taxes the explanatory powers of the philosopher, and will remain to the end, a permanent difficulty to the scoffer and to the sceptic, and to all those who have not faith. As a fact in history, it is unique: forming an extraordinary exception to the law of universal change: a portent, and a standing miracle. Its persistence, century after century, in spite ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... Matthew, sceptic and scoffer, had already failed to subscribe a prompt belief in that pain about the heart. He had muttered some words, amongst which the phrase "shamming Abraham" had been very distinctly audible, and the succession to the armchair and newspaper had appeared to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... smile did not escape him for which he did not reproach himself as for a crime. His efforts were successful. Nor was this the only cause in which he was engaged on the side of the weak and the wronged against the powerful and the persecuting. His whole life, though maligned as an Infidel and a-scoffer, was one long act of benevolence. On learning that a young niece of Corneille languished in a condition unworthy of his name, Voltaire, in the most delicate manner, invited her to his house, and she there received an education suitable to the rank that her birth had marked ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... was a boy thirteen hundred years afterwards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such thing as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities —but then they always do; I had noticed that, centuries later. However, of course the scoffer didn't laugh—I mean the boy. No, he scoffed; there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He said the most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest were petrified. I said "petrified" was good; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... going up stream. On some of the tributaries, when fishing is intermitted for a single day, the sturgeons have been known to completely fill a river 360 feet wide, so that the backs of the uppermost fish were pushed out of the water. (I take this statement, not from the 'Arabian Nights,' as the scoffer might imagine, but from that most respectable authority, Professor Seeley.) Still, in spite of the enormous quantity killed, there is no danger of any falling off in the supply for the future, for every fish lays from two to three million eggs, each of which, as caviare eaters well know, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... upon the lips of the third doctor, Maugredie, a man of acknowledged ability, but a Pyrrhonist and a scoffer, with the scalpel for his one article of faith. He would consider, as a concession to Brisset, that a man who, as a matter of fact, was perfectly well was dead, and recognize with Cameristus that a man might be living on after his apparent ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... precedes death. But there were in the palace a few persons who knew better. Charles had never been a sincere member of the Established Church. His mind had long oscillated between Hobbism and Popery. When his health was good and his spirits high he was a scoffer. In his few serious moments he was a Roman Catholic. The Duke of York was aware of this, but was entirely occupied with the care of his own interests. He had ordered the outports to be closed. He had posted detachments of the Guards in different parts of the city. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... approached the young scoffer, his hand on an exact level with the latter's ear, his right foot raised to indicate a possible means of enforcing obedience ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... preparation for the Gospel, and could be made subservient to the conversion of many. Thus we find St. Justin, the martyr, all his life long glorying in the name of philosopher, and continuing to wear, even after his conversion, the philosopher's cloak so much derided by the scoffer, Lucian. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... When I was a young girl we travelled in Europe, and I visited Ferney with my parents; and I remember we all stopped before a chapel, and I read upon its front, I knew Latin enough to understand it, I am pleased to say,—Deo erexit Voltaire. I never forgot it; and knowing what a sad scoffer he was at most sacred things, I could not but be impressed with the fact that even he was not satisfied with himself, until he had shown his devotion in a public ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in that fear and that hatred. The high priest of a deity or the ruler of a state is much less distinguished from the vulgar herd of mankind than the scoffer at all religion and the despiser of all dominion. But let us end our dispute. I feel my folly in continuing to argue with one who in reasoning does not seek to come at truth, but merely to show his wit. Adieu, Diogenes; I am going to converse ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... attached to it—my enemies might have doubted the motive which had loaded me with the choicest treasures of my library, and had drawn upon my failing resources for the prodigal expenses of a cab. Not the cruellest scoffer of them all could doubt now. Much better as it was! Oh, surely, surely, much ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... moves its deepest spring, and from this universality, the leading component of Humor, arise the mildness and forbearance of the humorist toward the individual, who is lost in the mass of little consequence; this also distinguishes the Humorist from the Scoffer. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... "converted," either in missionary reports or in attacks on them. They are not converted in the least. A really converted African is a very beautiful form of Christian; but those Africans who are the chief mainstay of missionary reports and who afford such material for the scoffer thereat, have merely had the restraint of fear removed from their minds in the mission schools without the greater restraint of love being ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... no more about it, Sam," said he, "but mind my words, and apply your experience to it afterwards in life, and see if I ain't right. Crime has but two travelling companions. It commences its journey with the scoffer, and ends it with the blasphemer: not that talking irreverently ain't very improper in itself, but it destroys the sense of right and wrong, and prepares the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Florentyne, that hadde neyther lernynge nor prudence, and was a man mete for nothynge but to scoffe and ieste; but yet with his mery toyes, he so moued the sayd Can, that he dydde greatly enryche hym. And, bycause Dantes dispised his foolysshenes, this scoffer sayd to hym: how cometh it, Dantes, that thou art helde[273] so wyse and so well lerned, and yet arte poore and nedy? I am an vnlerned man and am an ignorant fole, and yet I am farre richer than thou art. To whom Dantes answered: if I may fynde a lord ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... not that Don Federico, the young advocate, well known in the coffee-houses as a virulent Exaltado, a determined scoffer, a propagator ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... good deal of a scoffer. "Heaven had nothing to do with it," said he, with unnecessary asperity. "I knew you 'd be wanting to see him; I was hunting for you. Beggar speaks English fairly well, and he let out a word or two that made me think he knew something you ought ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... imperfect, and what is grandly and unwontedly successful. There is no great work of art, not excepting even the Iliad or the Parthenon, which is not open, especially in point of ornament, to the scoff of the scoffer, or to the injustice of those who do not mind being unjust. But all art belongs to man; and man, even when he is greatest, is always ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... spoke he put spurs to his horse and, kissing his hand to her, dashed away. Barbara, wounded and disappointed, gazed after the pitiless scoffer. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... understand your being in such a fearful state of mind about it; but as it's only mine, you know, I'm sure it really doesn't matter." And then they'd only go off worse than ever,—mother doing hysterics, and so forth—and say I was a wicked, bad, abominable scoffer, and that it made them horribly frightened even to listen to me. As if I wasn't more likely to know the real value of my own soul than anybody ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... should meet no one who would be capable of appreciating her? No, Marya Alexandrovna, listen to me, if you really believe that I am your friend, and that my advice is of use. But confess, it was agreeable to see the old scoffer at your feet.... If I had been in your place, I'd have kept him singing Beethoven's Adelaida and gazing at the ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... but by no means to be classed, as you class it, with the appetites of brutes; much less to be threatened, as you threaten it, with infinite and eternal misery by I know not what necessary laws of Zeus, and to be put off at last with some myth or other about Prometheus. Surely your mother bare you a scoffer and pitiless, Socrates, and not, as you boast, a man-midwife ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... she echoed, firing up at once. "I suppose if a fellow-mortal were on his way to the scaffold, you men would still ask for explanations. Listen to me. You're the only man here Maurice was at all friendly with—I shouldn't turn to you, you scoffer, you may be sure of it, if I knew of anyone else. He liked you; and at one time, what you said had a good deal of influence with him. It might still have. Go to him, Heinz, and talk straight to him. Make him think of his future, and of all the other things he has apparently ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... People. Louis Napoleon sent a sergeant to drive them away. The Assembly, having resisted the sergeant, he sent an officer, the temporary commander of the sixth battalion of the Chasseurs de Vincennes. This officer, young, fair-haired, a scoffer, half laughing, half threatening, pointed with his finger to the stairs filled with bayonets, and defied the Assembly. "Who is this young spark?" asked a member of the Right. A National Guard who was there said, "Throw him out of the window!" "Kick ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... perfectly willing that his world should see in him an incorrigible scoffer at moral conventions. He rather enjoyed being the object of maternal warnings to young daughters, but in financial affairs no stern moralist could have been more observant of rigid integrity, and in that, as in other things, he reversed the usual ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... foretold the progress it would make. It comes, too, most triumphant. No faith before it ever took such a victorious stand in its very infancy. It has swept like a hurricane of fire through the land, compelling faith from the baffled scoffer, and the most ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... several occasions) that poetry has so far not given to science any acknowledgment worthy of its distinguished position in the popular mind. Except that Tennyson looked down the throat of a foxglove, that Erasmus Darwin wrote The Loves of the Plants and a scoffer The Loves of the Triangles, poets have been supposed to be indecorously blind to the progress of science. What tribute, for instance, has poetry paid to electricity? All I can remember on the spur of the moment is Mr. Arthur Symons' line about arc lamps: "Hung ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... of deep thought and great practical wisdom," says Sedgwick,[2] "one whose piety and benevolence have for many years been shining before the world, and of whose sincerity no scoffer (of whatever school) will dare to start a doubt, recorded his opinion in the great assembly of the men of science who during the past year were gathered from every corner of the Empire within the walls of this University, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... will not and cannot do. But he has taught them HOW, in some most important points, to promote their own happiness; and, if his school had emulated him as successfully in this respect as in the trick of passing off truisms for discoveries, the name of Benthamite would have been no word for the scoffer. But few of those who consider themselves as in a more especial manner his followers have anything in common with him but his faults. The whole science of Jurisprudence is his. He has done much ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which nothing in our language is worse: here he gives us one of poetry, in honour of Love, for which the god has taken ample vengeance on him, by perverting his taste and feelings. The grossest of all the absurdities in this dialogue is, attributing to Aristophanes, so much of a scoffer and so little of a visionary, the silly notion of male and female having been originally complete in one person, and walking circuitously. He may be ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... wrestled with doubts that wrung his soul with intense agony, and walked in darkness under the veil of unbelief; had a healthful influence upon me because the attitude of his soul was that of a reverent inquirer, not that of a scoffer. ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... so, because in the midst of the world I know how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were not better ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Trones, Aman des Puissance, and Asmodeus, had promised to carry off the calotte of Monsieur de Laubardemont. They were preparing for this, when the physician Duncan, a learned and upright man, but somewhat of a scoffer, took it into his head to pull a cord he discovered fastened to a column like a bell-rope, and which hung down just close to the referendary's head; whereupon they called him a Huguenot, and I am satisfied that if Marechal de Breze were not his ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... may along the pages of history and the records of science, it is the devout men who have been the successful promulgaters of new ideas and searchers after truth. The scoffer and the infidel make great boasts of their progress through their independence of Scripture; but in a little while a devout man follows in their footsteps and proves that their deductions are false, and that even their observations of facts were not to be trusted. Scoffers ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... Were all those people on Earth who claimed to feel the presence of dead loved ones near them? Were those people just straining their fancy—just comforting themselves with what they wished to believe? Or was the scoffer himself the fool? And if that could be so, on Earth, why could not this strange realm be of such a quality that an awareness of those who have passed from life would be the normal thing? Who shall ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... went to call on her, he told me, and took occasion to reprove her for such excessive grief over so unworthy an object. 'He was not an upright man, Matty, and you know it,' he began quite boldly; 'he was a libertine, and a gambler, and an open scoffer at religion.' But Matty went on sobbing harder than ever, and at last, getting angry, he said sternly: 'And more than this, ma'am, he was, as you know, a faithless and disloyal husband!' Then the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the rebellion was at an end. Charlie prayed briefly, but fervently. After that there was no more trouble but many of the boys had somewhat fallen from grace before school ended. Yet they kept up their devotional exercises without any urging on my part. Mr. Hurlbut was something of a scoffer at religion and my prompt action with his boy made me extremely ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... heard this, there needed nothing farther; but they pushed forward by main force and fell a-crying out and saying, 'Seize yonder traitor and scoffer at God and His saints, who, being whole of his body, hath come hither, in the guise of a cripple, to make mock of us and of our saint!' So saying, they laid hold of Martellino and pulled him down from the place ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... accursed, you who thus great Pele do defy, Here, upon her sacred mountain, of a surety you shall die! Pele, mighty Pele, Vengeance! Strike her with thy dreadful doom! So let every scoffer perish!—Pele! Pele! Pele! come!" And ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... well-nigh healed of his wound, healed also of his love, I trust, at least headed off from it. M. de Fontelles was gone also, on that quest of his which made my Lord Rochester so merry; indeed I fear that in this case the scoffer had the best of it, for he whom I have called M. de Perrencourt was certainly served again by his indignant subject, and that most brilliantly. Well, had I been a Frenchman, I could have forgiven King Louis much; ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... with bitterness and misery! For I loved you, proud Olaf!—I loved you—" The bonde uttered an exclamation of incredulous astonishment. Lovisa fixed her eyes on him with a dark scorn. "Yes, I loved you,—scoffer and unbeliever as you were and are!—accursed of God and man! I loved you in spite of all that was said against you—nay, I would have forsaken my creed for yours, and condemned my soul to the everlasting burning for your sake! I loved you ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... mouth of Antigone concerning the unwritten laws of God that 'know no change and are not of to-day nor yesterday, but must be obeyed in preference to the temporary commandments of men,'[3] is a protest on behalf of conscience against human oppression. And even in Euripides, regarded as an impious scoffer by some scholars,[4] there are not wanting, especially in the example of Alcestis, evidence of belief in that divine justice and moral order of which the virtues of self-devotion and sacrifice in the soul ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... dear count," said Manteuffel, laughing, "beware that the color of your hair is not changed by this lovely scoffer—that it does not become a venerable gray. She is sufficiently accomplished in the art of enchantment to do that; I assure you that Madame von Brandt plays a most important role in the history of my ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... foreign extraction, with far-away eyes and large, earnest red hands. You ought to have saw her preserve order during the hour for morning prayers. I had a hired man there in Utah, in them days, who was inclined to be a scoffer at our plain home-made style of religion. So I told Lorena that I was a little afraid that Orlando Whoopenkaugh would rise up suddenly while I was at prayer and spatter my thinker all over the cook stove, or create some other ruction ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... flushed like a beetroot. 'I'll teach you to know your place, sir.' He turned his back on the scoffer, and strode towards ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... "harshness, oppression, endeavoring to keep the Indians in ignorance" could be compatible with the practice of heroic virtue and acts of mortification of mind and body which to the spiritual man or woman appear beyond words of admiration, to the scoffer and frivolous (but for this latter class we are not writing) foolish and impossible. The missions too, with their honest wealth and industry were California's first centers of enlightenment and refinement. The Spanish missionaries were ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... see the Titan who would dare to laugh at the First Consul!" exclaimed Marianne, eagerly. "You would do like Jove; you would hurl down the audacious scoffer into the abyss with ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... to rise out of the woods and stir and push the clouds before her with a broom. For a hundred yards around Witch Rock the ground is still accursed, and any attempt to break it up is unavailing. Nearly a century ago a scoffer named Reynolds declared that he would run his plough through the enchanted boundary, and the neighbors watched ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... says in a tone of apology. "We always have to learn a hymn on Saturdays, and I've had such a bother with Dolly. She would want to know where 'the scoffer's seat' was, and if it had a cushion? And it does so worry me ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... beams seeming to gather in a lustrous halo round his tall, majestic figure,—his countenance, fully illumined and clearly visible, was one never to be forgotten for the striking force, sweetness, and dignity expressed in its every feature. The veriest scoffer that ever made mock of fine beliefs and fair virtues must have been momentarily awed and silenced in the presence of such a man as this,—a man upon whom the grace of a perfect life seemed to have fallen like a royal robe, investing ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Mephistopheles sits down between the solemn antique Sphinxes, and boldly questions them, and reads their riddles. The red light of innumerable watch-fires glares all round about, and shines upon the terrible face of the arch-scoffer; while on either side, severe, majestic, solemnly serene, we behold the gigantic forms of the children of Chimera, half buried in the earth, their mild eyes gazing fixedly, as if they heard through the midnight, the swift-rushing wings ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Remorses, when touched with temporary Compunction, and in his last Scenes; which could not have been made, had either of them been painted as sentimental Unbelievers. Not to say, that Clarissa, whose great Objection to Mr. Wyerly was, that he was a Scoffer, must have been inexcusable had she known Lovelace to be so, and had given the least attention to his Addresses. On the contrary, thus she comforts herself, when she thinks she must be his—'This one consolation, however, remains: He is not an Infidel, an Unbeliever. ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... that supernatural sound that told her of the hopelessness of love, Aurora dropped the hollow, mocking scoffer, clutched spasmodically at her heart, and, with an agonizing shriek, fell lifeless ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... caused young De Plonville to make two resolutions; first, to mention his scheme to no one; second, to persevere and perfect his invention, thus causing confusion to the scoffer. There were several sub-resolutions dependent on these two. He would not enter a club, he would abjure society, he would not speak to a woman—he would, in short, be a hermit until his invention stood revealed ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... face, as he listened, was ugly to watch. He shot out a hand and grabbed the scoffer by his coat; then dropped it again and ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... bad for you that you resist in this way. The saints will bear it in mind, and will not forgive you, and when you cry out for them to deliver you from Purgatory, they will not deliver you. You're a wicked man, a scoffer and a blasphemer! Alas, alas, what ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... half-an-hour, whether I should relate a circumstance bordering a little on the supernatural line, that happened to me, as connected with the business of the bairns of which I have just been speaking; and, were it for no other reason, but just to plague the scoffer that sits in his elbow-chair, I have determined to jot down the whole miraculous paraphernally in black and white. With folk that will not listen to the voice of reason, it is needless to be wasterful of words; so them that ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... enough," said Pentaur, looking kindly at the old man. "But you, you everlasting scoffer—you look pale. How ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... heathen scoffer Answered: "I disdain thine offer; Neither fear I God nor Devil; Thee and ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the real rule of a university—its spirit of humility, and of reverence for antiquity—begins. The true university man, born and bred in the century, not in the years, in the race halls, not those alone in his Alma Mater, is neither a scoffer nor an atheist, nor a critic, sceptic, or cynic. He is a man of simple and exalted faith. God, who hath brought such great things to pass in science, nature, and art, in human character, in the destiny of ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... profit. When that profit comes, no matter how small it may be, I'll sell and sell quick, but not sooner.... But there, I've profaned the Lord's day long enough. I came over here this mornin' to visit Julia's grave. There was a scoffer in our pulpit, that young whippersnapper from Wapatomac had exchanged with our minister and I ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... lines Field managed to throw all the exulting fanaticism of the hopeless bibliomaniac without suppressing one jot of the chuckle of the profane scoffer. And then the gas and candles were relit and the punch and sandwiches and apple pie and cheese were served, and with song and story we passed such a night as sinners mark with red letters for saints to envy. If the reader should ever ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... that Guarinos, lance in rest, against the scoffer rode, Pierced at one thrust his envious breast, and down his turban trode. Now ride, now ride, Guarinos—nor lance nor rowel spare— Slay, slay, and gallop for thy life.—The ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... London which we inhabit we are come upon evil day's. The rage of the blasphemer, the laugh at the scoffer, the heartless lip-service of the worldling, and the light dalliance of the daughters of music, are offered every hour upon a thousand Baal-altars within this very parish. I would ask some of you who spend your evenings in the playhouses ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... never mind that vile scoffer. Set an example to Europe, Madam, by doing what I am going to do. Marry again. Marry some good man who will be a strength and support to your ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... chapter sadly, with a touch of Johnson's vigor:—"The annals of American literature are short and simple. The history of poverty is usually neither very various nor very interesting." Farther South the voice of the scoffer was heard. Mr. Robert Morris ventured to say in the Assembly of Pennsylvania, that America had not as yet produced a good poet. Great surprise and indignation, when this speech reached the eyes of the Connecticut men! Morris might understand banking, but in taste he was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... an expression of pain, then darted a quick glance at her daughter's face; but she did not see the smile of the scoffer there; it was a face which had grown cold and impassive, and she knew why it was impassive, and was as much offended, perhaps, as if the expected smile had met her sight. To ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... struck so deep as that sly dart they wield, The Bacchant's pointed spear in laughing flowers concealed. And oh, 'twere victory to this heart, as sweet As any thou canst boast—even when the feet Of thy proud war-steed wade thro' Christian blood, To wrap this scoffer in Faith's blinding hood, And bring him tamed and prostrate to implore The vilest gods even Egypt's saints adore. What!—do these sages think, to them alone The key of this world's happiness is known? That ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the signal for an orgy of Philistine rancour such as even London had never known before. The puritan middle class, which had always regarded Wilde with dislike as an artist and intellectual scoffer, a mere parasite of the aristocracy, now gave free scope to their disgust and contempt, and everyone tried to outdo his neighbour in expressions of loathing and abhorrence. This middle class condemnation swept the lower class away ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... where proved a steady friend to monarchy and the civil constitution. He knew well how to keep up the curiosity of the multitude, and his roving manner stamped a kind of novelty on his instructions. When exposed to the taunts of the scoffer, and the ridicule of the flagitious, he remained firm to his purpose, and could even retort these weapons with astonishing ease and dexterity, and render vice abashed under the lash of his satire and wit. Sometimes, indeed, he made little scruple of consigning over to damnation such ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... a reviler and scoffer of goodness!" said Birch, moving slowly, and with a due observance of clerical dignity, down the road, followed by the imaginary Caesar. "But I leave thee, and that behind me that will prove thy condemnation, and take from thee a hearty and ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... a ribald and a scoffer in the presence of much that the world holds sacred; but the most sacred thing of all—the sanity of human reason—has never been more ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... issue, involving the fundamental principles of Christianity. A brave man, who is not a scoffer, attacks the doctrine of non-resistance, and lays down his life for the faith that is in him. A martyr, then. Martyrdom in itself cannot establish a principle; but we respect martyrdom. Turn the argument around: the martyrdom ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... mixing some praises with his reproaches, he says: Isagoras the son of Tisander was of a noble family, but I cannot tell the original of it; his kinsmen, however, sacrifice to the Carian Jupiter. (Herodotus, v. 66.) O this pleasant and cunning scoffer of a writer, who thus disgracefully sends Isagoras to the Carians, as it were to the ravens. As for Aristogiton, he puts him not forth at the back door, but thrusts him directly out of the gate into Phoenicia, saying that he had his original from the Gephyraeans, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... This graceful young scoffer reappeared a couple of evenings later, and confirmed the friendly feeling he had provoked on Rowland's part. He was in an easier mood than before, he chattered less extravagantly, and asked Rowland a number of rather naif questions about the condition of the fine arts in New York and Boston. Cecilia, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... "Who is that scoffer," said the man in gray, not without warmth. "Who is he, who even were truth on his tongue, his way of speaking it would make truth almost offensive as falsehood. Who ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... describes the progress of his friend's opinions with every mark of regret. He even showed me letters that had passed between them, and in which every horrid and immoral tenet was defended by one and denied by the other. These letters showed Colden as the advocate of suicide; a scoffer at promises; the despiser of revelation, of Providence and a future state; an opponent of marriage, and as one who denied (shocking!) that any thing but mere habit and positive law stood in the way of marriage, nay, of intercourse without marriage, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... "Come away, scoffer!" said Buchanan, good-humoredly, locking his arm in the young man's and dragging him from the veranda towards the avenue, "and keep your ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... with a smile; "my treasure will find small price with Baldwin the scoffer, and Tostig the vain! Nor need ye look at me so sternly, my fathers; but rather vie with each other who shall win this wonder of wonders for his own convent; know, in a word, that it is the right thumb of St. Jude, which a worthy man bought at Rome for me, for 3000 lb. weight of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and be at the hall door ready to greet the incomer, before she was halfway up the stairs. The cat never got down for the wrong person, and she never neglected to meet any and every member of our family who might be entering. The irreverent scoffer may call it "instinct," or talk about the "sense of smell." ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... be in the printing-office some infidel compositor, but though he sneers at religion and those who believe the Bible, he cannot keep away from the pestilence as silently it steals along the street where he sleeps! The cholera would drive infidelity away from many a scoffer were it but to slay a few hundreds of Englishmen. How powerless are God's foes at such ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... OF THE STRANGER.—We urge you, gentle maiden, to beware of the silken enticements of the stranger, until your love is confirmed by protracted acquaintance. Shun the idler, though his coffers overflow with pelf. Avoid the irreverent—the scoffer of hallowed things; and him who "looks upon the wine while it is red;" him too, "who hath a high look and a proud heart," and who "privily slandereth his neighbor." Do not heed the specious prattle about "first love," and so ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may be yet susceptible. Without concealing the evil in the world he is for ever speculating how good may be made superior. He is a complete infidel, and a scoffer at all things reputed holy; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing out his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... no vain emblems on thy shield; All figures—that is bragging play. A modest dedication make, And give no scoffer room to say, "What! Alvaro de Luna here? Or is it Hannibal again? Or does King Francis at Madrid Once more of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... burned with blasphemies, amid oaths from the vile, and revilings from the scoffer, had the boy first learned that name, and never before had it possessed aught of import for him. But now he knew it was the name of the Great Father that loved him, and again he asked very earnestly, "Where is the way to God in heaven? I am ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... disappointed being of mine there is a child hidden—a frank, sad, simple creature, who believes in the ideal, in love, in holiness, and all heavenly superstitions. A whole millennium of idylls sleeps in my heart; I am a pseudo-skeptic, a pseudo-scoffer. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... against the intolerant spirit of religious persecutions—Thus much for the book Jonah. [The story of Abraham and the Fire-worshipper, ascribed to Franklin, is from Saadi. (See my "Sacred Anthology," p. 61.) Paine has often been called a "mere scoffer," but he seems to have been among the first to treat with dignity the book of Jonah, so especially liable to the ridicule of superficial readers, and discern in it the highest conception of Deity ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... levity again, thou scoffer, or even your years may prove a feeble protection!" said a stern, startling voice from behind. All eyes turned involuntarily at the unexpected sounds, and the muscular form of the Pilot was seen resuming its attitude of repose against the wall, though ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the scoffer may doubt me— I peered in surprise through the gloom; But nothing and none were about me, And I was ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... why Ishmael was driven out? It says just before—that he was a scoffer. And then it goes on: 'He will be a wild man, his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and against ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... humanity—this is the moving thought of Goethe's completed Faust. The keynote is struck in the "Prologue in Heaven." Faust, so we hear, the daring idealist, the servant of God, is to be tempted by Mephisto, the despiser of reason, the materialistic scoffer. But we also hear, and we hear it from God's own lips, that the tempter will not succeed. God allows the devil free play, because he knows that he will frustrate his own ends. Faust will be led astray—"man errs while he strives"; but he will not abandon his higher aspirations; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... a short distance. With folded arms, he gazed for some time upon the great city. When he had fixed his piercing look on this modern Babylon, which equally engages the contemplation of the religious enthusiast, the materialist, and the scoffer,—"Great city," murmured he, inclining his head, and joining his hands as if in prayer, "less than six months have elapsed since first I entered thy gates. I believe that the Spirit of God led my steps to thee and that he also enables me to quit thee in triumph; the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... another, "I came in touch with a man who has been the biggest and most hardened scoffer I have had to contend with. He had such a sarcastic way of ridiculing the Lord Jesus Christ. But this last fortnight I have seen a distinct change in that young man's life. Last week, as we were working near to one another, I spoke to him ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman
... much use talking in this wise to a scoffer. He that maun to Cupar maun to Cupar. We're all in the same express train, ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... compared with that of other literatures, is singularly unexceptionable; but who is there that holds a place among its writers so historical and important, who is so copious, so versatile, so brilliant, as that Voltaire who is an open scoffer at every thing sacred, venerable, or high-minded? Nor can Rousseau, though he has not the pretensions of Voltaire, be excluded from the classical writers of France. Again, the gifted Pascal, in the work on which his literary fame is mainly founded, does not ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... He was red-blooded, but at the same time his heart was clean. Once more he found himself contrasting the honest-eyed, pure-hearted Ruth with this sensual scoffer. There was no denying the physical appeal of the lithe, sinuous Russian; there was no gainsaying the call of the blood. On the other hand, the American girl stood for everything his own mother exemplified ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... some twenty years earlier, the fact did not seem to be generally known. People had all along spoken of Fulton as a half-crazy dreamer and had called his boat "Fulton's Folly." "Of course, the thing will not move," said one scoffer. "That any man with common sense well knows," another replied. And yet they all stood watching for Fulton's signal to ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... thing?" Then one exclaimed, with awe-abated breath, "This surely is the Man of Nazareth; This must be Jesus, for none else but he Something to praise in a dead dog could see!" And, being ashamed, each scoffer bowed his head, And from the sight of Jesus ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... well as floridly, about sighting the cold Northern Star and losing the Southern Cross. I lay back and gloated over the starry picture overhead through a crisscross picture-mount of ragged grass. I left the confutation of the scoffer to Miss Moore. There was an edge on many of her remarks that night, and I could trust her to deal with him. But what she said I have forgotten. Only I remember that he gave her best at last. Then, and not till then, I broke silence, submitting ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... rarer, but for evidential purposes even more valuable, manifestations of spirit photography. The fact that the photograph does not correspond in many cases with any which existed in life, must surely silence the scoffer, though there is a class of bigoted sceptic who would still be sneering if an Archangel alighted in Trafalgar Square. Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton, of Crewe, have brought this phase of mediumship to great perfection, ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pictured Gertrude as Mr. Murray's wife; for if he loved her (and did not his eyes declare it?), of course he would sweep every objection, every obstacle to the winds, and marry her speedily. She tried to think of him—the cold, harsh scoffer—as the fond husband of that laughing child; and though the vision was indescribably painful, she forced herself to dwell ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... morning and wet at night. These tragic tales abounded in Madame de T.'s salon, and by dint of cursing Marat, they applauded Trestaillon. Some deputies of the undiscoverable variety played their whist there; M. Thibord du Chalard, M. Lemarchant de Gomicourt, and the celebrated scoffer of the right, M. Cornet-Dincourt. The bailiff de Ferrette, with his short breeches and his thin legs, sometimes traversed this salon on his way to M. de Talleyrand. He had been M. le Comte d'Artois' companion in pleasures and unlike Aristotle crouching under ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... opinyn," said the leading female, "that you're a scoffer and a wretch! Your mind is in a wusser beclouded state than the poor nergoes' we are seeking to aid. You are a groper in the dark cellar of sin. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... just as Bluff says; and—yes, that's blood on the ground, as sure as you live! I guess I'm on the wrong track. He did have a merry circus. He did shoot an elk, but where has the blooming thing gone?" exclaimed the scoffer. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... bone of contention as circumcision; nor does the Sphynx surpass this relic of bygone ages in mystery. From time immemorial its practice has been the subject of disputes, and its literature finds oftentimes its friends and foes ranged side by side. At one time a noted Israelite and Voltaire, the scoffer of Judaism, may be consulted on the question as to whether Israelite or Egyptian is entitled to priority as to its original practice with a like answer; and, again, Christians are found who, after a careful investigation, will accord ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... are dumb—and the breezes go and come With an apathy that mocks at man's distress; Laugh, scoffer, while you may! I could bow me down and pray For an answer that ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... used it—as the word of God to man. Not diluted by their own reflections, but in its bare and grand simplicity. He had not made the Bible his study in vain. He knew how to bring it to the heart of men with a power that none 'could gainsay or resist,' Even Howel, sceptic, scoffer as he was, listened in spite ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... softened state of feeling, sensitive to everything, this inevitable act of hypocrisy was not merely painful to Levin, it seemed to him utterly impossible. Now, in the heyday of his highest glory, his fullest flower, he would have to be a liar or a scoffer. He felt incapable of being either. But though he repeatedly plied Stepan Arkadyevitch with questions as to the possibility of obtaining a certificate without actually communicating, Stepan Arkadyevitch maintained that it was out of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... scoffer, qui mockat mockabitur. Let mee tell you, (that you may tell him) what the wittie French-man [the Lord Mountagne in his Apol. for Ra-Se-bond.] sayes in such a Case. When my Cat and I entertaine each other with mutuall apish tricks (as ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... mine was. Most o' my money went into it an' stayed thar. Then I got a chance to tend light and ketch lobsters, an' hev stuck to it ever since. I take some comfort livin' and try an' pass it along. The widder Leach calls me a scoffer, but she allus comes to me when she's needin', an' don't allus have to cum, either. My life's been like most everybody else's—a streak o' lean an' a streak o' fat, with lean predominatin'. 'Twas a streak ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... after much argument and learning wasted upon the subject, it is to be feared that the controversy, through the medium of a public journal, between two such highly respected controversialists, on a topic of religious practice, only gave too much occasion to the scoffer. Indeed, Johnnie Favor, the Episcopal sexton's helper, one of those persons, reputed half-witted, who sometimes make very apposite remarks, observed,—"Well—Christmas here, or Christmas there, I'm not ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... Bearing unmoved the burden of the State,— Alike each duty challenged at man's hand. Life is built up of smallest atomics, Pile upon pile the ramparts still increase, And as those, Roman walls, o'er which in scorn The scoffer leapt, soon held the world at bay, So shall thy deeds of duty, lowly born, Be thy strong tower and glory ere the set ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... and all whatever else besides attended his train of triumphs, and all whatever besides has lasted among Moors, and Arabs, and Turks, and Asiatics, even to this our day—constitute to a thinking mind (and it seems not without cause) another antecedent probability. Let the scoffer about Mahomet's success, and the admirer of his hotchpot Koran; let him to whom it is a stumbling-block that error (if indeed, quoth he, it be more erroneous than what Christendom counts truth) should have had such free course and been glorified, while so-called Truth, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... wish it holdeth dear. Him with my life I'd ransom whose rigours waste away My frame and cause me languish; yet, if he would but hear, It rests with him to heal me; and I (a soul he hath Must suffer that which irks it), go saying, in my fear Of spies, "How long, O scoffer, wilt mock at my despair, As 'twere God had created nought else whereat ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... the right and the reasonable, his attitude towards the world and life, become manifest through the things which he laughs at. Only a man of a certain kind, with a certain sympathy and antipathy, could laugh as he laughs. The comic writer, however much of a scoffer and a skeptic, and however much he may deny it, is always an idealist. And it is for the revelation of themselves as much as for the revelation of the people whom they portray that we value the work of a Swift, a ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... reflection of the celestial effulgences could be seen rippling like sunshine on the sea of faces spreading away from the shore of the pulpit steps. When he spoke of hell and its terrors, which was frequently and with thrilling descriptive, even so hardened a scoffer as Japheth Pettigrass was wont to declare that you could hear the crackling of the flames and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... well forget his incessant and bitter attacks. That he might obtain Christian burial, he confessed and received absolution from the Abbe Gaultier; but, with his views, this was simply a sacrifice to the proprieties; he remained a heathen poet to the end, a born satirist and scoffer at all ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... tracks in forest and prairie; aye, and there are strange creatures that haunt the bush, some tell, in places where no human foot is wont to tread. So that nothing of this sort comes upon me with an air of newness, at least! I mayn't quite trust it, as you do, but I am no scoffer. Look, now, Mr. St. Aubyn, I have a proposal to make. You are alone, and purpose undertaking a bitter and, it may be, a perilous journey in mountain ground at this season. What say you to taking me along with you? May be, I shall prove ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... that, to the licence on religious subjects, which revelled through the first acts of that tremendous drama, a disposition of an opposite tendency had, for some time, succeeded. Against the wit of the scoffer, not only piety, but a better taste, revolted; and had Lord Byron, in touching on such themes in Childe Harold, adopted a tone of levity or derision, (such as, unluckily, he sometimes afterwards descended to,) not all the originality and beauty of his work would ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... were especially beautiful, the deep basses of the men mingling with the altos and thin sopranos of the women and forming a combination of sound that irresistibly reminded one of an organ. In fact, "kanaka organ" is the scoffer's description of the himine. On the other hand, some of the chants or ballads were very barbaric, having come down from pre- ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... the worship of Bacchus. Sometimes he would continue drinking for several days, until every penny was exhausted. Then he would make demands at home for more money, which if refused, he was sure to abuse his wife and family. He was not only a drunkard; he was a scoffer at religion, and considered it a mark of honor to take the name of ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... As I am your disciple in antiquities (for you studied them when I was but a scoffer), I think it my duty to give you some account of my journeying, in the good cause. You will not dislike my date. I am in the Very mansion where King Charles the First and his two eldest sons lay during the siege; and there are marks of the last's hacking with his hanger on a window, as he told ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... I betray the safeguards of my honor, that thou mayest cover me with shame at will, what have I less to lose than all? Wouldst thou know more, scoffer? Shall I confess that the whole secret wisdom of our sex is but a sorry precaution for the defence of this weak fortress, which in the end is the sole object of assault by all your vows and protestations, and which (I blush to own it) is so willingly surrendered—so ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... continue persons in favour, longer than, after much long suffering, he finds them deserving his support. You are acquainted with your own history. The Almighty, as you know, undoubtedly distinguished the posterity of Abraham, but he was not partial to them alike. Did he not reject Ishmael the scoffer, though he was the eldest son of Abraham, and countenance Isaac, who was the younger? Did he not pass over Esau the eldest son of Isaac, who had sold his birth-right, and prefer Jacob? Did he not set aside Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, the three eldest sons ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... you wait, my scoffer!" The Vicar borrowed the box of matches, lit the candle—which held a steady flame in the still evening air—opened the book, and laid it on his knee while he adjusted his spectacles. "The story is here, entered on a separate leaf of the Register ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... part, along with the Mass and the Confessional, in building up the Junker dream. A court official—the Oberhofprediger—was set up, and from that time on the Hohenzollerns were the most pious criminals in Europe. Frederick the Great, the ancestral genius, was an atheist and a scoffer, but he believed devoutly in religion for his subjects. He said: "If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one would remain in the ranks." And Carlyle, instinctive friend of autocrats, tells with jocular approval how he kept ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... not the characteristic of the rhyming paraphrases of certain dialogues of Lucian which Charles Cotton wrote and published late in the seventeenth century under the title of 'Burlesque upon Burlesque, or the Scoffer Scoft.' 'We bring you here,' said Cotton, 'a fustian-piece, Writ by a merry Wag of Greece'—'a piece of raillery writ,' as he went on to say, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... all the principles of the scientific spirit of today, were the targets for thousands of years of the most profound contempt; if a man inclined to them he was excluded from the society of "decent" people—he passed as "an enemy of God," as a scoffer at the truth, as one "possessed." As a man of science, he belonged to the Chandala[2].... We have had the whole pathetic stupidity of mankind against us—their every notion of what the truth ought to be, of what the service of the truth ought to be—their ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... He was well aware that his former foe but now firm friend was but a weak and ignorant disciple; and he expected, therefore, that he would find it anything but smooth sailing at first in his Christian course. Still, what a marvellous change, to see one so lately a sceptic and a scoffer now humbly studying ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... like eyes than holes through which light was pouring, while his fingers opened and shut as though he had forgotten his sword and would leap upon the scoffer with bare hands. Thorkel left off laughing to grasp the Jotun's arm and ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... humiliations!" said Meadows, putting an arm round the scoffer. "I tell you, she proposes to write my next set of lectures for me. She gave me an outline ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... We see that here down below was the earliest seat of the house, till Roger climbed the Bellus Mons, to found his castle, to give it his name, and to take his name from it. It is a pleasant process when these small facts come out on the spot with a life that they can never get out of books. A scoffer might ask whether it were worth while to go to Beaumont-le-Roger simply to get a clearer notion of the meaning of the words "Humfredus de Vetulis." But it is clearly worth while to go to Beaumont-le-Roger, both for the association of the ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... fully liberated into the character. He advanced with cautious care and he executed each detail of his design with precise accuracy. To various auditors, for that reason, the work seemed a little Methodistical; and drab is a colour at which the voice of the scoffer is apt to scoff. But the impersonation of Dr. Primrose soon became equally a triumph of expression and of ideal; not only flowing out of goodness, but flowing smoothly and producing the effect of nature. It was not absolutely and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... however, proved—impracticable—which, in some respects, is rather a pity. It has seemed to me that a man who can work off cough cures and cosmetics on to healthy folks with a hide like leather, and talk a scoffer off the field, ought to have made his mark ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... scoffer need not laugh, nor the judicious grieve," for our mountain did not bring forth a mouse,—our "mission to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... great hand on his thigh with more glee than one would have expected him to feel; for this man posed as a cynic—a despiser of men, a scoffer at charity. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman |
