"Sarcastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must have a compelling manner. He must be gabby and stentorian, witheringly sarcastic and plaintively cajoling. He must be able to detect the faintest symptoms of avarice and desire in the blink of an eyelid, in the tilt of a head. Behind his sing-song of patter as he knocks down a piece of useless bric-a-brac ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... begun to regard his wife with passionate admiration, became cold and sarcastic in his demeanor toward her. The hours which, until the emperor's arrival in Paris, he had spent with Marie Antoinette, were now dedicated to his ministers, to Madame Adelaide, and even to the Count de Provence—that brother whose enmity to the queen ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... John Bunyan's ingenious book is his strong sense and his sarcastic and humorous vein better displayed than just in his description of By-ends, and in the full and particular account he gives of the kinsfolk and affinity of By-ends. Is there another single stroke in all sacred literature better fitted at once to teach the gayest ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... the chapel was in full swing. A roar of voices raised in a marching hymn swept out to the deserted street. Dean's lips curved contemptuously for a moment. Then the whim came to him to finish his night's amusement by a sarcastic enjoyment of the revivalist service. He would go inside and watch other people ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... hand to his mouth to conceal the swift, sarcastic smile on his lips. He spat toward the pathside before agreeing seriously with ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... privately to his friends; but, if he is ever bitter in his public utterances, it is against priests[28] in general and theological enthusiasts and fanatics in particular; if he ever seems insincere, it is when he wishes to insult theologians by a parade of sarcastic respect. One need go no further than the peroration of the Essay on Miracles for ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... and marvelled; marvelled and was indignant—indignant with the printer or the telegrapher, for making so careless and so dreadful an error. And greatly distressed, too; for, of course, the newspaper people would fall foul of it, and be sarcastic, and make fun of it, and have a blithe time over it, and be properly thankful for the chance. It shows how innocent he was; it shows that he did not know the limitations of newspaper men in the matter of Biblical knowledge. The new verse 53 raised no insurrection in the press; in fact, it was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shoulders in an indifferent sarcasm. She was often both sarcastic and indifferent in her manner ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... service of man being the true service of God, the relation of the two terms is precisely the opposite, and it is the service of God that will effloresce into all service of man. Judas did not do much for the poor, and a great many other people who are sarcastic upon the 'folly,' the 'uncalculating impulses' of Christian love, with its 'wasteful expenditure,' and criticise us because we are spending time and energy and love upon objects which they think are moonshine and mist, do little more than he did, and what beneficence ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... when people heard that Bernard Shaw was witty, as he most certainly was, when they heard his mots repeated like those of Whistler or Wilde, when they heard things like "the Seven deadly Virtues" or "Who was Hall Caine?" they expected another of these silent sarcastic dandies who went about with one epigram, patient and poisonous, like a bee with his one sting. And when they saw and heard the new humorist they found no fixed sneer, no frock coat, no green carnation, no ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... urge him on?" rejoined Lin Tai-y, with a sarcastic smile, "nor will I trouble myself to give him advice. You, old lady, are far too scrupulous! Old lady Chia has also time after time given him wine, and if he now takes a cup or two more here, at his aunt's, lady Hseh's house, there's no harm that I can see. Is it perhaps, who knows, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... seem to carry much of it around with you," suggested Dale bluntly, casting a sarcastic ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... once so meek and so sublime, that, if a feeling spirit had been poisoned with misanthropy from too close a contemplation of mortal crimes, this character alone might serve as an antidote to the word of mental distempers, and awaken the most callous and sarcastic mind to confess the dignity of our Nature, and the beneficence of our God. In stating to you the merits of HOWARD, I might expatiate with delight on the various qualities of this incomparable man; I might trace his progress through ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... group round the young Barclays was a lieutenant of Mobiles; who evidently by no means approved of the attention, and interest which they excited among the ladies; and who had made several sarcastic remarks, during the course of the narrative. Presently a servant came in and, walking up to Monsieur Teclier, said that two swords had been picked up; had they fallen from ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... to note the more genial nuance of mockery. Raillery vibrated almost in the very tones of his voice, which had become clear and penetrating under the stimulus of her presence, but it passed away in tenderness, and the sarcastic wrinkles vanished from the corners of his mouth as he made the pathetic jest ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... fables, that were invented or derived from any other source, were attributed. He was a slave, whose wit and pleasantry procured him his freedom, and who finally perished in Delphi, where the people, exasperated by his sarcastic fables, put him to death on a charge of robbing the temple. No metrical versions of these fables are known to ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... salmon-brick, I should not have given him two thumbs on each hand, and I should have tried not to slue his right eye around so that he could see around the back of his head to his left ear. And Barker said, 'Oh, wouldn't you?' Sarcastic, your honour. And I said, 'No, I wouldn't'; and I wouldn't have painted oak-leaves on a cherry-tree; and I wouldn't have left the spectator in doubt as to whether the figure off by the woods was a factory chimney, or a steamboat, or George Washington's ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... you see it is sometimes necessary to tell white lies, and I think that after to-night I am entitled to a prize for general proficiency in this respect. Of course," she added, dropping her sarcastic tone, "you will not misinterpret anything that I was forced to say to Olfan with reference to yourself, because you know that those statements were the biggest fibs of all. Just then, had it been needful, I should have been prepared to swear that ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... not undertaken to kill Mr. Smith. He never told any one that he had, and did not intend to kill him or do him serious injury. The murderous-looking gas pipe club on exhibition on the Judge's Bench gave this part of the testimony a rather sarcastic tinge. In continuing, he got Kelly to say he did not think he had hurt Smith seriously, but simply that he had fulfilled his contract. It came out that, while living in Marlboro, Kelly was a barkeeper, and was seen drinking with others in a hotel. There is apparently a good opportunity ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... a gasp, but nothing came of it; Quilp resumed, with the same malice in his eye and the same sarcastic ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the train to Wadi Haifa in a chastened mood. Obviously the message was of very little, if indeed of any, importance. A man can hardly swing up to extravagant hopes without dropping to sarcastic self-reproaches on his flightiness and vanity. He was not aware that the young aide-de-camp pushed aside some pressing work to make sure that he did go on the train; or that when the last carriage disappeared ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... holler," I says, "but I guess it must of been a squirrel." I said it kind o' sarcastic like, fur I was still mad with myself fur being so dumb when we first seen each other. I hadn't no idea it would hurt her feelings as hard as it did. But all of a sudden she begins to wink, and her chin trembled, and she turned around short, and started to walk off slow. She was ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... lady," the tall man continued in a sarcastic tone, "permit me to present you to Mademoiselle Florine, waitress and decoy pigeon for Betrand's wine rooms, where gentlemen sometimes ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... he much surprised to find Miss Wallen no longer at her instrument, but leaning wearily against the casement, apparently gazing out into the street. "You see," he began, with cold, sarcastic emphasis, "the power to lock one door does not make a woman the mistress of an entire situation. It would have been better had you accepted what was meant for your good and spared me the necessity of forcing it upon you, as it were; but I have had my own sisters ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... the shows provided for it, crave something higher and more intellectual,—like, for example, a course of the Lowell Lectures? Its general expression had changed: it had no longer that entire gayety of the first day, but had taken on something of the sarcastic pathos with which we Americans bear most oppressive and fatiguing things as a good joke. The dust was blown about in clouds; and here and there, sitting upon the vacant steps that led up and down ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Ionian is too sarcastic Upon a nation whom she knows not well; The Assyrians know no pleasure but their King's, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... spirit of the party—a tall, self-conscious rooster, attired, apparently, in a scarlet cap, a light gray suit with voluminous knickerbockers, and yellow stockings—studied the new-comers, with his head to one side, expressing himself in sarcastic gutturals. ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... twinkling eyes and a pernicketty strong will, and a brogue she transferred deliciously into her broken French. She loved the children, yet did not win their love in return, because they stood in awe of her sarcastic criticisms. Life had gone hardly with her; she had lost her fortune and her children, all but this daughter, with whose marriage she was keenly disappointed. An aristocrat to the finger-tips, she could not accept the change of circumstances; ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... so briefly, as much of it has already appeared in the narrative, occupied the court more than one day, including the different cross-examinations of several witnesses, by the defendants: this duty fell to the lot of Mr. Grant, who carried it on in his usual dry, sarcastic manner, but was unable to effect any important change in the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Sarcastic joke Replete with malice spiteful, The people vile Politely smile And vote me quite delightful! Now, when a wight Sits up all night Ill-natured jokes devising, And all his wiles Are met with smiles, It's hard, there's no disguising! Oh, don't the days seem lank and long When all ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... shown us, there seemed to be an endless supply of these art-treasures in reserve. On the wall hung a crayon-portrait of Sterne, never engraved, representing him as a rather young man, blooming, and not uncomely: it was the worldly face of a man fond of pleasure, but without that ugly, keen, sarcastic, odd expression that we see in his only engraved portrait. The picture is an original, and must needs be very valuable; and we wish it might be prefixed to some new and worthier biography of a writer whose character the world ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... such phrases as "Ah! yes! You're religious, too. You wouldn't put yourself in opposition to the interests of your husband and child, would you? Not you!" and throwing off other sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparation for business. In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes, and whose young eyes ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... space of time. Unfortunately, however, formal work did not content him; and one day he carried to Rubinstein two or three eccentric little pieces, on which he had expended both energy and admiration. Here, at last, the great Anton found his opportunity. He whipped Ivan's work to rags with sarcastic criticism; leaving not one measure untouched by his caustic and rather brutal wit. Next day he received his young pupil's resignation from his classes; and the gay world regained its pet. For Ivan, in a fit of childish anger, left his work behind ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... tin cup and pretended not to pay any attention to her brother. She knew her uncalled-for, sarcastic remark had offended him. Had it been anyone else, she would have made ample apology, but it was only poor old Hugh—it was not necessary to trouble herself about him. He would "come round" after ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... his scholastic pursuits; the redoubtable Conqueror beat his rebellious sweetheart into matrimony. The flickering light of a wood fire served not merely to illuminate the actual portraits, but almost to discover the sarcastic face of the anonymous artist, smiling in triumph from the background. On the hearth in front of the fire stood the philosopher in earnest conversation with a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... intellectual power, the bitterest and most obstinate personal rancor to give way. He compelled pompous, despotic, and hostile judges to yield. He could not be awed. If they were haughty, he was proud. If they were malevolent, he was cuttingly sarcastic. ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... life, and I am not going to begin now!" Nor had he any use for bitter speech even in cold blood. "One thing," he said in a letter, "I will now correct; a sneer—intentionally or consciously— is a thing that, so far as my memory serves, I am as innocent of as a little babe." Yet he could be sarcastic, as the following memorandum shows: "Cardinal Cullen once said to me, after I had made a journey through Ireland, 'Well, Father Hecker, what do you think of Ireland?' I answered: 'Your Eminence, my thoughts about Ireland are such that I will get out of the country as soon ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... sarcastic, however great the temptation, but just talk straight on. What did the world, as a rule, think of the great fortune-makers of your time? What sort of human types did they represent? As to intellectual culture, it was held as an axiom that ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... urge him on?" rejoined Lin Tai-yue, with a sarcastic smile, "nor will I trouble myself to give him advice. You, old lady, are far too scrupulous! Old lady Chia has also time after time given him wine, and if he now takes a cup or two more here, at his aunt's, lady Hsueeh's house, there's no harm that I can see. Is it perhaps, who knows, that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... certainly promising a good deal," said the sarcastic Hendrik, "and I hope that Willem will not be too greedy in his request, but will leave something for ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... blanket about and sat up on his bunk. The sarcastic voice stirred his bile, and suddenly there boomed in his memory a woman's call for help. The hooded motor-car, the muffled cry of terror, the inert figure being lifted over the side of the yacht—these things crowded on his ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... and literally a gentle-man. I never heard him utter a hasty, angry, fault-finding word. His voice was uniformly pitched at a rather low tone, perfectly even, although lances of his eyes and slight intonations of his voice often indicated that something funny or mildly sarcastic was coming, but upon the whole he was serious and industrious, and, however deep and fun-provoking a story might be, he ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... hardly worth while to contend about the difference," he replied, with a sarcastic expression which I did not much like. "It is sufficient to say, however, that these projectors have no reason to complain; for with whatever show of reason men think or act here, so under exactly the same laws of thought and emotion do ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... taking a very inconvenient time for its spasms. It may result in spasmodically losing Billy his seat in the council in November. Nice thing if we didn't have a clear majority of aldermen next winter, wouldn't it?" Mr. Murdock was becoming finely sarcastic ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... knots for a gait, or you can use my head for a rivet nut!" He yanked the cord and the freighter howled angrily. The other replied with bellowing roar—autocratic, domineering. With irony, with vindictiveness, Captain Wass pitched his voice in sarcastic nasal tone and recited another rule—thereby trying to express his irate opinion of ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... with his sarcastic impudence, summed up the situation. "When Anarchism flourishes, everything flourishes, eh? That bomb has helped on the affairs of a good many fine fellows that I know. Do you think that my governor Fonsegue, who's so attentive to Silviane yonder, complains ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... felt as though, the railway carriages were full and he ought to say continually, "Now, Bim, be quiet. Sit still and look at the picture-book I gave you. Sarah, I shall leave you at the next station if you aren't careful," and that she replied, giving him one of her dark sarcastic looks, "I don't care if you do. I know how to get home all right ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... and 10 are generally taken as a sarcastic quotation of the drunkards' scoffs at the prophet. They might be put in inverted commas. Their meaning is, 'Does he take us grave and reverend seigniors, priests and prophets, to be babies just weaned, that he pesters us with these monotonous petty preachings, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... by the introduction of dots, and, in some cases, by the insertion of minute sketches of animals, birds, arrows, signs of the zodiac, etc., with here and there one of a humorous, possibly sarcastic, nature. ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... But on the following morning, conversation at the breakfast-table naturally referring to the great loss which the bishop had sustained, Mrs Quiverful thus pronounced her opinion of her friend's character: "You'll find that he'll feel it, Q," she said to her husband, in answer to some sarcastic remark made by him as to the removal of the thorn. "He'll feel it, though she was almost too many for him ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... we reached his office was busy designing a schoolhouse. On the stairs the bookseller had whispered to me that every workman in Cordova would die for Azorin. He was a sallow little man with a vaguely sarcastic voice and an amused air as if he would burst out laughing at any moment. He put aside his plans and we all went on to see the editor of Andalusia, a regionalist ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... paused a moment as if expecting an answer to her highly sarcastic question, but Paul felt that no advantage would be gained by saying more.. He was not naturally a quick-tempered buy, and had only been led to this little ebullition by the wanton attack ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... would have said is uncertain, for at that very moment the drama was further developed by the slow movement of the door, and the revelation of half of Uncle Samuel's body, clothed in its stained blue painting smock, and his ugly fat face clothed in its usual sarcastic smile. ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... most of his time travelling from house to house in the village, smoking his pipe in neighbourly kitchens and fanning into an active blaze all the smouldering feuds of the place. He had been nicknamed "The Morning Chronicle" by a sarcastic schoolteacher who had sojourned a winter at the Corner. The name was an apt one and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to have a rather sudden change in your opinion of me." He tried to be sarcastic. And he leaned back, ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... Englishman, with rather a full face, florid, almost rubicund, and keen, kindly eyes, and, after forty, abundant gray hair. He had a conspicuous, almost a commanding figure, with a certain awkwardness in his gait. He had a misshaped nose, caused by an accident in boyhood, and a sarcastic twinkle oftentimes in his eyes, which changed the expression ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... and sarcastic upon one!" replied he, tartly; "my only desire was to secure a good fortune for you, and another for myself. I don't see, for my part, what women are made for, except to mar everything a man wants to do for ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... cross," rejoined the Rover, with a sarcastic laugh; "on this diamond-mounted cross! No, sir," he added, with a proud curl of the lip, as he cast the jewel contemptuously aside, "oaths are made for men who need laws to keep them to their promises; I need no ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... some human feeling, anyway. She cares for something besides musty books and dry bones. I think, Ruth, when I die," said Philip, intending to be very grim and sarcastic, "I'll leave you my skeleton. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... my way to Cambridge there; but I was sceptical of the direction the Cambridge horse-car took when I found it, and I hinted to the driver my anxieties as to why he should be starting east when I had been told that Cambridge was west of Boston. He reassured me in the laconic and sarcastic manner of his kind, and we really reached Cambridge by the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Ladies first-and last," was the equally sarcastic answer. "I cabled to Castlegarry, his father's place, also to Lammis that he mentioned when he told us his story. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in her face, or her manner, or her deadly silence, broken only by that seemingly almost sarcastic cry—began ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... all this gossip in some eminently respectable place?" I snapped at him in a most sarcastic tone. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... assembly had appropriated L1200 for building a new pier at the harbor of Block Island (R.I. Col. Recs., IV. 502, 508, 512), and had not appropriated more since; but since the progress made had not been great, the quartermaster may be speaking in the vein of sarcastic prophecy.] ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... and leaned against the improvised table, laughing still in the same suppressed manner, and glancing at the young man, who replied to this dreadful mirth with a sarcastic smile. ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... debater who is inclined to belittle his opponents will only belittle himself. To the judges it will appear that the speaker who has time to ridicule his adversaries must be a little short of arguments. Insinuations of dishonesty and attempts to be sarcastic should be carefully avoided. These weapons are sharp but they are two-edged and are more likely to injure the ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... saw a woman walking rapidly along the road to meet him, and when he came a little nearer, he perceived that it was Tabitha. Gently urging his horse forward, they met in a few minutes. The expression of Tabitha's face alarmed Roger greatly. She was not wont to look so moved and troubled. Grim and sarcastic, even angry, he had seen her many times; but grieved and sorrowful—this was not like Tabitha. Roger's first fear was that she had come to give him some terrible news of Christie. Yet her opening words were not those of ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... generously sent back an old woman's finger and gold ring, which one of our soldiers had cut off, the Duc d'Aiguillon has sent a cartel-ship with the prisoner-spoons. How they must be diverted with this tea-equipage, stamped with the Blenheim eagles! and how plain by this sarcastic compliment what they think of US! Yet We fancy that we detain forty thousand men on the coast from Prince Clermont's army! We are sending nine thousand men to Prince Ferdinand; part, those of the expedition: the remainder are to make another attempt; perhaps ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... lot in the papers about this new shaving, sir. It seems you can shave yourself with anything—with a stick or a stone or a pole or a poker" (here I began for the first time to detect a sarcastic intonation) "or ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... suppose. Is the sky blue? You poor critter, you never saw blue sky worth being called blue in the same day with it. And I should rather fancy that the sun did shine I should. And the moon doesn't shine either. O no! (This last is sarcastic.) Mentone is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and has always had a very warm corner in my heart since first I knew ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... friends of all, and thwacked and banged his enemies into respectful silence. Felix made friends of none, and was equally despised by nominal friends and actual enemies. Oliver was open and jovial; Felix reserved and contemptuous, or sarcastic in manner. His slender frame, too tall for his width, was against him; he could neither lift the weights nor undergo the muscular strain readily borne by Oliver. It was easy to see that Felix, although nominally the eldest, had not yet reached his full development. A light ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... host of the Hand and Bottle," he cried in his usual hard, sarcastic tone; "be a man as much as in you lies. You had always a foolish trick of repentance; but, as I remember, it was commonly of a morning, before you had swallowed your first dram. And now, Hugh, fill the quart pot again, and we ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... these master-hands are favourable; and they were, in both instances, written under the influence of strong, yet transient impressions of disappointment and suspicion. The mind naturally seeks for some safer steersman to guide opinion than the intemperate though honest Jacobite, Lockhart, or the sarcastic and slippery friend, Sinclair. The worst peculiarity in the career of Mar was, that no one trusted him; towards the latter portion of his life he had even lost the power of deceiving: it had become impossible to him ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... she answered, with a faint sarcastic smile. "It goes to my heart to decline so charming an invitation. But, to tell you the truth, it would ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to Goutran's apartment. As he passed through the vestibule he heard a sarcastic laugh. He was of course mistaken, for only Goutran, with Carmen, were coming down the stairs—Monsieur de Laisangy, Comte ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... rose; his broad-shouldered figure loomed up proudly, a sarcastic smile played on his angular and well-marked features; his shaggy white eyebrows convulsively contracted up to this moment—the only outward symptom of anger which Thugut, even under the most provoking circumstances, ever exhibited—relaxed and became calm and serene ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... does is incalculable. He is, in fact, simple, kind-hearted, and truly religious. In addition to all, he is a considerable bit of a humorist; when the good man's mind is easy, his humor is kindly, rich, and mellow; but, when any way in dudgeon, it is comically sarcastic." ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... few blows, Brogten was disarmed by intense surprise. Of all receptions, this was the only one which it had never occurred to him to contemplate. He had imagined Julian bitter, sarcastic, cold; he had prepared himself for a torrent of passionate and overwhelming invective; he had thought how to behave if Julian remained silent, or rejected with simple contempt his stammered apology; but to be horse-whipped ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... knowledge would have absorbed willingly any account of Staunton's appearance and manners, his elevated eyebrows and rolling forehead, Munchausen anecdotes, Havannah cigars and tobacco plantations, Buckle's peculiarities, pedantic and sarcastic Johnsonian's gold-headed walking stick, so often lost yet always found, but once, and the frequent affinity between his hat and the spittoon, the yet greater absence of mind of Morphy and Paulsen and their only speeches, the gallantry, kid gloves, lectures of Lowenthal and ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... bridge of Dee." This was a skirmish which took place on the 19th of June, 1638, in which Middleton had displayed great zeal for the covenant, in opposition to Charles I. He took no notice of Mr. Dickson's sarcastic remark.—Kirkton's "History of the Church of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... songs I learn'd in the army. I make the echoes ring, I tell you! As the twilight fell, in a pause of these ebullitions, an owl somewhere the other side of the creek sounded too-oo-oo-oo-oo, soft and pensive (and I fancied a little sarcastic) repeated four or five times. Either to applaud the negro songs—or perhaps an ironical comment on the sorrow, anger, or style of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... when last summer they were upbraided for doing a little war against the Chips, in spite of Washington, with the sarcastic reply of a chief, who said: 'Our Great Father, we know, has always told us it was wrong to make war; yet now he himself is making war, and killing a great many. Will you explain this to us? We do ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... its three worlds or spheres. His other principal work, De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artium Atque Excellentia Verbi Dei Declamatio, was written about 1527 and published at Antwerp in 1531. This is a sarcastic attack on the existing sciences and on the pretensions of learned men. In it Agrippa denounces the accretions which had grown up around the simple doctrines of Christianity, and wishes for a return to the primitive belief of the early ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "Young's Night Thought—Wish I hadn't franked that letter!" Its appearance in Punch caused Mr. Sparkes to buttonhole the writer at the Reform Club, and excitedly dilate on the mischief that was being done to the Party by such very public and sarcastic means. Thackeray burst out laughing—"the mountain shook," says the historian—but felt a little genuine pleasure at ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... their coolness, from talking at meals; though, for the last few mornings, the vicar had been forced to strain his mind to find beguiling topics on which to loosen her tongue. If the narrow limits of this history permitted us to report even one of the conversations which often brought a bitter and sarcastic smile to the lips of the Abbe Troubert, it would offer a finished picture of the Boeotian life of the provinces. The singular revelations of the Abbe Birotteau and Mademoiselle Gamard relating to their ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... of yourself in those matters. Still, he keeps saying that I am to write to you and dissuade you from thinking of him. I never saw Papa make himself so uneasy about a thing of the kind before; he is usually very sarcastic on ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... little laugh,—not a harsh, sarcastic one, but playful, and tempered by so kind a look that it seemed as if every wrinkled line about his old eyes repeated, "God bless you," as the tracings on the walls of the Alhambra repeat a sentence ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... During the last few weeks she had seen him several times give way to sudden temper, but even these outbursts, unprecedented though they were in her experience of him, had not seemed to her so foreign to his usual affable manner and pleasant speech as did the harsh, sarcastic antagonism of the voice in which she could hear ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... to four the big Hall began to fill. Everybody was there. Fellows who were on the list, sanguine, anxious, touchy; fellows who were not on the list, cross, sarcastic, righteous. Nearly every one had his paper in his hand, which he furtively glanced through for the last time before the summons to deposit it in the basket ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... sarcastic. Shelton looked hastily around. All their faces were complacent. He grew red, and suddenly remarked, in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... pat remark upon his inconsistency was at her tongue's tip. But she realized that he had spoken impulsively, unguardedly, and she felt that it would be little short of sacrilege to be even gently sarcastic after the exalted revelation he had made ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... an excuse. She had stopped in the house all the evening, thinking that he might have been detained by an accident to his automobile; but the hours had dragged on emptily. Nothing happened except a bad headache, and a quarrel with her mother, who was ungratefully inclined to be sarcastic at her expense. ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... headed by the pipers, who commenced their inspiring skirl to the beat of the drums, they moved away over the rough, broken ground, the general standing astraddle and watching it all through his monocle with critical eye, and keeping up a fire of sarcastic comment directed ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... the effect of this strange convocation of persons, at night and in a mist which was itself a nightmare, that I failed to take action and remained riveted to my place, while Mr. Smead consulted his roll and finally asked in a business-like tone, quite unlike his previous sarcastic speech, the names of those whom he had the pleasure ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... and, above all, patriot. It is his portrait that you see in that old palace (called the Palace of the Prince because Charles V. had called him Prince) overlooking the port, where he sits an old, old man, very weary, in the sole society of his sarcastic cat, as I have noted before. The cat seems to have just passed some ironical reflection on the vanity of human things and to be studying him for the effect. Both appear indifferent to the spectator, but perhaps they are not, and you must ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... reading, and her husband took care to place in her way certain fascinating writers, then quite popular, whose frequent merry flashes and sarcastic allusions to the "orthodoxy" tended more surely than serious reasoning would have done to make her think lightly of the faith in which she had been trained. The old-fashioned Bible was skilfully tortured out of its plainest meaning ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... in India in the launching of ships. It is told of one, that, being directed to force a very large ship into the water, the work proved to much for its strength. Its master, in sarcastic tones bade the keeper take away the lazy beast, and bring another. The poor animal instantly put forth still greater efforts, fractured his skull, and died on ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown
... my motives; and, in fact, if you watch them, you will detect a thinly-disguised envy in their countenances. I violate the laws of mechanics—to use your own sarcastic phrase—for many reasons. I like to be envied when there are solid reasons for it. It gratifies my vanity to be seen in this artistic quarter with a pretty woman on my arm. Again, the sense of possessing you is no longer an abstraction when I hold you bodily, and feel the ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... South Africa. If the noble duke will introduce that subject we shall be happy to discuss it with him. No one could introduce it in a more interesting, and, indeed, in a more entertaining manner than the noble duke, who possesses that sarcastic faculty that so well qualifies him to express his opinion on such a matter. I think, however, that we ought to have had rather longer notice before we were called upon to discuss so large a theme, which has now been brought suddenly before us. If the noble marquis who introduced ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... "Don't be sarcastic," retorted Fullaway. "I'm going to take things clean up from this Federman or Ebers affair. I'm going deep—deep! You'll ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... to Stourwich, tie him up in a sack, and drown him, I suppose," said Tillotson, trying to live up to a reputation several lady friends had bestowed upon him of being sarcastic. ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... detect in the flushed cheek and flashing eye of the Marquise the indications of some new triumph. Little, however, were they prepared for its extent; and when Concini, some minutes afterwards, appeared, with a sarcastic smile upon his lips, and glanced a look of defiance around him, even while he bowed right and left alike to his friends and to his enemies, every pulse quickened with anxiety. The suspense was but momentary. The Italian was preceded by one of the royal pages, who, as the captain of ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... like it," muttered the captain, as the volcano at that moment gave vent to a burst which seemed like a sarcastic laugh at the hermit's opinion, and sent the more timid of the excursionists sprawling down ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... and eyed him with a glance equally shrewd and sarcastic. 'I'll teach him,' he said aside to Mannering, 'the value of the old admonition, Ne accesseris in ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to a somewhat different order of being. She had a strong and handsome face with regular features; a proud mouth, slightly sarcastic in expression; and dark gray eyes given to glow with fiery enthusiasm. Her hair was dark brown, but showed those shades of red in certain lights which betoken an energetic temperament, and good staying power. It ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... embellish the last moments of the apostle of God. On some occasions he betrayed such want of fortitude, such marks of childish impatience, as are in general to be found in men only of the most ordinary stamp; and such as extorted from his wife Ayesha, in particular, the sarcastic remark, that in herself, or any of her family, a similar demeanor would long since have incurred his severe displeasure. * * * He said that the acuteness and violence of his sufferings were necessarily ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... threatened the colony with the fury of his vengeance, and vowed he would report them to the king as in open rebellion against his authority. The colonists were shrewd and firm, and though some made very sarcastic answers to the governor's charges, they were, in ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... "Hold!" said the recluse; "let the victor go; he deserves his liberty for having thus sagaciously liberated himself from his tormentor. Would that we could as easily get rid of ours! How eagerly we should seek the lower branches of the trees!" He gave one of those peculiar, sarcastic laughs, which I observed he was ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... stranger had poured into my wounds with a furious avidity. As I retraced in my mind the loved image of my Minna, and depicted her sweet countenance all pale and in tears, such as I had beheld her in my late disgrace, the bold and sarcastic visage of Rascal would ever and anon thrust itself between us. I hid my face, and fled rapidly over the plains; but the horrible vision unrelentingly pursued me, till at last I sank breathless on the ground, and bedewed it with a ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... were the very reverse of African in their shape, and gave his face a very singular appearance. In repose, his countenance was severe in its expression; but when engaged in agreeable conversation, the thin sarcastic-looking lips would part, displaying a set of dazzlingly white teeth, and the small black eyes would sparkle with animation. The neatness and care with which he was dressed added to the attractiveness of his appearance. His linen ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... note, and so on. At an early stage in her career she followed the custom of the time, and lavished such an abundance of uncalled-for scales and trills and arpeggios and staccatos on her melody, that even Rossini entered a sarcastic protest; but in her later years she has conscientiously followed the indications of the composers. At the same time, she has shown more and more anxiety to win laurels as a dramatic singer. But here the vocal style which she has exclusively ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... he would be very much disturbed if he knew your opinion," was the faintly sarcastic reply. "He happens to be a young man ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... conversation was sparkling and dazzling, and full of startling paradoxes; he had considerable power of sarcastic repartee, and once or twice is reported to have encountered the imperious queen of Austrian society, Madame de Metternich, with her own weapons, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... recovered with remarkable rapidity," said Mrs. Watton, raising a sarcastic eye. "Do you know anything of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... father died. The family, however, did not remove from Somersby, but remained there until 1837. Late in 1832 appeared another volume entitled Poems by Alfred Tennyson. This drew upon the unfortunate author a bitterly sarcastic article in the Quarterly, written probably by its brilliant editor, John Gibson Lockhart. The result of this article was that Tennyson was silent for almost ten years, a period spent in ridding himself of the weaknesses so brutally ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbor. Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... engine answered, in jeering, sarcastic tones, the belligerent cries of men hiding what pounded in their hearts, driving down by sheer will-power the primitive desires of self-preservation. Again was the call repeated. Again was it answered by men who snarled, men ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... I always feel in his presence as one does when standing on the bow of an ocean liner, with the salt breeze whizzing into your heart. He is a force of nature, yet he explains nothing: a thorough man of the world; droll, sarcastic, generous and I believe for democracy he is unequaled by any Tammany politician: he knows more policemen, dopes, conductors, beggars, chauffeurs, gangsters, bartenders, jobless actors, painters, preachers, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Lilly, in the same issue of The Nineteenth Century and After, upon the atrocities recounted in an article on German atrocities in France by Professor Morgan, appearing in the next preceding number. Mr. Lilly quotes Thomas Carlyle's sarcastic words about the "blind loquacious prurience of indiscriminate Philanthropism" that commands no revenge for great injustice. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... have liked to fling a word in about the Englishman's cast of his eye upon inviting lands, but the trot was resumed, the lord of Earlsfont having delivered his mind, and a minute made it happily too late for the sarcastic bolt. Glad that his tongue had been kept from wagging, he trotted along beside his host in the dusky evening over the once contested land where the gentleman's forefathers had done their deeds and firmly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... don't think I should ever be sarcastic to you, do you know? You would only laugh. The point of sarcasm is to ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson |
