"Sneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... near a sneer. "If you neglect the rudiments of business it seems to me that you have only yourselves to blame. In your case, Lawler, it is rather astonishing. You have quite a reputation for intelligence; you own one of the ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... that the sun's going is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit to the ends of it, has given edge to many a sneer at its supposed assertion that the sun went round the earth. It teaches a higher truth—that the sun itself obeys the law it enforces on the planets, and flies in an orbit of its own, from one end of heaven in Argo to the other ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... vent on Eric his low and mean jealousy. He showed undisguised pleasure when he fell in form, and signs of disgust when he rose; he fomented every little source of disapproval or quarrelling which happened to arise against him; he never looked at him without a frown or a sneer; he waited for him to kick and annoy him as he came out of, or went into, the school-room. In fact, he did his very best to make the boy's life miserable, and the occupation of hating him seemed in some measure to fill up the vacuity of ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... with a sneer. At which the Guardsman after a moment's amazement, delighted to find an Academician with so much perception, exclaimed: ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... you first made this assertion I thought you were jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated me—for I am considered a good artist—and, therefore, when you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and throw ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... data. To the Litterateur? He is a phrasemaker by profession. To the Politician? He cannot rise above the conception of a "bill." One and all are copious in phrases, empty of positive ideas as drums. The initial laws of social science are still to be discovered and accepted, yet we sneer at phrasemakers! Carlyle, who never sweeps out of the circle of sentiment—whose eloquence is always indignation—who thinks with his heart, has no words too scornful for phrasemakers and poets; forgetting that he, and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... Rehearsal Bayes (Dryden), who is turned by Sheridan in his adaptation of the piece into Mr. Puff, is made to produce out of his pocket his book of Drama Commonplaces, and the play proceeds (Johnson and Smith being Sheridan's Dangle and Sneer): ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... her savage relations—perhaps be compelled to paint his visage scarlet with arabesque devices in charcoal, and go on the war-path against the white man; or, on the other hand, to introduce his Indian bride into the salons of civilisation, with the certainty of beholding the sneer of contempt on the face of outraged society; with the probability of innumerable violations of the rules of etiquette, and the possibility of Manuela exhibiting the squaw's preference for the floor to a chair, fingers to knives and forks, and—pooh! the thing ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... weeds led and angel along, Accomplish'd and pretty, who blush'd at the throng. The old dame seem'd to say, and i'faith she might well, "Sons of Eton, when saw you a handsomer belle?" If any intended the widow to sneer, Miss A———won their ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and no further comment is made on it. Not so with the asinine contingent. They have the same patter to prattle unceasingly about it. They have the same comment, the same bromides to get off, the same sneers to sneer and the same jeers to jeer. If there was no other reason—and there are a hundred—why I shall not do any more drinking, I shall never taste another drop just to show these fools what fools they are when they run up against a ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... There also flashed past the purple of the salmonoids, the brilliant majesty of the gold fish, the bluish belly of the sea bream, the striped back of the sheep's head, the trumpet-mouthed marine sun-fish, the immovable sneer of the so-called "joker," the dorsal pinnacle of the peacock-fish which appears made of feathers, the restless and deeply bifurcated tail of the horse mackerel, the fluttering of the mullet with its triple wings, the grotesque rotundity of the boar-fish and the pig-fish, the dark smoothness ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... how good you are!" I cried, without noticing her sneer; "tell me all about it, dear; tell ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... are Kingsley's words: "We may blame those ladies, if we will, for neglecting their duties. We may sneer, if we will, at their weaknesses, the aristocratic pride, the spiritual vanity, we fancy we discover. We must confess that in these women the spirit of the old Roman matrons, which seemed to have been dead so long, flashed up for one splendid moment ere it sank into the ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... th'inspiring Nine, I waited at Apollo's shrine: I told him what the world would say, If Stella were unsung to-day: How I should hide my head for shame, When both the Jacks and Robin came; How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer, How Sheridan the rogue would sneer, And swear it does not always follow, That semel'n anno ridet Apollo. I have assur'd them twenty times, That Phoebus help'd me in my rhymes; Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove. But, finding me so dull and dry since, They'll call ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... have the honor of knowing who it is that favors my poor dwelling, and with company like that!" said the Mayor, pointing to the child, while his upper lip contracted and the corners of his mouth drooped into a cold sneer. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Pitt's life, supposing him to live to the usual age of man. The calculation is ingenious, but has not proved to be as accurate as some of Newton's. On the other hand, his remarks on paper money are excellent, and his sneer at the Sinking Fund, then considered a great invention in finance, well placed:—"As to Mr. Pitt's project for paying off the national debt by applying a million a year for that purpose while he continues ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... reconcile unflinching honesty with a just and becoming regard for the feelings of those who have claims upon our forbearance, than would have been the case a hundred years ago. 'It is not now with a polite sneer,' as a high ecclesiastical authority lately admitted, 'still less with a rude buffet or coarse words, that Christianity is assailed.' Before churchmen congratulate themselves too warmly on this improvement in the nature of the attack, perhaps they ought to ask themselves how far it is due ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... are they, these stuckuppy snipsters, as jaw about quiet and peace, Who would silence the gay "constant-screamer" and line the Thames banks with perlice; Who sneer about "'ARRY at 'Enley," and sniff about "cads on the course," As though it meant "Satan in Eden"? I'll 'owl at sich ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... madam!" said Mr. Stillinghast, bowing with a sneer; "but depend on't I shall sift this matter—it shall not ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... sneer was curling on the young man's lip; the mariner's face had resumed its stern expression. 'The details of my escape from Botany Bay are unimportant. Suffice it, that I once more reached America, and devoted ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... by a wish ascribed to a great and good man—Johnson, and which has been noticed with a sneer by unbelievers, a wish that he might see a spirit from the other world, to testify to him of the truth of the resurrection. This has been sneered at, as if it were a confession of the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence which ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... come from anyone else, I should have turned the question aside with a sneer. But it so happens that I owe a great deal of gratitude to this particular Friend. It was he who, at a time when I was so afflicted with rheumatism that I could scarcely leap five feet into the air without pain, said to me one day quite casually: "Have you ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... enough to be your father, boy, and have done, in all things, the reverse of what I advised you. Therefore, I know I was wrong. We may sneer and speak of poetry when the words proceed from another, my boy; but, as inevitable as death, there comes to every man the knowledge that he stands accursed of Nature, who hasn't heard the voice of his own ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... disbelieving voices, their owners too dumfounded to take exceptions to the sneer in tone and words. "Zounds, man!—what did you come for, then?" ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... with ready Faces to approve and smile at all he says in the gross. It is good Comedy enough to observe a Superior talking half Sentences, and playing an humble Admirer's Countenance from one thing to another, with such Perplexity that he knows not what to sneer in Approbation of. But this kind of Complaisance is peculiarly the Manner of Courts; in all other Places you must constantly go farther in Compliance with the Persons you have to do with, than a mere Conformity of Looks and Gestures. If you are in a Country Life, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... One does not deny the honor of honorable men and women in any walk in life. But in polite society, fashionable society, these things occur. Oftener in New York than in Boston, and oftener in London and Paris than in New York. Indeed, we may sneer, as we often do, at the primitive customs of the lowly, and at their absurd phrase of "keeping company." It makes a delightful jest. But beneath it is a greater regard for the rights of a man or woman in love than one is apt to find ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... imperceptibly men swerved this way and that until there was an open way through them to the State-house steps, and through that human lane, nearly every man of which was at that moment longing to take his life, the autocrat strode, meeting every pair of eyes with a sneer of cold defiance. Behind him the lane closed; the crowd gasped at the daring of the man and slowly melted away. The mountain secretary followed him into the Senate with the resolutions he had just read, and the autocrat, still with that icy smile, received and passed ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... "What's more, I'm a member of the American Academy of Surgeons, with a special diploma from St. Luke's Hospital of Niles, Michigan, and a certificate of fellowship in the National Medical Scientific Fraternity. Pleased to meet a brother practitioner." The sneer was as ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... I. chopped in with his cold logic, and declined to believe that any golden mine existed in Guiana "anywhere in nature," as he craftily said. When Raleigh returned after his last miserable failure in May 1617, the monarch spared no sneer and no reproof to the pirate of the seas. Of course, the King was right; there was no mine of diamonds, no golden city. But the immense treasures that haunted Raleigh's dreams were more real than reality; they existed in the future; he looked far ahead, and our sympathies ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... They might say what they liked to him, but he would never be untrue to the girl whom he had left there. His aunt had spoken of the "affair of—the Irish young lady;" and he had quite understood the sneer with which she had mentioned Kate's nationality. Why should not an Irish girl be as good as any English girl? Of one thing he was quite sure,—that there was much more of real life to be found on the cliffs of Moher than in the gloomy chambers of ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... praised him for a certain dignity in {148} himself which made him appear as great in private life as in the most important offices he had borne. It was in allusion to Somers, indeed, that Swift said Bolingbroke wanted for success "a small infusion of the alderman." This was a sneer at Somers, as well as a sort of rebuke to Bolingbroke. If the "small infusion of the alderman" was another term for order and method in public business, then it may be freely admitted by his greatest admirers that Somers ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Tim! Would you throw another stone at him, boys? Would you hunt the weary old man through the streets like some wild beast? Would you taunt, and sneer, and shout in his ears, "Old crazy Tim"—"Old crazy Tim?" Oh, no—no! Pick a flower and give him, as Kitty used; take his hand—poor, harmless old man—and walk along with him; maybe he'll fancy that you are little Kitty, (who knows?) ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... were then parted. Hooper was to suffer at Gloucester, and returned to his cell; Rogers was committed to the sheriff, and led out to Smithfield. The Catholics had affected to sneer at the faith of their rivals. There was a general conviction among them, which was shared probably by Pole and Gardiner, that the Protestants would all flinch at the last; that they had no "doctrine ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... was too much in earnest to be conscious of them, or, indeed, to care for anything but what she was saying. There was a moment's pause when she came to the end of her speech, and then the thread of talk was quietly taken up again where Sybil's incipient sneer had broken it. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... we are," replied Raymond, with a sneer. "One thing is plain enough; they can't go ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... pleasure than the using the chance of speaking my mind about you and your work which was afforded me at the dinner the other night. I said not a word beyond what I believe to be strictly accurate; and, please Sir, I didn't sneer at anybody. There was only a little touch of the whip at starting, and it was so tied round with ribbons that it took them some time to find out ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... of Castille slowly moved towards the woodland path, with her graceful Spanish step, followed, but at some distance, by two of her women. She turned as she was passing him, and smiled with a sweet radiance that would have won him instantly, had he not heard his elder brothers sneer at the cheap coin of royal smiles. He only bowed; but Leonillo was more accessible, and started forward to pay his homage of dignified blandishments to the queenly sweetness that pleased his canine appreciation. Richard was forced to step forth, call ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... failure of all peaceful measures to restore the Union, slowly dawned—with but a few hours lacking of the time when Mr. Lincoln would be inaugurated President of the United States—Mr. Wigfall thought proper, in the United States Senate, to sneer at him as "an ex-rail-splitter, an ex-grocery keeper, an ex-flatboat captain, and an ex-Abolition lecturer"—and proceeded to scold and rant at the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... intensely bitter expression on her face—a frown on her brow, a sneer on her lips—which so disfigured it that scarcely any one would have recognized her as the brilliant and beautiful woman of the world who so ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... we were painted"?—Faith, no word of black was said; The lightest touch was human blood, and that, ye know, runs red. It's sticking to your fist today for all your sneer and scoff, And by the Judge's well-weighed word you ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... patron will have a gringo for majordomo?" He returned to the issue. "Then I, Manuel, must leave the patron's employ. I and half the vaqueros. The patron," he added with what came close to a sneer, "had best seek gringo vaqueros—with the clay of the mines on their boots, and their red shirts to ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... daze to hear Mrs. Silverstein's hysterical sneer, "keepin' company vit a bruiser." Next, Silverstein and his wife fell to differing on "noted" and "notorious" as applicable ...
— The Game • Jack London
... became a frequent caller, if he chanced to utter some admiring word concerning the pretty deft creature that had just flitted from the room like a dark butterfly, would not in reply draw from him more than a grunt and a half sneer. Yet now and then he might have been caught glowering at her, and would sometimes, seemingly in spite of himself, smile on ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... with so much concentrated fury, and the hatred and contempt expressed in his pale eyes were so fierce that an involuntary ice-cold shiver ran down the length of Lebel's spine. But, even so, he would not give in; he tried to sneer and to keep up something of his ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Cab! Hi!" Oh, no! On the sullen brute will go; When he wants a fare, he's clamorous and unruly; But if he wants a drink, With a sneer or with a wink, He'll rumble on and just ignore ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... another of his arguments? I don't wonder they're convincing—" But as quickly as it had come the sneer dropped, yielding to a wave of pity, the vague impulse to silence and protect her. How could he have given way to the provocation of her weakness, when his business was to defend her from it and lift her above it? He recalled his old dreams of saving her from Van Degenism—it was not ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... to the entire world, and America to-day stands stronger than she ever did before. In fact, there is not a nation that does not respect us and fear us, which possibly could not have been said before the American-Spanish war. Prior to that, it was rather the fashion to sneer at the Yankee army and navy, but that will never be ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... some of their own members, either from disappointment or some ingrained discontent. When you hear such detraction, fix your thoughts not on the paltry accidents of your art, such as the use of cosmetics and other little infirmities of its practice, things that are obvious marks for the cheap sneer, but look rather to what that art is capable of in its highest forms, to what is the essence of the actor's achievement, what he can do and has done to win the genuine admiration and respect of those whose admiration and respect have ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... we went, the tall thin man Explained the manners of Old Japan; If you pitied a thing, you pretended to sneer; Yet if you were glad you ran to buy A captive pigeon and let it fly; And, if you were sad, you took a spear To wound yourself, for fear your pain Should quietly ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... interpret as an intentional cruelty. The Indian is not malicious. He will insult and exult over the vanquished foe in the heat of passion; but he will take the scalp and keep it very carefully, respect it, and to a certain extent the memory of the slain. But to sneer at and taunt a fallen adversary in the hour of sadness, and in the condition in which Tyope was, is not the Indian's way. That was not what made Tyope suffer. What overpowered his faculties, darkened ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... e'er death first may reap Here in a Father's arms shall quiet sleep, The tender flowers shall grow above his head And drink the dews that fall upon his bed. The silent grave is safe from foolish sneer And ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... to exclude partiality, as alleged by Godwin, it would seem to be equally, if not more, necessary for women, on account of their inferior physical power: and if, as is persistently alleged by those who sneer at their claims, they are also inferior in mental power, that fact only gives additional weight to the argument in their behalf, as one of the primary objects of government, as acknowledged on all hands, is the protection of the weak against the ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... trusted by the rulers and the ruled. It is a new era in Government when such men are called into action; and if there were not proclaimed and fatal limits to that ministerial liberality, which, so far as it goes, we welcome without a grudge and praise without a sneer, we might yet hope that, for the sake of mere consistency, they might be led to falsify our forebodings. But alas! there are motives more immediate, and therefore irresistible; and the time is not yet come when it ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... the Captain, unsuspicious of his sneer, "I protest I have hardly seen a soul. Have you tried the Pantheon ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... to stand up boldly for those whom the fashionable world would sneer at. She was not ashamed to recognize a plainly-dressed acquaintance in the most public thoroughfare, nor did she ever make an excuse to be pre-occupied when approached by ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... with a sneer, "you are come to fetch your loving bride, I suppose; but the beautiful bird has flown from the nest, and will never sing any more. The cat has fetched it away, and she intends also to scratch your eyes out. To thee is Lettice lost; thou wilt ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... 'Why don't you try to write it for two voices before attempting it in twelve?' was his only comment, uttered in a sharp tone, in which sarcasm was too plainly apparent. Joseph blushed deeper than before. 'Oh,' he said simply; it was all he could say, for the master's sneer had struck home. 'And if you must try your hand at composition,' continued Reutter in a somewhat kinder tone than before, as he observed the tears spring to the boy's eyes, 'let me advise you to write variations on the motets ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... that, while the town was still ringing with news of his downfall, the Wizard with his wife and son walked down from their thousand-dollar suite into the corridor, their hands burdened with their satchels. A waiter, with something between a sneer and an obsequious smile upon his face, reached out for the valises, wondering if it ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... sneer as you like. But I tell you that's love that I've been describing. That's all. It's love. It's the realest, purest, finest thing that can happen to a man. And I know what I'm talking about. It happened ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... arriving at the spot, laid his paw upon the meat. Snap! went the trap, and caught him by the fingers. Mad with the shame and the pain, he reproached the Fox for a false thief and a traitor. Reynard laughed heartily, and said, with a sneer: "You a king, and ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... books went flying across the room, and Skippy, now thoroughly infuriated, stood before him, arms akimbo, a sneer on his disgusted lips. ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... Taylor was so often seduced by the fertility of his intellect and the opulence of his erudition. An antagonist by exposing the improbability of the tradition, (and most improbable it surely is), and the little credit due to Saint Gregory and Saint Jerome (not forgetting a Miltonic sneer at their saintship), might draw off the attention from the unanswerable parts of Taylor's reasoning and leave an impression of ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... life has been a hardening process tending in the direction of a crystallized selfishness the rules of etiquette are regarded with contempt and alluded to with a sneer. No more disheartening problem faces the social reformer than the question how to overcome the bitter hostility to refined manners which marks the ignorant "lower classes." On the other hand, there is no more hopeful sign of progress in civilization ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... babyhood? Haven't I drank my wine at his table, sitting by his side, three times a day for at least fifteen years? Haven't I seen him frown on every effort at temperance reform throughout the country? Haven't I seen him sneer at my weak, feeble efforts to break away from the demon with which he has constantly tempted me? If he didn't rear me up for a drunkard, what in the name of heaven am I designed for after such ...
— Three People • Pansy
... some harsher name for it," said Astley with a sneer. "Nay, you need not think to scare me by glaring at me, Sir Robert, nor will your ill-pleasure change my thoughts. I have faced fiercer eyes than thine, and I have ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said he was a woman," added Montigny with a sneer. "Sit up, can't you?" he went on, giving another shake to the murdered body. "Tread ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spoke disrespectfully of Johnson. Thus, Mr. Sharp, writing to him in 1769, talks of 'risking the sneer of one of Dr. Johnson's ghastly smiles.' Ib i. 334. Dr. J. Hoadly, in a letter dated July 25, 1775, says:—'Mr. Good-enough has written a kind of parody of Puffy Pensioner's Taxation no Tyranny, under the noble title of Resistance ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Poems, as evidence of his youth. For some years past he had occasionally written more or less topical verses which appeared in The Outlook and the defunct Speaker. Greybeards at Play was, after all, merely an elaborate sneer at the boredom of a decade; the second book was a more definite attack upon some points of its creeds and an assertion of the ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... my estate without a touch of a sneer, when we were alone; but with strangers, he rang the words out ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nearly all of them come here; you alone had not done so," answered Porphyrius, with an almost imperceptible sneer. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... forgotten her. A cunning sneer took the place of the slavering animal look and he ran to the kitchen to reappear moments later with a butcher knife ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... of the Alexandrine is that, in attempting to give dignity to his line, the poet may only produce heaviness, incurring the sneer of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... dinner at a public-house (this is a court sneer)—provided by Scotch booksellers, presided at by a Scotch baronet, accompanied by Scotch bagpipes, and prepared for two hundred Scotch appetites, there being four hundred of the said appetites admitted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... Besides those who sneer at dream study, because they have never looked into the subject, there are those who do not dare to face the facts revealed by dream study. Dreams tell us many an unpleasant biological truth about ourselves and only very free minds can thrive on such a diet. Self-deception is ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... seems!" Chisholm was almost too hot to sneer. "But can't you realize how your action ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... You are a person who stickles for your hours—you won't do anything extra for me.' There was a sneer in ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there. But that doesn't make it gentlemanly, that doesn't make it honourable, that doesn't justify throwing a person back upon himself after he has struggled and strived out of himself like a butterfly. The world may sneer at a turnkey, but he's a man—when he isn't a woman, which among female criminals he's expected ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... with something between a smile and a sneer. 'David and Jonathan—or, to be more classical and less scriptural, Damon and Pythias—eh?' These papers, then, are from the faithful abroad, the exiles in Holland, ye understand, who are thinking of making a move and of coming over to see King ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... camps, frowning mutual defiance; and, if not terminating in war, must, if not arrested, end in embargoes and non-intercourse, or discriminating duties on imports and tonnage, greatly injurious to both countries. I know it has become fashionable in England and America to sneer at the fact of our common origin; but the great truth still exists, and is fraught with momentous consequences, for good or evil, to both nations, and to mankind. The United States were colonized mainly by the people of England. Ten of our original thirteen States bear English ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... said the scoundrel with a sneer. "Work, work, work. You and me, Mas' Don, is treated worse than the black niggers as cuts the sugar-canes down, and hoes the 'bacco in the ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... the elder woman's sneer dulled the edge of Claire's anticipations, but presently the man began to speak, and at once she felt a sense of power back of his halting words, a sudden bursting fort of bloom amid the frozen assembly that sat ice-bound, refusing to be melted by the fires of an alien ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... it seems has made his mind to bestow upon her his hand, his few remaining acres, and," with a sneer, "his ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... a sly old fellow rose, and waving his long brush with a graceful air, said, with a sneer, that if, like the last speaker, he had been so unfortunate as to lose his tail, nothing further would have been needed to convince him; but till such an accident should happen, he should certainly ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... he ended, with a sneer, "perhaps as the world views these things there is a certain greatness in ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... and girls are alike in this, and will be so, let us hope, to the end of time. Even we old fellows recall those old-time stories with something of the same awe-struck admiration, and something of the same unquestioning belief, with which we listened to them, I don't know how many years ago. We sneer at the improbabilities and inconsistencies of modern fiction; but who thinks of being startled at the charming incongruities, the bold but fascinating impossibilities, of Cinderella, and Aladdin, and Puss ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... with a laugh that had a little sneer in it, "put them to the test! I will not object to that, if you will only keep your notions to yourself. Now, Christian, give me your word for silence, and we will freeze here ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... kindly-natured persons would say, in the event of my returning to England empty-handed, were I to lead the steadiest life possible.—"Here is Frank Lorton back again like a bad penny!"—they would sneer.—"Reformed from all his wild ways, eh? Really, Mrs Grundy, you must not expect us to believe that! Can the leopard change his spots?"—and so on; or else, kindly hint, that,—"when the devil was ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... I did not provide for him," he said with a sneer. "Adam, his brother, could do naught for him: he is poor as a church-mouse, poorer even than I—but nathless," he added with a violent oath, "it strikes everyone as madness that I should keep a secretary when I scarce can pay the wages of a ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... the fine sneer that accompanies it, escape her, she becomes aware that Desmond himself has come to the foot of the stairs, and ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... refrain from a sneer at Plutarch as a pedant who thought himself a great philosopher and a great politician. Pedant he may have been; philosopher and politician he may not have been; but he was, nevertheless, the prince of biographers. Macaulay has praised Boswell's "Life of Johnson" as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... 15) we have the old sneer at the three insatiables, Hell, Earth and the Parts feminine (os vulvae); and Rabbinical learning has embroidered these and other texts, producing a truly hideous caricature. A Hadis attributed to Mohammed runs, "They (women) lack wits and faith. When Eve was created Satan rejoiced ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... sententious bits of wisdom, inscribed on decorated scrolls or embroidered on rich crapes and brocades. They carve them on door-posts and pillars, and emblazon them on the walls and ceilings in gilt letters. The following are a few specimens of this sort of literature: As a sneer at the use of unnecessary force to crush a contemptible enemy, they say: "He rides a fierce dog to catch a lame rabbit." Similar to this is another, "To use a battle-ax to cut off a hen's head." They say of wicked ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... favouring me with a particularly sardonic look, but at these words the sneer was wiped out, and ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... assented Miss Varnham; but her smile was so like a sneer, and her glance about the room so cold and contemptuous, that Peggy felt dislike hardening at ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... reason of the extraordinary nature of the views expressed, and the author's well-known tendency to build magnificent structures on a slight foundation, his later writings were received, for the most part by critics utterly incompetent to understand them, with a sneer, or what seems to have grieved the writer more, in silence. Now that the great Americanist is dead, while it is not likely that his theories will ever be received, his zeal in the cause of antiquarian science, ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... came you and your fellow-sufferers to be adrift in that boat?" demanded Renouf, unceremoniously cutting short my expression of thanks. I could not help thinking that there was more than the suspicion of a mocking sneer in the tone in which he uttered the words "you and your fellow-sufferers". Moreover there was a distinct air of discourtesy in his manner of interrupting me, and a suggestion of antagonism in his flashing eyes that put me on my guard; so, curbing a very decided disposition ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... your present purposes," said Wellmere, with a sneer; "but I apprehend it is opposed to all the opinions and practices ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Sir Oracle got to say about it?" he demanded, with something like a covert sneer. "You'll know all about it, Krevin, ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... three of them. The tears of indignation were still standing in Christine's eyes. He willfully misinterpreted their significance. A hateful tenderness came into his voice, but it did not disturb the sneer ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... much of a Christian for that. Yes, you can sneer. He is a Christian and a gentleman. You are not worthy to touch the ground beneath his feet. He would not leave you without help. Since you have been ill, he has given part of each day to working in your garden; and he ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... a contemptuous sneer at this, and replied, "Ay, ay, I will venture him with you. He is too well grounded for all your philosophical cant to hurt. No, no, I have taken care to instil ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... sensibilities of his neighbours. More than once he deliberately recommended wickedness so horrible that wicked men recoiled from it with indignation. But they could not succeed even in making their scruples intelligible to him. To every remonstrance he listened with a cynical sneer, wondering within himself whether those who lectured him were such fools as they professed to be, or ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... isn't a pretty go!" he exclaimed, with a sneer. "So you've come here looking for work, have you? I'd like to know what you know about railroad business, anyhow? No, sir; you won't get a job on this road, not if I can help it, and I rather think I can. The best thing for you to do is to go back to Euston, ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... not put any value on themselves, are slow to take offence. It was not that she did not perceive a slight, or a rebuff, or a sneer at her expense, but she never, so to speak, picked up the offence flung at her. She let it lie, by the same instinct that led her to step aside in a narrow path rather than that her skirt should touch a dead mole. No one could know Magdalen long without seeing that she lived by a kind of spiritual ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... will do, I suppose," continued the Baital, with a sneer, "is to support the opinions of the Digambara, who maintains that the soul is exceedingly rarefied, confined to one place, and of equal dimensions with the body, or the fancies of that worthy philosopher Jaimani, who, conceiving soul and mind and matter to be things purely synonymous, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... speaks of the author's "characteristic unselfishness" in ascribing the theory of Natural Selection "unreservedly to Mr. Darwin." about Wallace in Lubbock's last chapter. I had not heard that Huxley had backed up Lubbock about Parliament...Did you see a sneer some time ago in the "Times" about how incomparably more interesting politics were compared with science even to scientific men? Remember what Trollope says, in 'Can you Forgive her,' about getting into ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... you?' he asked, with a sneer, 'if he tempted you now it would only be to betray you later! He hankers after Maasau, but remember my cousin in England. He has claims which ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... and manner. In the discourse the subject was changed from the wearing of gay clothing to the practise of tobacco using. When the habit of using snuff was mentioned the plain lady's smile was turned to a sneer, and the fashionable lady's sneer was turned to a smile. Afterwards in conversation the fashionable lady said she believed it was a sin to use snuff, but she could not see any evil in wearing gay and fine clothing. The plain lady said she thought it was a sin to wear ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... epic. The term "Epic Satire" (p. 6) certainly seems to refer to the wedding of two disparate genres in The Dunciad, lifting it above satire that is merely "rugged" or "mischievously gay" (p. 8). (The epithet is also, perhaps, a thrust at Edward Ward, who had pinned it on The Dunciad with a sneer.)[22] Harte's claim that ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... 16th November, 1250 men were put ashore, under Gordon, without hindrance from the enemy, who were ready to take to flight before such a force. Gordon's idea was to advance in a hollow square, which, in spite of Hamilton's sneer at him as a 'freshwater land officer,' was a good enough formation in the circumstances; but so much time was consumed in getting the men into the required formation, owing to the inexperience and want of discipline among both officers and men, that the ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... in, boldly, without being invited, and looked around. I detected a sneer in his voice as he said, "So this ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... where yours begins," said he, with his best sneer. "I grudge none of the trouble I have taken for the dear boy, but I must decline to remain here as the assistant of Signor ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... ached like a living wound. She had told so little, and he could guess so much. This unknown man who had triumphed seemed to sneer scornfully at ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the theatre, or even at Baroness Dinati's; longing to break the dull monotony of his now ruined life; and, with a sort of bravado, looking society and opinion full in the face, as if to surprise a smile or a sneer at his expense, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... holidays, and they then increased their exertions to make Mr. Lincoln issue a proclamation abolishing slavery. At the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, held at Boston, in January, 1862, Wendell Phillips, with a sneer, expressed himself thus: "Mr. Seward had predicted that the war would be over in ninety days, but he didn't believe, as things were going, it would be over in ninety years. He believed Lincoln was honest, but as a pint-pot may be full, and yet not be so full ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... a villain game, and answered only with a sneer. It was that packet of Mira's letters handed to Davies with his father's watch that supplemented Brannan's story and told him all. Mira could not live without adorers, could not resist the longing to flaunt her victims in the faces of other girls, and Powlett was a conquest indeed until ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... caused the thief to fall, But—he was very hungry, and lonely, too, and cold; And youth lay all behind him, a tattered funeral pall, For he was very tired, and he was growing old. It was a glowing ruby that lay upon the breast Of one who had not earned it, who wore it with a sneer; The thief was very weary, he only longed for rest; He was too wan for caring, he was ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... forgiveness. "Your apology is ample, Sieur Deschenaux. I am satisfied you meant no affront to my sister! It is my weak point, messieurs," continued he, looking firmly at the company, ready to break out had he detected the shadow of a sneer upon any one's countenance. "I honor her as I do the queen of heaven. Neither of their names ought to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... out. The original edition of "Why are the many poor?" differs very little from that now in circulation. It was revised some years later by Bernard Shaw, who cut down the rhetoric and sharpened the phraseology, but the substance has not been changed. It is remarkable as containing a sneer at Christianity, the only one to be found in the publications of the Society. Perhaps this was a rebound from excess of "subordination of material things to spiritual things" insisted on by the Fellowship of ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... time. A struggle was evidently going on in his mind. But the sneer on Hall's face ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the habit in America and in England to sneer at German singers; and it is customary if a German singer has a good mellow voice to attribute that to his Italian method, while his shortcomings are ascribed to the German method. This, again, is as absurd as it ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... With half a sneer on his astute face, Lawrence drawled: "I cannot see that you have accomplished anything by this rather extraordinary summoning of us to your laboratory. The evidence is just as black against Dr. Gregory as before. You may think you're clever, Kennedy, ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... or twenty guns, and have a hundred and fifty men on board, and they'll swear they fought us for three hours. They have something to boast of, that's certain; and I suspect that French captain is a brave sort of chap, from the sneer he gave when our cowardly English lubber gave him so fine a speech. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... whatever, of having brought my task unprepared to the school-room. The words almost stifled me. I fain would have pleaded illness or some other false reason for my transgression. Nothing seemed so dreadful as to provoke a sneer from my ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... in turning the car—"what you doing in that outlandish rig, anyhow? Must think you're one o' them Wild West cowboys or something. Huh!" This last carried a sneer that stung. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson |
