"Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... light and glow of life wax dim in thickly gathering gloom, Shall mortal scoff at sting of Death, shall scorn ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... is Christmas day, But every holiday presents Its special round of play, And looking back on boyhood now And all the charms it knew, One day, above the rest, somehow, Seems brightest in review. That day was finest, I believe; Though many grown-ups scoff, When mother said that we could leave Our ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... fairness in him, and a little gleam of reason and morality left. To Morgan's relief and hope this man went further as he put his view of the case, even so far as to question their right to hang the granger at all. They clamored against him and tried to scoff him down, moving with drunken, scuffing feet near the spot where Morgan lay, as if to put ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... it, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... called Jewish Letters, published at Newcastle in 1746. (The Dublin edition of 1753 I have not seen.) Though d'Argens's purpose in Letter 35 may have been to advertise his own novel, what he had to say is interesting. Like many others, he could scoff at the heroic romances and yet borrow and quietly modify the doctrines of Ibrahim and Clelie. He proposed a still more "advanced" vraisemblance and decorum—psychological analysis tinged with ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... the outcome of the preceding Act. To whom is Berowne's line (V, ii, 477)—"Speake for yourselves, my wit is at an end"—addressed? How is the King brought to confusion? Is the Princess too hard upon him? Why does Berowne scoff so fiercely at Boyet? ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... of my book, To what thoughts shall't in alien hearts give birth. But, as he who doth love, and, loving, hopes, Yet, hoping, fears, fears to put proof to proof, And in his mind for possible proofs gropes, Delaying the true proof, lest the real thing scoff, I daily live, i'th' fame I dream to see, But by my thought ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... discussed Anarchist principles as opposed to those of legal Socialism. Nekrovitch and others often joined in the discussion, and very animated we all grew in the course of debate. Nekrovitch smiled sympathetically at my whole-hearted and ingenuous enthusiasm. He never made any attempt to scoff at it or to discourage me, though he vainly attempted to persuade me that Anarchism was too distant and unpractical an ideal, and that my energies and enthusiasm might be more advantageously expended in other directions. "Anyway," he once said to me, "it is very agreeable to a Russian to see young ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... They must hear the curse pronounced, and then depart into the world which has begun to grow thorns for them. Yes, sufferings after death. What is history but the story of punishment? When men scoff at what is called eternal punishment they forget, or, perhaps, have never given it a thought, that the punishment of the first crime is going on at the present moment. Thorns and briars are but parables. They are real, it ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... sects and schism, but who at the same time, as Milton shrewdly intimates, dreaded more the rending of their pontifical sleeves than the rending of the Church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with the "Defence of Unlicensed Printing" before him? Who scoff at Quakerism over the "Journal" of George Fox? Who shall join with debauched lordlings and fat-witted prelates in ridicule of Anabaptist levellers and dippers, after rising from the perusal of "Pilgrim's Progress?" "There were giants in those days." And foremost amid that band of liberty-loving ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... 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, until he ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... we fear not scoff or smile At meek attire of blue and grey, For the proud wrath that thrills our isle Gives faith ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... Lucagus bent forward in readiness for the fight, the Trojan javelin whizzed through the rim of his shield, smote him in the groin, and hurled him, quivering in the pangs of death, out of the chariot. AEneas assailed his dying ears with a bitter scoff: "It is not, O Lucagus, the slowness of thy steeds in flight that hath lost thee thy chariot, but thou thyself, springing from thy seat, hast abandoned it." So saying, he seized the chariot; and now the miserable Liger, extending his hands in supplication, begged for his life. "It was not in ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... listening to the exhortations of the priests, and ready, as might be seen from their earnest gaze, to suffer martyrdom in the cause. More, however, stood indifferently round, or, after listening to a few words, walked on with a laugh or a scoff; indeed, preaching had already done all that lay in its power. All those who could be moved by exhortations of this kind were there, and upon the rest the discourses and ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... Farwell could not speak. Once an inward desire to laugh, to scoff, would have driven him to supernatural gravity; now he merely smiled with grave ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... 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 ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... 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 ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... landlord, to turn from sport and 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 ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... that greatness. Once disunited, we are no longer great. The nations of the earth who have looked upon you as a formidable Power, and rising to untold and immeasurable greatness in the future, will scoff at you. Your flag, that now claims the respect of the world, that protects American property in every port and harbor of the world, that protects the rights of your citizens everywhere, what will become of it? What becomes ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... as the world has rarely seen, that the powers of darkness were very near, and that behind those blackened walls there lurked evil forms. Twilight was coming on as we turned back to our car, and a cold mist was slowly rising from the river. I am not superstitious, and in broad daylight I will scoff at ghosts with anyone, but I should not care to spend a night alone in Termonde. One could almost hear the Devil laughing at the handiwork of ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... violence upon you, that a man should be able to say you were slain. You 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 I bid ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... ablaze, And through the garden came a rushing wind Thundering a paean as of victory. Then that dead man came forth . . . oh, Claudia, If thou couldst but have seen the face of him! Never was such a conqueror! Yet no pride Was in it . . . naught but love and tenderness, Such as we Romans scoff at, and his eyes Bespake him royal. Oh, my Claudia, Surely he was ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... in silent scoff, Lay, grim and threatening, under; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff No ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... show up. [i.p.] play upon, play tricks upon; fool to the top of one's bent; laugh at, grin at, smile at; poke fun at. satirize, parody, caricature, burlesque, travesty. turn into ridicule; make merry with; make fun of, make game of, make a fool of, make an April fool of[obs3]; rally; scoff &c. (disrespect) 929. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... which he adored, had said its last 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 ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... many scoff at this, because there are heathen who take this on them for gain, that they may trade more openly, or find profit among Christian folk, never meaning or caring to seek further into the faith that lies ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... consolingly. "It looked good to you, because you never thought of the chances of another raid being made on your aunt's opals. But perhaps you might have your mother go over and see Miss Alicia. She could mention what you thought, and even if the old lady did pretend to scoff at the idea, it would put a flea in her ear, so perhaps she'd keep an ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... must go there, and call the people to repentance, for the day of the Lord was at hand; and this message was as a heavy yoke upon me, so that I wept bitterly at the thought of what I should have to pass through. While I wept, I heard a voice say, "weep not, some will laugh at thee, some will scoff at thee, and the dogs will bark at thee, but while thou doest my will, I will be with thee to ...
— Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman • Anonymous
... brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... against the gate of Elvira when issuing forth so vaingloriously with his army, which he now saw clearly had foreboded the destruction of that army on which he had so confidently relied. "Henceforth," said he, "let no man have the impiety to scoff at omens." ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... impost is the smallest evil. They smite the tax-gatherer, but fall prostrate at the feet of the contemptible prince for whom the tax-gatherer plies his craft; they will even revile the troublesome and importunate monk, or sometimes they will scoff at the sleek and arrogant priest, while such is their infatuation that they would risk their lives in defense of that cruel Church which has inflicted on them hideous calamities, but to which they still cling, as it it were the dearest object ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... that they take their own amusement seriously. They base on it their serious ideas of international instruction. It was said that the Englishman takes his pleasures sadly; and the pleasure of despising foreigners is one which he takes most sadly of all. He comes to scoff and does not remain to pray, but rather to excommunicate. Hence in international relations there is far too little laughing, and far too much sneering. But I believe that there is a better way which largely consists of laughter; a form of friendship between ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... her, came with better grace from those who had the power to enforce them; and, with a brutal scoff, the Croatian bade her merit their indulgence by frank discoveries and voluntary confessions. He insisted on knowing the nature of the connection which the imperial colonel of horse, Maximilian, had maintained with the students of Klosterheim; and upon other discoveries, with respect ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Norbert may give in, he may marry another woman, and I shall be left alone, with my reputation gone, and the scorn and scoff of all the neighborhood." ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... protection against the emptiness. Around the fence stood vehicles of all descriptions, saddle horses, and a few ponies on which cowboys sat lazily, looking on. Even those who had come only for adventure were silenced. They felt the challenge of the land and were no longer in a mood to scoff. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... administration of affairs. And when these giovinastri, other people's boys, the scum of the gay world, flung their unsavory jests in the face of the old man who had no son to come after him, the silly insults so lightly uttered, so little thought of, the natural scoff of youth at old age, stung him to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... have been telling you of my ambitions! Mean of them! They might have known you'd scoff. All boys do, but I fail to see why if a girl has brains she should not use them as ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I instead of we. In a word, a journal, with two or three hundred thousand francs, good, at the back of it, has just been started, with a view to making an opposition paper to content the discontented, without prejudice to the national government of the citizen-king. We scoff at liberty as at despotism now, and at religion or incredulity quite impartially. And since, for us, 'our country' means a capital where ideas circulate and are sold at so much a line, a succulent dinner every day, and the play at frequent intervals, where profligate women swarm, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... neighbours and voiced strangely radical sentiments concerning Life and its obligations. They were often startling, particularly as she made no secret of the fact that she and her husband never "got on." Between puffs of cigarette smoke she would scoff at the laws of marriage and speak with much leniency of divorce. Her sympathies were invariably with offenders, and Joyce thought her rather too fond of the society of men. Meredith feared and disliked her. The ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... horribly world-weary, you care for nothing. You have drained philosophy to the dregs, and scoff at everything." ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... there were some to scoff at the spirit who through all time, from the days of the Sibyl to those of the Witch, had filled and troubled the woman. They maintained that he was neither God nor Devil, but only "the Prince of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... must provide for themselves. Another Spanish statesman expressed his doubt to them whether they were able to do so: he really thought England would one day become an apple of discord between Spain and France, as Milan then was. It was almost a scoff, to compare the Island that had the power of the sea with an Italian duchy. But from this very moment she was to take a new upward flight. England was again to take her place as a third Power between ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... delicate that the hearer lives over again the finely shaded mood of the poet. Take the words of a lyric for what they say, and they say nothing most of the time. And that is true of philosophers. You must penetrate the ponderous vocabulary, the professional cant to the insight beneath or you scoff at the mountain ranges of words and phrases. It is this that Bergson means when he tells us that a philosopher's intuition always outlasts his system. Unless you get at that you remain forever foreign ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... stranger. She therefore considered herself as having fallen a victim to love; and could she only save her daughter from a similar error she might yet by her means retrieve her fallen fortune. To implant principles of religion and virtue in her mind was not within the compass of her own; but she could scoff at every pure and generous affection; she could ridicule every disinterested attachment; and she could expatiate on the never-fading joys that attend on wealth and titles, jewels and equipages; and all this she did in the belief that she was acting the part ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... every flap of England's flag Proclaim that all around are free, From 'farthest Ind' to each blue crag That beetles o'er the Western Sea? And shall we scoff at Europe's kings, When Freedom's fire is dim with us, And round our country's altar clings The damning ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... 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 the resurrection?—with wit, to deride the ineffable glory of transfigured ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... justice wickedly, had degraded the Judiciary, and had degraded the age." Mr. Wilson followed Mr. Sumner in a somewhat impassioned speech, denouncing the Dred Scott decision "as the greatest crime in the judicial annals of the Republic," and declaring it to be "the abhorrence, the scoff, the jeer, of the patriotic hearts of America." Mr. Reverdy Johnson answered Mr. Sumner with spirit, and pronounced an eloquent eulogium upon Judge Taney. He said, "the senator from Massachusetts will be happy if his name shall stand as high upon ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Bourbons. Those who 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 ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... general sickness which attacked the crew while lying in Plymouth harbor. The brief narrative of his sickness and death is all that we know of his personality. The writer says: "He was a proud young man, and would often curse and scoff at the passengers," but being nursed when dying, by those of them who remained aboard, after his shipmates had deserted him in their craven fear of infection, "he bewailed his former conduct," saying, "Oh! you, I now see, show your love ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... elsewhere; a glass of beer and a pipe don't cost much. And Heloise is such a house-wife, so thrifty, scolds me if I buy her a ribbon, poor love! No wonder that I would pull down a society that dares to scoff at her—dares to say she is not my wife, and her children are base born. No, I have some savings left yet. War to society, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them. For this failure to respond where the subject happens to be one in which she has repeatedly given brilliant proofs of what she really can do, is embarrassing and humiliating, for then those who are only too ready to scoff merely feel their case strengthened. Indeed, it needs some determination to keep one's temper on such occasions, yet to "let oneself go" even for one moment—would mean weeks of painful and laborious uphill work in order to regain the dog's confidence. One is often ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... [scowl], 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!] [Down, down, with the tyrant ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... but at her words there burst from the depths of my being the voice of instinct, that voice which I had tried to stifle, almost unconsciously, by force of habit and training.... Oh, that blatant, piercing voice! It seemed to me to rend the darkness, to scoff at my heart and my sweet reasonableness! It was as though I saw all my kindly dreams of tolerance and indulgence fly into a thousand splinters! Never had I so clearly realised their brittleness. My anger was all the greater because it was still trammelled ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... power which brought ye here Hath made you mine. Slaves! scoff not at my will; The mind, the spirit, the Promethean spark, The lightning of my being is as bright, Pervading and far darting as your own, And shall not yield to yours though coop'd in clay. Answer, or I will ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... of quizzing, or of staring out of countenance some preacher of rather more than usual energy and zeal, have known one of this band pierced by 'a dart from the archer,' convinced that religion is 'the one thing needful,' and though he came 'to scoff, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... scoff at me; shield yourself from me, if you can," said Zoroaster. "Lift one hand, if you are able—make one step from me, if you have the strength. You cannot; you are altogether in my power. If I would, I could kill you as you stand, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... his childhood, and along with the elements he also was exposed to the evils of the hexerei. The hexerei, or witchcraft, was something that was never doubted or scoffed at by his people. Then why should he, a good Pennsylvania Dutchman, doubt or scoff at ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson
... 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
... explosion in the subway; to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning. It will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in America who has seen Prince Henry do anything, or try to. The man who was absent and didn't see him to anything, will scoff. It is his privilege; and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself, to be different from other Americans, and better. As his opinion of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, and ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... his antagonist's ear with a sinister smile, "rotten manners! for just that, my buck, I'll make you scoff 'muffin' 'till you're ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... bishop murmured, 'Atheist! How sinfully the wicked scoff!' And sent the old men on their way, And drove ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... ter de load en fergit de distress, En dem w'at stan's by ter scoff, For de harder de pullin', de longer de res', En de bigger de ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... in silent scoff, 5 Lay grim and threatening under; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... from little Tom. She felt that to look at him would be more than she could bear. There was no deceit in him, no falsehood—as yet; but perhaps when he grew up he would cheat her too. He would pretend to love her and betray her trust; he would kiss her, and then go away and scoff at her; he would smile, and smile, and be a villain. Such words were not in Lucy's mind, and it was altogether out of nature that she should even receive the thought: which made it all the more terrible when it was poured ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... it! cannot bear it!" he repeated. "You must bear it, madam. Do you suppose your child is to be exempt from the penalties of his birth? Do you suppose that he alone is to be saved from the upbraiding scoff? Do you suppose that he is ever to rank with other boys, who are not stained and marked with sin from their birth? Every creature in Eccleston may know what he is; do you think they will spare him their scorn? 'Cannot bear it,' indeed! Before ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... do scholars or 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 been handicapped by the erroneous doctrines ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... she said dramatically. "Look at 'em. They're yours, Miss Rachel—and covered with mud and soaked to the tops. I tell you, you can scoff all you like; something has been wearing your shoes. As sure as you sit there, there's the smell of the graveyard on them. How do we know they weren't tramping through the Casanova churchyard last night, and ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... deem myself presumptuous, as a young man, in offering advice, were it not addressed to one still younger. Mr. Townsend has the greatest difficulties to encounter; but in conquering them he will find employment; in having conquered them, his reward. I know too well "the scribbler's scoff, the critic's contumely;" and I am afraid time will teach Mr. Townsend to know them better. Those who succeed, and those who do not, must bear this alike, and it is hard to say which have most of it. I trust that Mr. Townsend's share will be from 'envy'; he will soon know mankind well ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... there is no life after this life'? Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous and misshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou done to me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this world, the hopes of another! Is there no other life? Well, then, I want thy gold, that at least I may hasten to make the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... from the cities, in a lone place where none came to scoff or criticize. When it was finished, I took my place and sealed the port by which I had entered. The Adventurer spurned the Earth beneath its cradles, and in the middle of the Twenty-second century, as time is computed ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... speech many of the band shook their heads, and said to themselves, "Now the Sheriff will think that we are cowards, and folk will scoff throughout the countryside, saying that we fear to meet these men." But they said nothing aloud, swallowing their words and doing as Robin ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... frail and past his prime, would rest with Macdonald. The presidency of the Executive Council, which was offered him, unless joined to the office of prime minister, was of no real importance. Some party friends throughout the country {40} would misunderstand, and more would scoff. He had parted company with his loyal personal friends Dorion and Holton. If, as Disraeli said, England does not love coalitions, neither does Canada. For the time being, and, as events proved, for a considerable time, the Liberal party ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... young and bold Marsk Stig, So stately stepped the threshold o’er; The Danish Queen so sharp and keen She straight began to scoff ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... the time of his canonization (1189), but from that time forward ambition, avarice, and luxury made such inroads upon the solitude of Grammont that its monks became the byword and scoff of the Christian world.[8] ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... 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 ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... is a Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a patronising 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 level of a Scotland Yard Bungler. We should simply ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... come to the old habitation again: we shall see their differing conduct presently. When the three came back, like furious creatures, flushed with the rage which the work they had been about put them into, they came up to the Spaniards, and told them what they had done, by way of scoff and bravado; and one of them stepping up to one of the Spaniards, as if they had been a couple of boys at play, takes hold of his hat, as it was upon his head, and giving it a twirl about, jeering in his face, says he to him, "And you, Seignior Jack Spaniard, shall have ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... shall come from far; they shall fly as an eagle that hasteth to eat; they shall come all for violence; their faces shall nip as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand. And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them; they shall deride every stronghold; they shall heap dust and take it." The Chaldaeans, recent occupants of Lower Mesopotamia, and there only a dominant race, like the Normans in England or the Lombards in North Italy, were, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... his picturesque way, like so many garden plots—the rectangular oblongs in a garden in which pot-herbs are grown—on the green grass, below the blue sky, by the side of the quiet lake. Cannot you fancy how some of them seated themselves with a scoff, and some with a quiet smile of incredulity; and some half sheepishly and reluctantly; and some in mute expectancy; and some in foolish wonder; and yet all of them with a partial obedience? And says John in the true translation: 'So the men sat down, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the spiritual. In a word, America has not attained, or nearly attained, perfection. But below and behind and beyond all its weaknesses and evils, there is the grand fact of a noble national theory, founded on reason and conscience. Those may scoff who will at the idea of anything so intangible being allowed to count seriously in the estimation of a nation's or an individual's happiness but the man of any imagination can surely conceive the stimulus of the constantly abiding sense of a fine national ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... 