"Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... paths. Nor were the freethinkers of the large towns, who shared the missionary's esoteric principles, encouraged; for outwardly, at least, the Mahdi was strictly a Moslem. When people at Kayrawan began to put in practice the missionary's advanced theories, to scoff at all the rules of Islam, to indulge in free love, pig's flesh, and wine, they were sternly brought to order. The mysterious powers expected of a mahdi were sedulously rumored among the credulous ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... bringing the highest quantity of rational enjoyment within the reach of general society, England is wholly superior in civilization to the shivering splendours of the Continent. Foreigners are beginning to learn this; and those who are most disposed to scoff at our taste, are the readiest to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... remain pious in that country (or, rather, we should say, in the capital, for of that we speak,) are unaffectedly so, for they have no worldly benefit to hope for from their piety; the great majority have no religion at all, and do not scoff at the few, for scoffing is the minority's weapon, and is passed always to the weaker side, whatever that may be. Thus H. B. caricatures the Ministers: if by any accident that body of men should be dismissed from their situations, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... concert audience will not raise it. If the audience were left to itself, it would permit late arrivals, and all the disturbance of chatter and movement. To twist the line of Goldsmith, those who came to pray would be at the mercy of those who came to scoff; and such mercy is merciless. The conductor stands in loco parentis. He is the advocatus angeli. He does for the audience what it would not do for itself. He protects it against its own fatal good-nature. He insists that ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... had assembled in the square, despite the increasing rain. Many had come to scoff. What a farce it all would be! They did well, however, to wait two days! The rain was almost over. It would probably stop by the time they ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sumptuous furniture, equipage, and apparel, though without taste or discernment; they indulged their criminal passions to the most scandalous excess; their discourse was the language of pride, insolence, and the most ridiculous ostentation; they affected to scoff at religion and morality, and even to set heaven at defiance. The earl of Nottingham complained in the house of lords of the growth of atheism, profaneness, and immorality; and a bill was brought in for suppressing blasphemy and profaneness. It contained several articles seemingly calculated to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... know what scorn and obloquy and denunciation await that man who stands unawed before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard of individual excellence, perpetuates ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... baffled, angry, selfish man, at whose mercy she would be, with only one word to speak in self-defense and justification; and it was much to be feared that he would, considering the circumstances, reject and scoff at even that. The one word was—she loved him! and, if there be any redeeming virtue in it, let her, in Heaven's name, have the benefit thereof. She ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... says he—to which I, who must prate, Answered, "Yes, Sir, but changeable rather, of late." He took it, I fear, for he lookt somewhat gruff, And handled his new pair of whiskers so rough, That before all the courtiers I feared they'd come off, And then, Lord, how Geramb[2] would triumphantly scoff! ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... from the millions which your steps have bowed? Think ye, ye hold in your ignoble thrall, Mind, soul, thought, taste, hope, feeling, valor, all? No; these unfettered scorn your nerveless hand, Sport at their will, and scoff at your command, Range through arcades of shadow-brooding palms, Snuff their free airs and breathe their floating balms, Or bolder still, on fancy's fiery wing—[22] Caught from their letters at the noon-day spring— With star-eyed science, and her seraph ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... it in the pages of a novel. In endeavouring to depict the characters of the persons of whom I write, I am to a certain extent forced to speak of sacred things. I trust, however, that I shall not be thought to scoff at the pulpit, though some may imagine that I do not feel all the reverence that is due to the cloth. I may question the infallibility of the teachers, but I hope that I shall not therefore be accused of doubt as to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... jerk he flung the linen napkin on the floor, and, dropping the hand which had shaded his face, turned to La Mothe with what seemed a challenge in his eyes, almost a defiance: it was as if he said, Scoff if you dare! And yet in the little heap of interwoven, fine steel rings there was nothing to move either laughter or contempt, and if the quaint velvet mask which lay beside the coat of mail was effeminate in the tinsel of its gold embroidery, it was at least no child's toy to ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... kinds of knowledge in use: the knowledge of arms, and the knowledge of books. The first is the scoff if the wise, whilst the last ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... all! caps off! Old Blue-light's going to pray. Strangle the fool that dares to scoff! Attention! 'tis his way! Appealing from his native sod In forma pauperis to God; "Lay bare Thine arm—stretch forth Thy rod! Amen!" ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... religion to the stage. Mr. Martyn had lived in London and his love of music had taken him to the Continent, but he had been something of a Nationalist, whereas Mr. Moore had lost few opportunities to scoff at the country his father had striven so unselfishly to aid. What of Mr. Moore that was not French in 1899 ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Why how now, saucy Jade; Sure the Wench is tipsy! How can you see me made [To him. The Scoff of such a Gipsy? ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... castle of dreams, a fortress of holiness in the very center of wilderness barbarity and cruelty unspeakable. The multitudinous voices of traffic shriek where the crusaders' hymn rose that May night. A great city has risen on the foundations which these dreamers laid. Let us not scoff too loudly at their mystic visions and religious rhapsodies! Another generation may scoff at our too-much-worldliness, with our dreamless grind and visionless toil and harder creeds that reject everything which cannot be computed in the terms of traffic's ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... like me Win thee back again? With the joyous and the free Thou wilt scoff at pain. Spirit false! thou hast forgot All but ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... so——, but I cannot trust myself with such anticipations. I am well aware how little the world sympathises with the man whose fortunes are the sport of his temperament—that April-day frame of mind is ever the jest and scoff of those hardier and sterner natures, who, if never overjoyed by success, are never much depressed by failure. That I have been cast in the former mould, these Confessions have, alas! plainly proved; but that I regret it, I fear also, for my character ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... word. He was haunted by the morbid idea that decadence must inevitably succeed a certain degree of progress: and he trembled lest the lovely art, which made him love life, should stop short, and dry up, and disappear into the ground. Christophe would scoff at such pusillanimous ideas. In a spirit of contradiction he would pretend that nothing had been done before he appeared on the scene, and that everything remained to be done. Olivier would instance French music, which seemed to have reached a point of perfection and ultimate civilization ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a patronizing manner at that humble follower of the great investigator; but as a matter of fact we should have been just as dull ourselves. We should not even have risen to the modest height of a ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... fancy, until at last it became something quite different from the original paradox, and full of truth and wisdom. But when such a paradox went off in a letter, there it remained unqualified; and they who, not having known him, scoff at his friends who claim for him the honours of a great critic, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... was every so neglected and insulted, so generally ignored, as this very Deity to whom you ascribe unlimited power, and from whom you say you receive life and everything. An eastern despot would take off the heads of those who treated him in such a style; and a republican politician would scoff at the idea of giving office to such lukewarm followers. Why, here in Christian Chicago the will of God is no more heeded by the majority than that of the Emperor of China, and the Bible might as well be the Koran. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... and a [glass] [howl], and a [toast] [scoff], and a [cheer] [sneer], For all [the good wine, and we've some of it here] [strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer] In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, [Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all!] ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... incisive philosophy. Perhaps, however, this influence led to lack of faith in his own work, to his loss of an ideal, which Zola thinks the real secret of his sudden change from novelist to journalist. Voltaire taught him to scoff and disbelieve, to demand "a quoi bon?" and that took the heart out of him. He was rather fond of exposing abuses, a habit that appears in those witty letters to the Gaulois which in 1878 obliged him to suspend that journal. His was a positive mind, interested ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of course they will. You surely cannot suppose I should, in cold blood, sit down to write a story in which nobody was to fall in love or be in love! Sir, scoff as you may, love is the one vital principle in all romance. Not only does your cheek flush and your eye sparkle, till "heart, brain, and soul are all on fire," over the burning words of some Brontean Pythoness, but when you open the last thrilling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with Fortune an eternal war, Checked by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown, And ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar? Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime Has felt the influence of malignant star, And waged with Fortune an eternal war— Check'd by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown, And Poverty's unconquerable bar— In life's low vale remote has pined alone, Then dropp'd into the grave, unpitied ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... world-weary, you care for nothing. You have drained philosophy to the dregs, and scoff at everything." ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... to relieve the tedium of my two hours on the lee side of the poop. I found Welsh John sitting on the main-hatch and disposed to yarn. He had been the most intimate with Duncan, harkening to his queer tales of the fairies in Knoidart when we others would scoff, and naturally the talk came round ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... among the maidens, Gay with paint and decked with feathers, She would look on him with kindness That the others might not scoff him; She would smile upon his weakness, Though she did not wish ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... not believe in the power of Siva or of his servants.. They call his messengers imposters, and scoff at them when they speak of the ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... Hoi! come kite! Hoi! come erne from off the fen! You followed us, and we fed you well, when Swend Forkbeard brought us over the sea. Follow us now, and we will feed you better still, with the mongrel Frenchers who scoff at the tongue of their forefathers, and would rob their nearest kinsman of land and lass. Hoi! Swend's men! Hoi! Canute's men! Vikings' sons, sea-cocks' sons, Berserkers' sons all! Split up the war-arrow, and send it round, and the curse ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... water off, Or folk be cutting weed, While he doth at misfortune scoff, From every trouble freed. Or else he waiteth for a rise, And ne'er a rise may see; For why, there are not any ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... ever without such cause from you, as I will not suppose possible, you find my affections veering but a point, may I become a proverbial scoff for ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... to turn aside this appeal which I now make to you with a laugh or a sneer. This is the Lord's word, and the word of the Lord is not to be put aside with a sneer. Do not scoff at this as a water of salvation. You certainly will not scoff at the word of ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... kept asking me if I was willing to do all the Prophet required. I said I was sure of it, thinking they meant to be good and worshipful. Then they would ask if I was ready to take counsel, and they said, 'Many things are revealed unto us in these last days that the world would scoff at,' but that it had been given to them to know all the mysteries of the Kingdom. Then they said, 'You will see Joseph and he will tell you what ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... rail against money, Spurn its beneficent power; Bears spurn impossible honey, Foxes the grapes that are sour. Men, who can never be funny, Scoff at the funny man's dower; Lands where it seldom is sunny Find little praise ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... men of letters were attracted by them; musicians seldom. Nor did Mr. Innes encourage their presence. Musicians were of no use to him. They were, he said, divided into two classes—those who came to scoff, and those who came to steal. He ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Gentiles, and among their mighty men; and it shall come to pass that Darsie Latimer shall be delivered, even if it were at the expense of half my substance." And I said, "Nay, my brother, go not, for they will but scoff at and revile thee; but hire with thy silver one of the scribes, who are eager as hunters in pursuing their prey, and he shall free Darsie Latimer from the men of violence by his cunning, and thy soul shall be guiltless of evil towards the lad." But he answered and said, "I will not be controlled ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... may mildly scoff, That hard, afflicting churchyard cough Gives pretty plain advice, "Be off, While yet you can." It is not time yet, John, to doff ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... baned tyngue! Myrriades of neders pre upponne thie spryte! Maiest thou fele al the peynes of age whylst yynge, 515 Unmanned, uneyned, exclooded aie the lyghte, Thie senses, lyche thieselfe, enwrapped yn nyghte, A scoff to foemen & to beastes a pheere; Maie furched levynne onne thie head alyghte, Maie on thee falle the fhuyr of the unweere; 520 Fen vaipoures blaste thie everiche manlie powere, Maie thie bante boddie quycke the wolfome ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... great arch spans the vista of the Avenue, lined here with red brick dwellings and the sunny white bulk of the old Brevoort House. Far off, the sky-scrapers begin to loom, whipping out flags and steam plumes. It is a treeless vista, yet it is hazed with spring! Imagination, you scoff—and dust. Yet you look again, and it is not imagination, and it is not dust. It is the veil of spring, cast with delicate hand over the city. These laughing sight-seers atop the green 'bus now going under the arch feel it, too. These children screaming ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... among the poorer classes is every day on the increase. Most of the men manage to get on with their 1fr. 50c. a day. In the morning they go to exercise, and afterwards loll about until night in cafes and pothouses, making up with liquids for the absence of solids. As for doing regular work, they scoff at the idea. Master tailors and others tell me that it is almost impossible to get hands to do the few orders which are now given. They are warmly clad in uniforms by the State, and except those belonging to the marching battalions really doing duty outside, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... result of considerable deliberation. He had argued with himself and had made up his mind to find out for himself just what these people did. He was finding out, certainly. His motives were good and he had come with no desire to scoff, but, for the life of him, he could not help feeling like a criminal. Incidentally, it provoked him to ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... short coat or jacket; and in the performance of the public services some standing up at the Creed, the Gloria Patri, and the reading of the Gospel; and others sitting, and perhaps laughing and winking upon their fellow schismatics, in scoff of those who practise the decent order of the Church.' Irreconcilable parties, he adds, and factions will be created. 'I will not hear this formalist, says one; and I will not hear that schismatic (with better reason), says another.... So that I dare avouch, that to bring in a comprehension ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... therefore she would kill them all if she could and if she dared. She never seeks the houses of the Busnees but for the purpose of prey; for the wild animals of the sierra do not more abhor the sight of man than she abhors the countenances of the Busnees. She now comes to prey upon you and to scoff at you. Will you believe her words? Fools! do you think that the being before ye has any sympathy for the like ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... The father and son, in the Clouds, are evidently representatives of the generations to which they respectively belonged. Nothing more clearly illustrates the nature of this moral revolution than the change which passed upon tragedy. The wild sublimity of Aeschylus became the scoff of every young Phidippides. Lectures on abstruse points of philosophy, the fine distinctions of casuistry, and the dazzling fence of rhetoric, were substituted for poetry. The language lost something of that infantine sweetness which ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to these latter reigns of the Ptolemies, when high feeling was sadly wanting in all classes of society, when literature and art were alike in a very low state, that we may place the rise of caricature in Egypt. We find drawings made on papyrus to scoff at what the nation used to hold sacred. The sculptures on the walls of the temples are copied in little; and cats, dogs, and monkeys are there placed in the attitudes of the gods and kings of old. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... of the New Art, not to scoff, but in earnest desire for enlightenment as to this thing which is so near to consciousness and yet so far. ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... the scoff," said he: "Those were days of sin. I deserve every humiliation that can be put upon me. But I have since found the grace of God. I found it at three o'clock in the afternoon on the eighth of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... just what, in an elementary way, they need concerning the nervous system, the essential musculatures, and the epithelia, whose manifold activities are in some certain mode concomitant to the succession of compound mental events. Surely, and widely, those who a few years ago "came to scoff" at the ever-rising scientific stream of mind-protoplasm relationship will "remain to pray" to the rising and satisfying goddess of the new philosophy. The body with its unimagined intricacies and beauties of still unguessed adaptation ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... persons as both know and love their business. No human being[10] ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect we hear too much of it in literature. The weather is regarded as the very nadir and scoff of conversational topics. And yet the weather, the dramatic element in scenery, is far more tractable in language, and far more human both in import and suggestion than the stable features of the landscape. Sailors and shepherds, and the ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... work and whatever its worth, No matter how strong or clever, Some one will sneer if you pause to hear, And scoff at your best endeavour. For the target art has a broad expanse, And wherever you chance to hit it, Though close be your aim to the bull's-eye fame, There are those ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... When the wondrous tale was ended, Looking round upon his listeners, Solemnly Iagoo added: "There are great men, I have known such, Whom their people understand not, Whom they even make a jest of, Scoff and jeer at in derision. From the story of Osseo Let us learn the ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... resumed at last, with strange gentleness, "insult me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn! but come, come. Let us make haste. It is to be to-morrow, I tell you. The gibbet on the Greve, you know it? it stands always ready. It is horrible! to see you ride in that tumbrel! Oh mercy! Until now I have never felt the power of my love for you.—Oh! follow ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... white with foam and slaver; and the whole mouth, of yore so musical, grinning ghastly like the fleshless face of fear-painted death! Is that Voltaire? He who, with wit, thought to shear the Son of God of all His beams?—with wit, to loosen the dreadful fastenings of the Cross?—with wit, to scoff at Him who hung thereon, while the blood and water came from the wound in His blessed side?—with wit, to drive away those Shadows of Angels, that were said to have rolled off the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre of ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the same temper and attitude. We sometimes see students destined for the Christian ministry also with all their religion so without root in themselves that a session in an unsympathetic class, a sceptical book, sometimes just a sneer or a scoff, will wither all the promise of their coming service. And so on through the whole of human life. He that hath not the root of the matter in himself dureth for a while, but by and by, for one reason or another, he is sure to ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... There is, however, probably no cause to regret this, for the author assures us that his new work is "as far above the two former in beauty as the sun is above the stars." If any light-minded person be disposed to scoff at him for this, let it be added that he has the grace to abstract the whole in the Avis au Lecteur which contains the boast, and to give full chapter-headings, things too often wanting in the group. The hero is named ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... never to be realized. And perhaps all was for the best; for we are all creatures of circumstance. Not one in a thousand follows out his plans through life. Half of our existence is imaginary; and wise-acres may scoff as much as they please at what they term 'castle-building,' I believe all mankind indulge in it more or less; and it is an innocent, harmless pastime, which injures no one. I consider it the 'unwritten poetry,' the romance of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... He looked so great and high, So noble was his manly front, So calm his steadfast eye,— The rabble rout forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through all the people crept, And some that came to scoff at him Now ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... for? and that you'll attend to your duties, and stand watch and watch, and bear your proper share of the ship's work, instead of leaving it all on the shoulders of a landsman, and making yourself the butt and scoff of native seamen? Is that what you mean? If it is, be so good ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no, ma'am, be not afraid;—my father! how shall I meet him? how go back to Lyons? the scoff of the whole city! Cruel, cruel, Claude [in great agitation]. Sir, you have acted ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... from some source, and might have continued to scoff at religion to the last but for the experience of his intimate friend, a youth named Almond, whose life was changed by witnessing one day the happy death of a Christian believer. Decided to be a Christian himself, it was some time before he mustered courage to face White's ridicule ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... beauty of Israel for ever is fled, And low lie the noble and strong: Ye daughters of music, encircle the dead And chant the funereal song. Oh, never let Gath know their sorrowful doom, Nor Askelon hear of their fate; Their daughters would scoff while we lay in the tomb, The relics of ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... boast of your strength and power. See, you follow the motion of my hand, as a dog would. See, you kneel before me, and prostrate yourself in the dust at my feet, at my bidding. Lie there, and think well whether you are able to scoff any more. You kneeled to the king of your own will; you kneel to me at mine, and though you had the strength of a hundred men, you must kneel there till ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Iskender blurted out the truth at last. "I know not how my patron would regard it. On him I depend entirely for the present. I have heard him scoff at all who change the faith that they were born in. Wait a little, I beseech thee, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... supercilious, unprincipled ascendancy, for whom the public exists only as a prey to be destroyed, who keep themselves close and mark men's steps that they may lay in wait for them; who forge chains for their country, who distrust and belie the people, who scoff at the complaints of the poor and needy, and who impudently call themselves Ireland. You have made the sick and the lame to go out of their way. You have eaten the good pastures and trodden down the residue with your feet. You care for Ireland, and you mean by ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... Temple of Nemesis has been opened again," answered Socrates. "Aristophanes has never been ingenuous hitherto; now he is so with a vengeance. Very well, Aristophanes, I sympathise with you that you can no more scoff at me. I pardon you, but I cannot help you to stage your comedies. That is asking too much. Now I ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... obtain suffrage; but I know that these efforts must be to them, and are to us, a source of pride and glory, because they show that there is no part of our people which has remained indifferent to the great movements of the century. There are persons who scoff at them and many shrug their shoulders; but this must not discourage our women, because neither scoffing nor shrugging the shoulders are very weighty arguments. The same persons who now laugh at them and shrug their shoulders, probably because they do not know that the world ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... it, and hast thou forgot? Is thy praise in thine ears as a scoff? Blood of men guiltless was shed, Children, and souls without spot, Shed, but in places far off; Let slaughter no more be, said ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "Scoff at Founders of Systems. And cry with a glow of fine enthusiasm, 'Here are errors and misleading statements in abundance in our contemporary's work, and to what end? To depreciate a fine work, to deceive the public, and to arrive at this conclusion—"A book that sells, does not ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Mammon upon the throne of the world, and scoff at the God of heaven, who seeks the poor and needy, and who would in love lift up every son and daughter of the ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... scales. A butcher does all that sort of think. We just kills it, and cooks it, and eats it—and goes by guess. What won't keep we salts down in the cask. I reckon it weighs about a ton by the weight of it if yer wanter know. Mother thought that if she sent any more it would go bad before you could scoff it. I ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... one rushes into an office of philosophical, higher-critical professors, and cries, "Fire!" You would see those hard-boiled skeptics, if they believed the cry, rush unceremoniously and indecorously out of that building with all speed. People may scoff at faith working with lightning speed; but every exhibition of it only ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... certain people always grow splenetic— Why, goodness knows—at everything pathetic, And scoff it down. We all know how, of late, An unfledged, upstart undergraduate Presumed, with brazen insolence, to declare That "William Russell"(1)was a ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... me! I am a bachelor; I have not a single wife! Is that right towards a man like me?" If a woman gives physical expression to her anger at a man, she is sentenced to carry him on her back from the court of the chieftain to her own house. While she is carrying him home, the other men scoff at and jeer her; the women, on the contrary, encourage her with all their might, calling out to her: "Treat him as he deserves; ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... adventurers. The whole country was smitten with the fever of travel, and possessed with the lust for wealth and conquest. Men and women believed strange things of the wonderful western world, and they listened eagerly and without question to things their great-grandchildren would scoff at. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... harden'd heart forget the gallant youth; That hour allotted canst thou not escape, That dreadful hour, when Contumely and Shame Shall sojourn in thy dungeon. Wretched Maid! Destined to drain the cup of bitterness, Even to its dregs! England's inhuman Chiefs Shall scoff thy sorrows, black thy spotless fame, Wit-wanton it with lewd barbarity, And force such burning blushes to the cheek Of Virgin modesty, that thou shalt wish The earth might cover thee! in that last hour, When thy bruis'd breast shall heave beneath the chains That link thee to ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... up at ten o'clock—encamped to our joy—so here we are with "piled arms," "saddles off," and "horses picketed." As we came into camp we heard once again the Mausers of the snipers afar off. We have rigged up a sun shelter and have just dined, our "scoff" (Kaffir for "grub") being ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... ever-wandering mind went back to a scene in undergraduate days. It was the Corn Exchange at Cambridge, where the most famous of all American evangelists was holding one of a series of revivalist meetings. The great bare hall was packed with youths, who came, some to scoff and others to pray. The coarse-figured, bald-headed, brown-bearded man in black on the platform, with his homely phrase and (to polite undergraduate ears) terrible Yankee twang, was talking vehemently of the trivial instruments the Almighty used to effect His purposes. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... fuel to the flame. You were to have presented Matilda to my arms, more beautiful, more tender, more kind, than she had ever appeared. From this moment then, let the name of trust be a by-word for the profligate to scoff at! Let the epithet of friend be a mildew to the chaste and uncorrupted ear! Let mutual confidence be banished from the earth, and men, more savage than ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... be overcome by a counter-resistance to itself, in a better audience slowly mustering against the first. Forty and seven years it is since William Wordsworth first appeared as an author. Twenty of these years he was the scoff of the world, and his poetry a by-word of scorn. Since then, and more than once, senates have rung with acclamations to the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... expelled; they peer over the shoulder, and tug at the hand which fain would write; they turn images upside down, and distort the thoughts; and here and there, from ceiling and wall, they grin, and scoff, and oppose: and what was just gushing as an aspiration from the soul, is converted to a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... though not all, are commissioned with the rest, Heaven blesses, and Fortune aids the struggle: but where you send out a general and an empty decree and hopes from the hustings, nothing that you desire is done; your enemies scoff, and your allies die for fear of such an armament. For it is impossible—ay, impossible, for one man to execute all your wishes: to promise, [Footnote: Chares is particularly alluded to. The "promises of ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... and ceased to scoff. Money is a great dignifier, and Jim and 'Lias were making money. There had been some sniffs when the latter had hinged the front gate and whitewashed his mother's cabin, but even that had been accepted now ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... errors. The clumsiest thing a dramatist can possibly do is to lay a long and elaborate train for the ignition of a squib. We take pleasure in an event which has been "prepared" in the sense that we have been led to desire it, and have wondered how it was to be brought about. But we scoff at an occurrence which nothing but our knowledge of the tricks of the stage could possibly lead us to expect, yet which, knowing these tricks, we have foreseen from ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... cannot hold his tongue; he does nothing but scoff at their credulity, and when they reach the house the first thing he does is to go straight to the dining-room and tell the whole story to ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... sought to twine— And bade her minions mocking bow, With sweeter vows at pleasure's shrine— Or if I mirrored to the thought, With glorious truth the charms of earth, While yet the trusting fool I taught, To scoff at Him who gave it birth— Or if I filled the soul with light, And bore its buoyant wing in air— To plunge it down in deeper night, And mock its maniac wanderings there— I did but wield the wand of power, That God intrusted to my clasp, And not, the tyrant of an ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... were not English, and hated England, and all connected therewith, had yet much to say in thy praise, when thou wast far inferior to what thou art now, why should true-born Englishmen, or those who call themselves so, turn up their noses at thee, and scoff thee at the present day, as I believe they do? But, let others do as they will, I, at least, who am not only an Englishman, but an East Englishman, will not turn up my nose at thee, but will praise and extol thee, calling ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... The doubter may scoff, and the pessimist may croak, but even they must take hope at the picture presented in the simple and touching incident of eight Grand Army veterans, with their silvery heads bowed in sympathy, escorting the lifeless body of the Daughter of the Confederacy from Narragansett to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... physicians scoff at the ancient authorities who dominated medical thinking for so many centuries. The seventeenth-century physician striving to reduce the frightful inroads that disease made into the colony at Jamestown may have ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... to scoff at this apparition as a heretical innovation, there was still the story of Concepcion, the Demon Vaquero, whose terrible riata was fully as potent as the whaler's harpoon. Concepcion, when in the flesh, had been a ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... cheeks as she spoke, and Wilhelm was not sufficiently blase to scoff at the doting nonsense of a love-sick woman. Love has enormous power, and at its heat all firmness, all resistance, melts away. Pilar's affection filled Wilhelm with heartfelt emotion and gratitude. He denied himself the right of judging her, suspecting or doubting her, or of discovering dark ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... itself with sneering, carping, and fault-finding; and is ready to scoff at everything but impudent effrontery or successful vice. The greatest consolation of such persons are the defects of men of character. "If the wise erred not," says George Herbert, "it would go hard with fools." Yet, though wise men may learn of fools by avoiding their errors, fools rarely ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... the Free Gold Mining Company, his objection was likely to be based on substantial grounds. But then, as Brooks had observed, or, rather, inferred, Bill was not exactly an expert on finance, and this new deal savored of pure finance—a term which she had heard Bill scoff at more than once. At any rate, she hoped nothing ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... What right have I to judge others severely, do you suppose, when I must ask for indulgency myself? Or have you forgotten that I am a laughing stock to everyone, who is not too indifferent even to scoff?... By the way," he added, "did ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... And on his neighbour's worth presume; But still let Nature's garb prevail— Esop has left this little tale: A Daw, ambitious and absurd, Pick'd up the quills of Juno's bird; And, with the gorgeous spoil adorn'd, All his own sable brethren scorn'd, And join'd the peacocks—who in scoff Stripp'd the bold thief, and drove him off. The Daw, thus roughly handled, went To his own kind in discontent: But they in turn contemn the spark, And brand with many a shameful mark. Then one he formerly disdain'd, "Had you," said he, "at home remain'd— Content with Nature's ways ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... allies the affair may appear a trifle, father; and such white planters as cannot refuse to hear the tidings may scoff at them; but Jean Francais, a negro and a slave—is it possible that ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... his feelings to escape from his controul or management; his word was esteemed in the council as the word of wisdom; his warning of danger was regarded as the cry of the owl. Never did he mock the wretched, or laugh, or scoff at the insane; he was always respectful to the aged; and he daily cried to the Master of Life, from the high grounds, with clay spread thick upon his hair, and at every successful hunt offered, to the same Great Judge and protecting guide of man, the best part of the animals he had caught. That ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... fact, without change, we could have no cognisance of our surroundings, we should have no consciousness of living. We have become so accustomed to certain sensations that we are apt to take them, as facts, and scoff at the suggestion that they are non-realities. I propose, however, to show that what we perceive are not Realities, and true conception of our surroundings depends upon the knowledge which we can bring to bear to interpret the meaning of these sensations. ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... strain, and a mistake. It must come to Goldsmith's "travelling over one's mind," with power to travel no farther. Browning, too, had been "found out by Society"; was the guest at noble houses, and I suppose became somewhat lofty in his views. No one could scoff so loudly and violently as could Forster, at what is called snobbishness, "toadying the great"; though it was a little weakness of his own, and is indeed of everybody. However, on some recent visit, I learned to my astonishment, that a complete breach ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... to the sticks of the beadles. Nevertheless, oh Muse, if it be right to esteem the most honest and illustrious of our comic writers at his proper value, permit our poet to say that he thinks he has deserved a glorious renown. First of all, 'tis he who has compelled his rivals no longer to scoff at rags or to war with lice; and as for those Heracles, always chewing and ever hungry, those poltroons and cheats who allow themselves to be beaten at will, he was the first to cover them with ridicule and to chase them from the stage;(1) he has also dismissed that slave, ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... early Victorianism. She had obviously just come from one of those elaborate finishing schools in which the daughters of rich people are turned into hothouse plants by sycophants and parasites and sent out into the world the most perfect specimens of superautocracy, to patronize their parents, scoff at discipline, ignore duty and demand the sort of luxury that brought Rome to its fall. With admiration and amusement she watched her say good-by to one woman after another as the various tables broke up. It really gave her quite a moment to see the way in which Joan gave as careless and unawed ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... gone over in the training quarters, innumerable times; and this continues so long that by the time the "group" is ready for the stage, behold! the cubs with which the patient and tireless trainer began have grown so large that to the audience they now seem like adult and savage animals. Those who scoff at the wild animal mind, and say that all this displays nothing but "machines in fur" need to be reminded that this very same line of effort in training and rehearsal is absolutely necessary in the production of every military ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... years changed the aspect of things. As they grew up, and entered upon the world for themselves, all the older apprentices fell into habits of dissipation, and finally sunk into the drunkard's grave. But the little boy, at whose abstinence they used to scoff, grew up a sober and respectable man, engaged in business for himself, and a few years ago, was worth a hundred thousand dollars, and had in his employ one hundred and ninety men, none of whom used ardent spirits. All this came from his having courage to ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb |