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 ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... our failure to unriddle the enigma In the "rags" of rival towns was made a byword and a scoff, Till each soul in the community felt branded with the stigma Of the unexplained suspicion of poor ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... honest belief of any one, I am sure he never felt or spoke otherwise than most tolerantly, most tenderly. As often as he spoke of religion, and his talk tended to it very often, I never heard an irreligious word from him, far less a scoff or sneer at religion; and I am certain that this was not merely because he would have thought it bad taste, though undoubtedly he would have thought it bad taste; I think it annoyed, it hurt him, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that he could persuade mankind to live and die without religion. Suppose he had proved to the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour of sorrow? Scoffing will not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they must give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... almost, 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 got the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the good Father said. And he was so careless a man, was M. Baldwin. And then with tears in his eyes the priest told Brice how, from the olden times when Baldwin, pretending to scoff at the efforts of the missionaries, had yet ever been their best ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... partaker of the soot himself. For what will you do if a man speaks about gladiators, about horses, about athletes, or what is worse about men? Such a person is bad, such a person is good; this was well done, this was done badly. Further, if he scoff, or ridicule, or show an ill-natured disposition? Is any man among us prepared like a lute-player when he takes a lute, so that as soon as he has touched the strings, he discovers which are discordant, and tunes the ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... hid in my girdle's folds. The Duke shall hear me. Patience. Trust in me." Somewhat the authoritative voice abashed, Even hoarse and changed, the miscreants, who feared Some strong curse lurked in this mysterious tongue, Armed with this evil eye. But brief the spell. With gibe and scoff they dragged their victims forth, The abused old man, the proud, insulted youth, O'er the late path of his triumphal march, Befouled with mud, with raiment torn, wild hair And ragged beard, to Vladislaw. He sat Expectant in his cabinet. On one side His secular adviser, Narzerad, Quick-eyed, sharp-nosed, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... 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 ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... a perito is a perrito (little dog)!" exclaimed Father Damaso, with a scoff. "One would have to be more of a brute than the natives, who erect their own houses, if he did not know how to build four walls and put a covering over them. That's all that a school ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... though you 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 ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... Compton, with a scoff. "Failing nothing! You're a pair of young idiots. I'm good for twenty years more of hard work, but, as I told Harold, I would like to quit and travel, and I shall do so just as soon as I am convinced that ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the judge to say that?" asked the doctor, trying to scoff, but not a little pleased. "I'm sure I can't tell you, Mrs. Graham, only the idea has grown of itself in my mind, as all right ideas do, and everything that I can see seems to favor it. You may think that it ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... "Scoff at me if you will, I am proof. But hearken—you mustn't turn out that schoolmistress. She's an angel, and I know it; and if I say so of any human being, you may be sure I ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... against it as we used to do in the Fourth Reader Class, when we all with one accord turned against "Teacher's Pet." Teacher's Pet might be dowered with all the virtues, but we of the commonality would have none of them. We chose to scoff at ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... 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 flies ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... seeing that Fyodor Pavlovitch was by no means touched, but, as usual, was beginning to scoff. At that moment Smerdyakov, who was standing by the door, smiled. Smerdyakov often waited at table towards the end of dinner, and since Ivan's arrival in our town he had done so ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Let no man scoff; lest he drives away the means of real information.—And let all men watch, for the increase ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... The name of the Prince of Peace has been profaned by all kinds of injustice toward the Gentile whom he said he came to save. But I need not speak of what has been done towards the Red Man, the Black Man. Those deeds are the scoff of the world; and they have been accompanied by such pious words that the gentlest would not dare to intercede with "Father, forgive them, for they ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... economic. They have built up thriving trades under the Union. They have the closest business connections with Great Britain, and a mutual fabric of credit. They cherish sincere and profound apprehensions that their business prosperity will suffer by any change in the form of government. To scoff at these apprehensions is absurd and impolitic in the last degree. But to reason against them is also an almost fruitless labour. Those who feel them vaguely picture an Irish Parliament composed of Home Rulers and Unionists, in the same proportion to population as at present, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... not feel it. Sometimes I have spoken of these things to my mother, but she does not see as I do. I dare not tell my father all I think, and Juste is so much a creature of moods that I am never sure whether he will be sensible and kind, or scoff. One can not bear to be laughed at. And as for my sister, she never thinks; she only lives; and she looks it—looks beautiful. But there, dear Lucie, I must not tire you with my childish philosophy, though I feel no longer a child. You would not know your friend. I can not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Infallibility, concerning which, however, the differences were scarcely less or fewer than those which it was to heal; an Infallibility which taken literally and unqualified, became the source of perplexity to the well-disposed, of unbelief to the wavering, and of scoff and triumph to the common enemy, and which was, therefore, to be qualified and limited, and then it meant so munch and so little that to men of plain understandings and single hearts it meant nothing at all. It resided here. No! there. No! but in a third subject. ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... jeopardize our own souls, to remain poor if we cannot make wealth honestly. Say what you will, the Christian government we are approaching will not recognize property, because it is gradually becoming clear that the holding of property delays the Kingdom at which you scoff, giving the man who owns it a power over the body of the man who does not. Property produces slavery, since it compels those who have none to work for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... expression of bitterness. "Are you satisfied with your pupil?" she added. "I am progressing.... I laugh—when I wish to weep.... But you yourself would not have laughed had you seen the fervor of charming Fanny. She was the picture of blissful faith. Do not scoff at her." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... who endured such sufferings for our sakes, and again bestowed such blessings upon us, him dost thou reject and scoff at his Cross? And, thyself wholly riveted to carnal delights and deadly passions, dost thou proclaim the idols of shame and dishonour gods? Not only hast thou alienated thyself from the commonwealth of heavenly felicity but thou hast also severed from the same all others ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... are recognized as exceptional. The city draws the village and rural family to itself, and the contagion of its customs and ideals spreads through the villages and affects the forms of living there. Youths become city dwellers and do not cease to scoff at the village unless later years give them wisdom to appreciate its higher values. The standard of domestic organization is established by the city; that type of living is the ideal toward ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... persuade Margaret (who, being sore From the doubts she'd felt before, Was prepared for mistrust) To believe her reasons just; Quite destroy'd that comfort glad, Which in Mary late she had; Made her, in experience' spite, Think her friend a hypocrite, And resolve, with cruel scoff, To renounce and ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... unaffected grace, His looks adorn'd the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray. 180 The service pass'd, around the pious man, With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; Even children follow'd with endearing wile, And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile. His ready smile a parent's warmth express'd, 185 Their welfare pleas'd him, and their cares ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... House of Lima Street; but inasmuch as she never thought about her appearance it would have been a waste of time for anybody to try to romanticize her. The civilizing effect of her presence in the slum was quickly felt; and though Lidderdale continued to scoff at the advantages of civilization, he finally learnt to give a grudging welcome to her various schemes for making the bodies of the flock as comfortable as her husband tried ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... cadets): Here are the rebels! Ay, Sirs, on all sides I hear that in your ranks you scoff at me; That the Cadets, these loutish, mountain-bred, Poor country squires, and barons of Perigord, Scarce find for me—their Colonel—a disdain Sufficient! call me plotter, wily courtier! It does not please their mightiness to see A point-lace ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... writer of The present poem—of—I know not what— A tendency to under-rate and scoff At human power and virtue, and all that; And this they say in language rather rough. Good God! I wonder what they would be at! I say no more than hath been said in Dante's Verse, and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... us are asking, "What is the way out?" As for myself, I confess to being only a student. I have no word of sneer or scoff for any mail's honest thinking, who is sincerely trying to uplift his brothers and sisters; and yet I must say that, as yet, I have not been able to become a disciple of any of the new systems that have been presented. I feel something like the man who says, "There are good things to be said in ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... You killed a boy! (His Wife sobs. Man softly strokes her hair with his trembling hand) Don't cry, my dear, don't cry. He will scoff at our tears, just as He scoffed at our prayers. And you—I don't know who you are—God, Devil, Fate, ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... winter days are passing fair! As if a breath of spring Had permeated all the air, And touched each living thing With thankfulness for such a boon— Discounting with a scoff The almanac's report that "June Is yet ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... who scoff at all things it may be a great amusement to detect the secret of a woman, to know that her chastity is a lie, that her calm face hides some anxious thought, that under that pure brow is a dreadful drama. But there are other souls to whom the sight is saddening; ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... wish? What would I have? Is it my intention or my desire to make her wretched? What! Sink her whom I adore in the estimation of the world; and render her the scoff of the foolish, the vain, and ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... 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 thee mart of the world—a place of wonder and astonishment!—and, were ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... is not interested in sin, or even immorality, but it is vitally interested in the effects of them. A person may stay away from church, but he must not scoff at the Holy Scriptures. He may bathe in the nude, but not at a public beach or near where persons are passing. A human model may be posed for an artist, but must not be exhibited ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... psychical unity of the race is becoming matter not only of emotional intuition, but established scientific fact: and no modern sociologist, no psychologist who realizes how unknown in origin and how intimate in interpenetration are the forces that control our destiny, can afford to scoff at her. She had longed inexpressibly for outward martyrdom. This was not for her, yet none the less really did she lay down her life on the Altar of Sacrifice. The evils of the time, and above all of the Church, had generated a sense of unbearable sin in her pure spirit; her constant ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... is a bitterly indignant protest against those who would suppress the dialect, against the regents and the rectors whom "we must pay with our pennies to hear them scoff at the language that binds us to our fathers and our soil!" And the poet cries out, "No, no, we'll keep our rebellious langue d'oc, grumble who will. We'll speak it in the stables, at harvest-time, among the silkworms, among lovers, ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... care about any more, but if you will let me talk to you about something— See here, Anna. Yes, I mean Anna. What nonsense for us to attempt to keep up the Miss Moore and Mr. Sanderson business. I used to scoff at love at first sight and say it was all the idle fancy of the poets. Then I met you and remained to pray. You've turned my world topsy-turvy. I can't think without you, and yet it would be folly to tell this to my Governor, and ask ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... with jocular scoff unto Joseph Carnaby, thus accosting him, whom his shirt, being made stiffer than usual for the occasion, ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... Vicentio been inclined 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 celebrated herder of cattle and wild horses, and was reported to have chased the ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... 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 me. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... glitter of the comparatively large salaries paid to a few of us—such unreasoning envy as this is another; and the want of sympathy of some writers with the art itself, who, unable to pray with Goethe and Voltaire, remain to scoff with Jeremy Collier, is a third. There are causes from without that will always keep alive a certain measure of hostility towards the player. As long as the public, in Hazlitt's words, feel more respect for John Kemble in a plain coat than the Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack, so long will this ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... the creation, subjected to vanity for their sakes, find its freedom in their freedom, its gladness in their sonship. The animals will glory to serve them, will joy to come to them for help. Let the heartless scoff, the unjust despise! the heart that cries Abba, Father, cries to the God of the sparrow and the oxen; nor can hope go too far in hoping what that God will do for the creation that now groaneth and travaileth in pain because ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... leisure to attempt the consolidation of his little empire and the fusion of the jealous tribes which composed it. The low moral condition of his Arabs, who were for the most part thieves and cowards, and the rude individuality of his Kabyles, who would respect his religious but scoff at his political claims, made the task of the leader a difficult one. To the Kabyles he confided the care of his saintly reputation, renouncing their contributions, and asking only for their prayers as a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the date of the Battle of Salamis. So I returned to S. Alfio and asked whether he always answers all prayers; they said the people believe he does or they hope he will. One of them, thinking I was inclined to scoff, rebuked ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... the temple laid His desperate hands, and in its overthrow Destroyed himself, and with him those who made A cruel mockery of his sightless woe; The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all, Expired, and thousands ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... satisfaction and happiness. It behooves the musician, therefore, to study the underlying bases of the community music movement, and to use this new tool that has been thus providentially thrown into his hands for the advancement of art appreciation, rather than to stand aloof and scoff at certain imperfections and crudities which inevitably are only too evident in the ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... I," continued Monsieur Bernard paying no attention to the expression in Godefroid's eyes, "even I, a child of the eighteenth century, fed on Voltaire, Diderot, Helvetius,—I, a son of the Revolution, who scoff at all that antiquity and the middle-ages tell us of demoniacal possession,—well, monsieur, I affirm that nothing but such possession can explain the condition of my child. As a somnambulist she has never been able to tell us the cause of her sufferings; ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... it is Leroy would never do?" The voice carried a scoff with it, the implication that his very presence had ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... sees the gyves that bind mankind And strives to strike them off Shall gain the hissing hate of fools, Thorns, and the ingrate's scoff. ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... every power of my soul, gasps to mock you—you Gracious Monster on High. I tell you, I would, if I could, breathe it into every human soul, every flower, every leaf, every dewdrop in the garden! I tell you, I would scoff you on the day of doom, and curse the teeth out of my mouth for the sake of your Deity's boundless miserableness! I tell you from this hour I renounce all thy works and all thy pomps! I will execrate my thought if it dwell on you again, and tear out my lips if they ever utter your name! I tell you, ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... are sacrilegious, they are excommunicated, who impeach the magic of the past and the poison of tradition. And the thousand million victims themselves scoff at and strike those who rebel, as soon as they are able. All cast stones at them, all, even those who suffer and while they are suffering—even the sacrificed, a ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... made the discovery that they do not subsist entirely upon frogs. He has encountered real Germans, at sufficiently close quarters to realize that the "German Menace" at which his party leaders encouraged him to scoff in a bygone age was no such phantom after all. Altogether he is a very different person from the complacent, parochial exponent of the tight-little-island theories of yester-year. He has encountered things ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... Henry and Elizabeth had spared was demolished. In 1643 Chichester was besieged by Waller and taken after ten days. His soldiers, we read, "pulled down the idolatrous images from the Market Cross; they brake down the organ in the Cathedral and dashed the pipes with their pole-axes, crying in scoff, "Harke! how the organs goe"; and after they ran up and down with their swords drawn, defacing the monuments of the dead and hacking the seats and stalls." Indeed, such was their malice that it is wonderful to see how ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... 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 ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... kneel all! caps off! Old Blue Light's going to pray; Strangle the fool that dares to scoff! Attention! it's his way! Appealing from his native sod In forma pauperis to God Lay bare thine arm—stretch forth thy rod, Amen! ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... first offences needs must come! Even now[115:1] (Black Hell laughs horrible—to hear the scoff!) 160 Thee to defend, meek Galilaean! Thee And thy mild laws of Love unutterable, Mistrust and Enmity have burst the bands Of social peace: and listening Treachery lurks With pious fraud to snare a brother's life; 165 And childless widows o'er the groaning ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... shore hears Jule's views of me as a beau! They're hot enough to fry meat! Moreover, Jule tells all Sni-a-bar an' I'm at once a scoff an' jeer from the Kaw to the Gasconade. Jule's old pap washes out his rifle an' signs a pledge to plug me if ever ag'in I puts my hand on his front gate. As I su'gests, it rooins my social c'reer ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... taking upon himself the command, had found a letter of Demades's, formerly written by him to Antigonus in Asia, recommending him to come and possess himself of the empire of Greece and Macedon, now hanging, he said, (a scoff at Antipater,) "by an old and rotten thread." So when Cassander saw him come, he seized him; and first brought out the son and killed him so close before his face, that the blood ran all over his clothes and person, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... advanced,—even so far as to have entered into the conventional valley of dry bones,—one whom the world is preparing, by its daily practical lessons, to enlighten with unbelief. If we see them together, perhaps we shall hear the senior scoff at his younger companion as a poetic dreamer, as a hunter after phantoms that never were, nor could be, in nature: then may follow a homily on the virtues of experience, as the only security against disappointment. But there are some hearts that never suffer the ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... neighbours scoff, and her menace, But saddened friends grieve at her sore disgrace, Love, through their heart, in fervour rills, Each one respects this plaintivest of girls; And many a pitying soul a prayer said, That some great miracle ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... cynical, he was a perfect type of the Georgian courtier to whom loyalty, patriotism, honesty, and honor were so many synonyms for folly. He was effeminate in habits and appearance, but notoriously licentious; he affected to scoff at learning but made some pretense to literature, and had written 'Four Epistles after the Manner of Ovid', and numerous political pamphlets. Pope, who had some slight personal acquaintance with him, disliked his political connections and probably despised ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... would atone to her for it by my unwearying love. But," his voice mastered by emotion, "how dare I say such words to you? In the sphere in which you live they would be considered a dastardly insult—one must not dare to move one step from the beaten track of custom. The world would scoff at the idea that my love for you is more sacred and reverent than that of a man who, inspired by a momentary passion for a woman and desiring her, obtains his end by a simple and speedy means, without reflection as to the possible misery ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... tournament, Forgetful of his glory and his name, Forgetful of his princedom and its cares. And this forgetfulness was hateful to her. And by and by the people, when they met In twos and threes, or fuller companies, Began to scoff and jeer and babble of him As of a prince whose manhood was all gone, And molten down in mere uxoriousness. And this she gather'd from the people's eyes: This too the women who attired her head, To please her, dwelling on his boundless love, Told Enid, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... summer when Mr. Stephen Brice began to make his appearance in public. The very first was rather encouraging than otherwise, although they were not all so. It was at a little town on the outskirts of the city where those who had come to scoff ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... drudgery of the fields; in it he must live his life, and fulfil his mission. The more he wrote the more he accustomed himself with the idea of being an author. He knew that the critic-folk, deep read in books, might scoff at the very suggestion of a ploughman turning poet, but he recognised also that they might be wrong. It was not by dint of Greek that Parnassus was to be climbed. 'Ae spark o' Nature's fire' was the one thing needful for poetry that was ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... at Angelo for marrying Rosalina but he began to hang about his discarded mistress again and scoff at her choice of a husband. But Rosalina gave him the cold shoulder, with the result that he became more and more insulting to Angelo. Finally one day our client made up his mind not to stand it any longer, secured a revolver, sought out Tomasso in his barber shop and put a ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... remaining, of course, incurably "bright." I think I detect a certain amount of the too-British attitude that contemns what is strange and is more than a little scornful of poverty, official and private. And I suppose the artist's wife will scoff if I tell her that I was shocked that she should have taken some shots at the Austrians with a Montenegrin machine gun, as if war was just a cock-shy for tourists. But I was. If Mr. JAN GORDON found a good deal more colour in his subjects than we other fellows would have been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... married, being well advanced in years, having spent his youth in good fellowship, a great talker and a great jeerer, calling to mind how much the subject of cuckoldry had given him occasion to talk and scoff at others. To prevent them from paying him in his own coin, he married a wife from a place where any one finds what he wants for his money: "Good morrow, strumpet"; "Good morrow, cuckold"; and there was not anything wherewith he more commonly and openly entertained ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... 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 company, every ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Mercury, nor Jupiter we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or scoff. Off, would-be tyrant, off!!!" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... of it. By all I hold most sacred and most solemn- By all my wishes now—my fears hereafter- By all I scorn on earth and hope in heaven- There is no deed I would more glory in, Than in thy cause to scoff at this same glory And trample it under foot. What matters it- What matters it, my fairest, and my best, That we go down unhonored and forgotten Into the dust—so we descend together. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a mercurial and nervous temperament, and this fact perhaps may account for the anomaly of a mountain-boy who was a poor shot. Andy was the scoff of Persimmon Ridge. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... and best, and highest that ever lived. Hearken, Mary! and do not scoff at me—nor scorn me. No, you can never do that, I know. My knight is far above me—so far, it may be, that he will never stoop so low as to give me more than passing signs of his good-will. But I have had these. He has shone on me with his ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... will be finished, when our national literature shall be so purified as to reflect a faithful and a just light upon the character and social habits of our race, and the brush, and pencil, and chisel, and lyre of art, shall refuse to lend their aid to scoff at the afflictions of the poor, or to caricature, or ridicule a long-suffering people. When caste and prejudice in Christian churches shall be utterly destroyed, and shall be regarded as totally unworthy of Christians, and at variance with the principles of the gospel. When the ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... better to have had a head and lost it," he cried, "than never to have had a head at all! Mark you, Dryden, my boy, it ill befits you to scoff at me for my misfortune, for dust thou art, and to dust thou hast returned, if word from t'other side about thy books and that which in and ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... hear'st Men scoff at Heaven and Fate, Because the Gods thou fear'st Fail to make blest thy state, Tremblest, and wilt not dare to ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 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 ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson |
