"Scoffing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... decay; like the Boeotians, to have had her Pindaric period, and thenceforward to have paid for its raptures and renown by perpetual darkness; or like the Israelites in Egypt, to be condemned to drudgery for life, sunk into an intellectual slave-caste;—when in the midst of the scoffing, or the sorrow, suddenly arrived a new epoch, a new summons to the national genius, a time of lofty interpositions, "thunderings in the air, and lightning running along the ground," an era of the marvellous things of mind; the chains fell off the hands, and the generation went forth, with a new ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... standing there. Ha-ha, had she been to a dance, unknown to everybody? But the harvest-homes were over, and Twelfth Day had not yet come round. "What had she been eating or drinking to make herself so ill?" he inquired in a scoffing tone. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... death his court, and there the antick sate, Scoffing her state and grinning at her pomp. Allowing her a little breath, a little scene To monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks, Infusing her with self and vain conceit, As if the flesh which walled about her life Were brass ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... number of little jokes going at the vicar's expense, which kept that good man in a half-protesting chuckle most of the way; he cleared every gate that presented itself in first-rate Oxford form, and climbed every point of rock with a cat-like agility that set the girls scoffing at the pretence of invalidism under which he had foisted ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ruins in going to meet him, almost without thought, if you can understand that. I had my lantern; and he showed me a coil of taper which he had ready for use. "There is nothing like light," he said, in his scoffing tone. It was a very still night, scarcely a sound, but not so dark. We could keep the path without difficulty as we went along. As we approached the spot we could hear a low moaning, broken occasionally by a bitter cry. "Perhaps that is your voice," said the Doctor; "I thought it ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... dulcet tones, so persuasive a manner, and in such well-turned periods, that I, who had been inclined to blame the President for allowing a discussion that could serve no scientific purpose, now forgave him from the bottom of my heart.... In a light, scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution; rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know was ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... society,—a time for not liking tamed people,—a time for not dancing quadrilles,—a time for pretending that Milton, and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people are greater in death than the first living lord of the treasury,—a time, in short, for scoffing and railing, for speaking lightly of the opera, and all our most cherished institutions. A little while you are free and unlabelled, like the ground you compass; but civilization is coming, and coming; you and your much-loved waste-lands will be surely inclosed, and sooner or later ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... as older people sometimes do, that Margaret was no longer a child to be kept in silent subjection. Girls of fifteen—and she was nearly that now—were virtually women in the thirteenth century. Margaret turned to the scoffing Levina, with an air of dignified displeasure which rather ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... heretic is enough to remind us that the Church could not show much favour to one who insisted always on thinking for himself. His works survived, but he was not read, through the Middle Ages. With the Renaissance he partly came into his own again, but still laboured under the imputations of scoffing and atheism, which confined the reading of ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... thoroughly discontented with, and more than half ashamed of, my lot. And the more I mixed with Doubleday and his set, the more I felt this. They all had the appearance of such well-to-do fellows, to whom expense seemed no object. They talked in such a scoffing way of the "poor beggars" who couldn't "stand" the luxuries they indulged in, or dress in the ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... present is proved by the attack made on them by the public journals, and is confessed by the more candid and the more violent among their opponents. Thus the amiable Mr. Bickersteth speaks of it as having manifested itself "with the most rapid growth of the hot-bed of these evil days." The scoffing author of the Via Media says: "At this moment the Via is crowded with young enthusiasts who never presume to argue, except against the propriety of arguing at all." The candid Mr. Baden-Powell, who sees more of the difficulties of the controversy than the rest of their antagonists ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... grown discreet and dutiful. I am fain to command thy release, taking thy promise on oath, and some reasonable security, that thou wilt abstain and withhold in future from that idle and silly slut, that sly and scoffing giggler, Hannah Hathaway, with whom, to the heartache of thy poor, worthy father, thou ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... stole favours in the dark by pretending to be the lady's chosen lover, or induced guileless maids to trust him under promise of marriage, then rode away as fast as his horse could carry him. The monotony of his methods and their success are an outrage to the intelligence of the sex. But for all his scoffing he remained a true Catholic, devoutly believing that the day would come when he must account for his acts; and he proposed, when too old to commit more sins, to repent and make his ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... "Cease your scoffing, Socrates! Do not make sport, and do not compare yourself, your godless self, with a man who ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... gilt, which cost a large sum of money to its founder, a Jew! There is a Latin inscription on it which explains the paradox. There stood on the same spot a wooden statue of Christ in the XVI century. One day an opulent Jew, on passing by, made some scoffing or contemptuous remark on it. He was overheard by some of the people, accused of blasphemy and condemned to die; but on expressing great contrition and offering to pay a fine to any amount, he was pardoned, on the condition of his promising to erect ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... a case of contract; of mercantile contract; of that contract which the Roman law expressed by the formula—Do ut des. Vainly you came before the altars with empty hands. "But my hands are pure." Pure, indeed! would reply the scoffing god, let me see what they contain. It was exactly what you daily read in morning papers, viz.:—that, in order to appear effectually before that Olympus in London, which rains rarities upon us poor abject creatures in the provinces, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... softened its trunk. No; the seared wood is the fitter for the use of the workmen—the hardened and the dried-up heart is that which can best bear the task imposed by these dismal times. God and man will no longer endure the unbridled profligacy of the dissolute—the scoffing of the profane—the contempt of the divine laws—the infraction of human rights. The times demand righters and avengers, and there will be ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... and clatter are excellently depicted by the artist; and we, who have been scoffing at his manner of designing animals, must here make a special exception in favor of the hens and chickens; each has a different ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... follow him no longer, for the dust and sand sticking in his eyes smarted so sore, that of force he must rub and wash it away, which Reynard seeing, with all the fury he had he ran upon him, and with his teeth gave him three sore wounds on his head, and scoffing said, "Have I hit you, Mr. Wolf? I will yet hit you better; you have killed many a lamb and many an innocent beast, and would impose the fault upon me, but you shall find the price of your knavery. I am marked to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... I had thus, in an unexpected way, convinced him of the Countess's virtue, when a voice at my side broke in upon my satisfaction. I had so closely kept my attention upon the Count that I had not observed Captain Ferragant come down the stairs. It was he that now spoke, in his cool, quiet, scoffing tone: ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... is here rebuked, and the person or persons in this practice, as is said, were such as feared not God; a course of lying and the fear of God cannot stand together. This sin of lying is a common sin, and it walketh in the world in several guises. There is the profane scoffing liar, there is the cunning artificial liar, there is the hypocritical religious liar, with liars of other ranks and degrees. But none of them all have the fear of God, nor shall any of them, they not repenting, escape the damnation of hell—"All liars shall have ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... permit me, Liege Lady, with all loyalty, to submit that now and then you prick with your pin the wrong man. But the poor child from Domremy, shrinking under the gaze of a dazzling court—not because dazzling (for in visions she had seen those that were more so), but because some of them wore a scoffing smile on their features—how should she throw her line into so deep a river to angle for a king, where many a gay creature was sporting that masqueraded as kings in dress! Nay, even more than any true king would ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... divinity, who are to be the future teachers of this great nation; ministers and congregations apparently dead as stones; churches becoming idols, claiming the reverence and love of their members, and jealous of any other idol usurping their throne; scoffing infidelity among the ignorant; philosophic scepticism among the intelligent; indifference among thousands; while abroad heathen nations, with countless millions, are opened up to the Protestant Church, which can only send driblets of two or three missionaries here and ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... Minerva; and never before had he been more bowed down by his needy distress, the everlasting anguish of his ill-luck. On the other hand, Duthil, in spite of everything, was perorating in the centre of a group with an affectation of scoffing unconcern; nevertheless nervous twitches made his nose pucker and distorted his mouth, while the whole of his handsome face was becoming moist with fear. And even as Massot had said, there really was only Fonsegue who showed composure and bravery, ever the same with his restless ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... are closely connected. That pronounced on daring evil-doers, who not only let sin draw them to itself, but go more than halfway to meet it, needing no temptation, but drawing it to them eagerly, and scoffing at the merciful warnings of fatal consequences, comes first. Next is a woe on those who play fast and loose with plain morality, sophisticating conscience, and sapping the foundations of law. Such juggling follows sensual indulgence such as drunkenness, when it becomes habitual and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... characteristic opinion as to his purpose, but all of them roughly compassionate. Without exception, they looked upon him as one of the show-sick youths who, in those days, as now, succumb too readily to the lure of sawdust and spangles. More than one scoffing jest was uttered over his ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... enjoying holy peace instead of war, it would be no small matter of entertainment and recreation to survey the landscape at times. The Moro does not like to see us, and is looking at us continually from his stronghold and yelling and scoffing at us—as they say sometimes that the Spaniards are chickens; again, that they are sibabuyes; [21] and again, that they will come to set fire to us all, and kill us. The Moro is a great rascal and buffoon. I trust in God that in a little while He will be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... is step-dame—scoffing at the strife, And black assassins, armed with deadly knife, At every step lurk, striking at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... was not applied to themselves by the followers of Jesus before the completion of the New Testament. There were other names in currency before that designation—which owed its origin to the scoffing wits of Antioch—was accepted by the Church. They called themselves 'disciples,' 'believers, 'saints,' 'brethren,' as if ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... her eyes dazzled him, her smile made him forget everything else—yet just at the moment when he had reached out for the money the memory of the prophecy had come back to him. And so he had refused, turning a deaf ear to her entreaties, and scoffing at her easy-going father; and she had gone off down the trail without once looking back, promising Bunker she would become ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... barricades bowing to the image of Christ, 'who first taught fraternity to men.' One trembles to look into every fresh newspaper lest there should be something to mar the picture; but hitherto even the scoffing newspaper critics have been compelled into a tone of genuine respect for the French people and the Provisional Government. Lamartine can act a poem if he cannot write one of the very first order. I hope that beautiful face given to him ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... legions of tall, gaunt shadows, and whilst some of these were explicable, there were others that certainly had no apparent counterparts in any of the natural objects around them. Even Curtis, in spite of his scoffing, showed no inclination to examine them too closely; but kept his face resolutely turned to the more cheery light of the fire. The soft, cool, sweet-scented air gradually acted as an anaesthetic, and Kelson and Curtis were almost asleep, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... quarrel with the general attitude of scoffing at new ideas. It is better to be skeptical of all new ideas and to insist upon being shown rather than to rush around in a continuous brainstorm after every new idea. Skepticism, if by that we mean cautiousness, is the balance wheel of civilization. Most of the present ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... might hope for help was three miles away; the home of a partial friend—at least no enemy. Reaching it after a perilous walk through a roadless, bridgeless wilderness, she stood outside the crooked gate and called "Hallo." Again and again she called till, in desperation scoffing at the risk—for it is never wise to approach the Kentucky mountaineer's home nearer than his front gate without an invitation—she walked boldly to the door. It was open, and she peered into the darkness. No fire had been lighted for supper. She kneeled on the sill and felt around ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... the army, then?' enquired the curate, who could not understand the sort of scoffing dislike he seemed ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... dissensions were a cause of deep humiliation and of anxious concern to all loyal Lutherans. To the Romanists and Reformed, however, who united in predicting the impending collapse of Lutheranism, they were a source of malicious and triumphant scoffing and jeering. A prominent theologian reported that by 1566 matters had come to such a pass in Germany that the old Lutheran doctrine was publicly proclaimed only in relatively few places. In the Palatinate public thanks were rendered to God in the churches that also Electoral Saxony ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... the jest of the party; even the ladies tittered at my folly. Next evening the Governor had a large dinner-party. I was there. Having caught cold, I coughed slightly; this drew attention to me. Remarks were made, and the Governor alluded in scoffing terms to my exploit, which created much mirth. 'Were you drunk?' said one. 'Had you lost your senses, to risk your life for a brute of a negro?' said another. 'Rather than spoil my uniform, I would have knocked ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... little, growing stronger, taking courage, inspired by the sacred text, he forgot everything, and the Superior, old Father Richard, who watched him with his little bright cunning eyes, and the unmoved professors, and his watchful fellow-students, jeering and scoffing at first, then at last astonished and jealous. "There is the stuff of an orator in him," the Professor of Sacred Eloquence had said, "we must push this lad forward." "He is full of talent and virtue," the Superior had replied, "he will get on. He is our chosen vessel." ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... rather than allow their inmost thoughts to assume control. He himself, already initiated by the awful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He had reached the stage where he was immune. But these two, the scoffing, analytical doctor, and the honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sat trembling in the depths ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... sent the 5th, 6th, and part of the 7th Number—all as yet printed. Your censures are all right: I wish your praises were equally so. The Essay on Fasts I am ashamed of. It was conceived in the spirit, and clothed in the harsh scoffing, of an Infidel. You wish to have one long essay;—so should I wish; but so do not my subscribers wish. I feel the perplexities of my undertaking increase daily. In London and Bristol "The Watchman" is read for its original matter,—the news and debates barely tolerated. The people of Liverpool, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... obtains are really from my son Peter. That his spirit speaks to me through her. This has been proved to me in many ways, but a far greater proof is the conviction in my soul of the reality of it all. My wife believes as implicitly as I do, and no amount of scoffing from outsiders can in any way ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... alone was free. The thought made him tremble; but admiring his own cleverness in pursuing his infernal schemes, and putting away his sad looks, he smiled again with an expression of indefinable pride. The madman at this moment was scoffing at the justice of God. But Lello of Aquila, who was waiting at the table, bent down, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... another foundation than the superficial part would promise. Marry, these other pleasant fault-finders, who will correct the verb, before they understand the noun, and confute others' knowledge before they confirm their own: I would have them only remember, that scoffing cometh not of wisdom. So as the best title in true English they get with their merriments is to be called good fools: for so have our grave forefathers ever termed that humorous kind of jesters: but that which giveth greatest scope to their scorning humours is ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the gold brought forth, the Gauls used false dealing in the weights, secretly at first, but afterwards openly pulled back and disturbed the balance; at which the Romans indignantly complaining, Brennus in a scoffing and insulting manner pulled off his sword and belt, and threw them both into the scales; and when Sulpicius asked what that meant, "What should it mean," says he, "but woe to the conquered?" which afterwards became a proverbial ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... listening rather doubtfully to their tales, for the tales had taken devious turns under cross-examination. But for the bloody trappings of Pete Gamble's horse, telling mutely of tragedy, the hunters might have met only contempt and scoffing. Indian scares ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... of grace shot across the soul of Cassier; he struggled in the grasp of an unseen power, but suddenly lapsed into the awful callousness which characterizes the relapses of confirmed guilt; he pretended to smile at his weakness, and found a sorry relief in cursing and scoffing at everything ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... spectator at such an exhibition—but that solitary crawling wretch who, after having spent his days and nights in agony and fear, is thrust forward, bound and pinioned, to be hanged up there like a dog before the scoffing or yelling multitude? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... to Villiers' temperament. It was piercing and acute in an altogether different sense—a side of forbidding pleasantry and fierce raillery. No longer was it the paradoxical mystifications of Poe, but a scoffing that had in it the lugubrious and savage comedy which Swift possessed. A series of sketches, les Demoiselles de Bienfilatre, l'Affichage celeste, la Machine a gloire, and le Plus beau diner du monde, betrayed a singularly inventive and keenly bantering mind. The whole order of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... wickedness prospers sometimes, I much fear; And virtue's not always victorious, that's clear: At least, not at first: for it must be confessed Poor Blackbird lost many a stick from his nest; And his unkind grand neighbors with scoffing caw-caws, In his voice and his character found many flaws, And jeered him and mocked him; but when they'd all done, He flew to his tree ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... struck him in the breast. It is necessary to say that on the evening before he had noticed that the little medallion which had been given to him by Fanny Dorville, worn from its chain by friction, had disappeared from his neck. Scoffing comrades smiled at the coincidence; the more ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... the humbly living, contented, narrow-minded, timid, - whom he did not hate as much as he despised them with fervid scorn. And finally women, whom he neither hated nor despised, but whom he feared with a scoffing dread. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... playing to-night," Steve began. He was cut short by a torrent of scoffing advice ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... met a man like Mr. Arthurs. His life had been passed in Dublin, among people who thought and talked and speculated, but seldom did; and he had been habituated to scoffing talk at Belfast men ... "money-grubbers" ... mitigated, now and then, by a grudging tribute to their grit and great energy and resource. Mr. Arthurs had none of the money-grubbing spirit in him; his ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Freddy's surmises had been correct. The chaff and scoffing which he had so good-naturedly put up with from the fellow-excavators who had been to visit the camp were likely to be turned the other way. He had little or no doubt left that he had struck an important tomb, probably the tomb of the Pharaoh for ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... with bitter words, and one of them, made mad by his scoffing, cast a heavy ballast-stone at him. It fell upon his shoulder and ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... then as ignorance can be; Soon wilt thou hear it shouted from our ranks. Those who once hurled defiance o'er our heads, Scorning our arms, and scoffing at our faith, The nightly wolf hath visited, unscared, And loathed them as her prey; for famine first, Achieving in few days the boast of year; Sank their young eyes and opened us the gates: Ceuta, her port, her citadel, ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... sense of my follies and demerit, I strove to throw the blame on others. We kept nightly orgies in Palazzo Carega. To sleepless, riotous nights, followed listless, supine mornings. At the Ave Maria we showed our dainty persons in the streets, scoffing at the sober citizens, casting insolent glances on the shrinking women. Juliet was not among them—no, no; if she had been there, shame would have driven me away, if love had not brought me to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... pictured faces eloquently proclaim the tale of buoyant life and action entrusted to them many thousands of years ago. Sometimes, it is a natural rock, cut and smoothed down at a height sufficient to protect it from the wantonly destructive hand of scoffing invaders, on which a king of a deeper turn of thought, more mindful than others of the law which dooms all the works of men to decay, has caused a relation of the principal events of his reign to be engraved in those curious characters ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... hair or of her eyes, nor what her face was like, nor her form, save that she was tall and very slender; but beautiful—ah yes!—with the beauty which this world cannot give; a beauty which silenced every flippant jest, shamed every scoffing thought, turned ridicule into wonder, contempt into reverence. Whether this wonderful maiden came in truth as a messenger of God or no, at least not one present but saw well that she herself believed heart and soul in her ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of a blare of music, and looking along the street saw a number of people advancing out of Russell Square, red shirts, and the banner of the Salvation Army to the fore. Such a crowd, chanting in the roadway and scoffing on the pavement, I could not hope to penetrate, and dreading to go back and farther from home again, and deciding on the spur of the moment, I ran up the white steps of a house facing the museum railings, and ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... behaviour. It is an explanation that I would fain avoid giving; but it must come some time, and so may as well be given now. You may perhaps have noticed that when during our voyage you all joined in scoffing at dreams, portents and visions, I invariably avoided giving any opinion on the subject. I did so because, while I had no desire to court ridicule or provoke discussion, I was unable to agree with you, knowing only too well ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... despatch the druids [6]and the poets of the camp,[6] the lampoonists and hard-attackers,[a] for Ferdiad, to the end that they might make three satires to stay him and three scoffing speeches against him, [7]to mock at him and revile and disgrace him,[7] that they might raise three blisters on his face, Blame, Blemish and Disgrace, [8]that he might not find a place in the world to lay his head,[8] [W.3021.] if he came not [1]with them[1] [2]to the ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... elegant manners, skilled, nevertheless, in all manly sports and exercises; Cleon, no less a master in physical prowess, was nurtured by a hind in the mountains; the contrast between their manners is admirably sustained: Cleon is rough, inclined to be rude and scoffing, totally without tact, even where his mistress is concerned. Lalus remembers her upbringing and her tastes; he makes no unnecessary or ostentatious display of wealth; his gifts are simple and charming, while Cleon's are so grotesquely unsuited ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... fine raiment and lodged as befitted one so great; but then came Merlin and spoiled all; for he persuaded the king that you are mad, and know not whereof you speak; and said your threat is but foolishness and idle vaporing. They disputed long, but in the end, Merlin, scoffing, said, 'Wherefore hath he not named his brave calamity? Verily it is because he cannot.' This thrust did in a most sudden sort close the king's mouth, and he could offer naught to turn the argument; and so, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... him. With spur in side and slackened rein, he dashed upon the heathen, mad with rage. Through shield and hauberk pierced his spear, and the Saracen fell dead ere his scoffing words were done. "Thou dastard!" cried Roland, "no traitor is Charlemagne, but a right ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... factions, one upholding the belief that Jerome would remain true to his promise, the other full of scoffing and scorn at the insanity of it. Both factions invaded Jerome, and while neither broached the matter directly, strove by indirect and sly ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fires kindled in the palace, and take care of them, instead of the maids who usually looked after them. This plan of his evidently interferes with an existing arrangement, hence the abusive words of Melantho toward him first, and then the scoffing speech of Eurynomus, her lover, who lets fly at him a footstool which hits the cupbearer. General confusion results, in the midst of which Telemachus commands order which is seconded by Amphinomus. After ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... was just that life was like that. Indeed, the bitterness festered around the thought that it was life itself—the way of life—not the brutality of any particular people. "They'll pension him—he's done a lot for the school." Even the grateful memory of Gretta's tremulous, scoffing little laugh for the way it fell short could not follow to the deep place that had ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... thus "for full half an hour with inimitable spirit, emptiness and unfairness." "In a light, scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution; rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... thrown, with no decent cover o'er it— Jeers its funeral rites alone—into Hackensack they bore it, 'Mid the clanging of the bells in the old Brick Church's steeple, And the hooting and the yells of the gladdened, maddened people. Some they rode and some they ran by the wagon where it rumbled, Scoffing at the lifeless man, all elate that death had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... perhaps, in solitude; and, by a great exertion of self-command, resolves to bear it with fortitude and in silence. Some days after, in a public room, he sees strangers reading it also: he hears them scoffing and laughing loudly: in the midst of all this, he sees himself pointed out to their notice by some one of the party who happens to be acquainted with his person; and, possibly, if the libel take that particular shape which excessive malice ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... dirty road, in waggons, in small tents, and in the open, men, women, and children were lying huddled in family groups. How far these crowds extended she could not see. Watch-fires were burning here and there, and in the fields on either side a patrol of Missouri militia were heard scoffing and shouting in the darkness. The Danite answered the challenge of one of these men with apparent meekness; Susannah perceived that he had gained in self-control. When they had entered the road, along the sides of which the forlorn multitude lay, they travelled for ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... piece of work it would make among the lively youths of the village, to be sure! What scoffing, what ridicule, what embellishments, what fables, would follow in the trail of the story! If the Interviewer got hold of it, how "The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor" would blaze with capitals in its next ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... who relates this anecdote, was himself an unbeliever; yet the scoffing tone adopted by Sir Robert seems ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... may come to yerself, sooner or later, God have mercy upon ye; and as such no scoffing matter,' said an older man. 'Faith, I'd as lief cry as laugh to see a ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... erect ears, and in his boisterous position had suffered a loss of hair, wearing nothing save an impudent scalp-lock. A very grotesque personage. Was he the guardian imp, the legendary Eft of Katahdin, scoffing already at us as verdant, and warning that he would make us unhappy, if we essayed to appear in demon realms and on Brocken heights ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... General from the brazen craft And dash with which he sneaks a bit of road And all its fares; challenged, or chafed, or chaffed, Back-answers of the newest he'll explode; He reins his horses with an air; he treats With scoffing calm whatever powers there be; He gets it straight, puts a bit on, and meets His losses with both lip and pounds s. d.; He arrogates a special taste in short; Is loftily grateful for a flagrant ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... his household to resume the subject. It is supposed that the Grey Friars from their great lodgment so near the Court had found fault with the appointment of Buchanan and assailed himself as a profane and scoffing heretic. It was certainly strange that a man who had adopted the heresies of Luther should be appointed to the care of the son of a Catholic King, but Buchanan it is probable kept his religious opinions to himself, and it was not necessary to be a Protestant ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... and kings severally applied to the king, and begged the matter might be intrusted to each of them singly, and that Tigranes would sit as a spectator. Tigranes also attempted to be witty, and, in a scoffing manner, he uttered the well-known saying, "If they have come as ambassadors, there are too many of them; if as soldiers, too few." Thus they amused themselves with sarcastic sayings and jokes. At daybreak Lucullus led out his troops under arms. Now the barbarian army was on the east side ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... broke again into articulate scoffing. "It is very odd that at your age you should be so little a ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... wondrous tale, that, in his own land beyond the Great Waters, the mighty animal which is called the King of Beasts is, save only when he lacks food, as mild as the dove or the song-sparrow. And thus it was with the Great Spirit, as regarded the scoffing and wickedness of the Andirondacks. Long he resisted the importunities of the subordinate Manitous, that the haughty tribe might be punished for their insolence; long he waited with the hope that their eyes might be opened, and repentance seize their hearts, and amendment ensue. He waited ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... rightly—or at least more rightly and approximately rightly—of the position and age of man upon this earth. The Psalmist's ancient question of devout thankfulness is too often travestied to-day into a question of scoffing or of melancholy unbelief: 'When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy hands; what is man? Art Thou mindful of him?' This psalm comes to answer that. 'The Lord of hosts is with us.' True, we are but of yesterday, and know nothing. True, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in all the newest fashions, how do their example provoke others to love and follow the same vanity; spending that upon their lusts which should relieve their own and others' wants. Also if there be any given to jesting, scoffing, lying, whoring, backbiting, junketing,[25] wantonness, or any other sin, they that are most expert in these things do ofttimes entangle others, that peradventure would not have been so vile as now they are, had they not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... clearer light and for purer air the unquiet soul. In manner, in thought, and in person as yet almost an infant, deep in her heart lay yet one woman's secret, known scarcely to herself, but which taught her, more powerfully than Hilda's proud and scoffing tongue, to shudder at the thought of the barren cloister and the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seed of His Church. The one casts us into fiery dispensations of suffering and loss; the other takes these moments of human anguish and desolation, and makes of them open windows through which a doubting or scoffing world may see what love can do. Thus He makes us to triumph In the midst of our foes, while working in us a likeness to Himself, ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... afraid," he admitted frankly, "that in some corner of the world, if not in this country, you might whisper a word, a scoffing or an angry sentence, which would make people wonder what grudge you had against a simple Norfolk baronet. I would not like that word to be spoken in the presence of any one who knew your history and realised the rather amazing likeness between Sir Everard Dominey ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... care of her daughter's child, the maternal pleasure which had hitherto been denied her. Ere leaving Montreal Mr. Hartley, at his wife's request, erected a handsome monument in Mount Royal Cemetery to the memory of the humane man, who, regardless of the jeers and scoffing of gossiping scandal mongers, had braved public opinion, and saved to the world a good wife, an affectionate daughter and ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... exiles whose captivity preceded it by a few years; and he was confronted by the incredulity which fancied that it had a great many facts to support it, and so it generalised God's long-suffering delay in sending the threatened punishment into a scoffing proverb which said, 'The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth.' To translate it into plain English, the prophets had cried 'Wolf! wolf!' so long that their alarms ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... true that his quiet and unremitted efforts had smoothed Grace's path to some extent. There were ill-used women whom he had helped and comforted; there were neglected children whose lives he had contrived to brighten; there were unbelievers whose scoffing his gentle simplicity and long-suffering had checked a little. He could be regarded no longer with contempt in Riggan; he even had ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... better for you," a voice within me rang, "had this evil dream been the reality, and this fair reality the dream; better your part pleading for crucified humanity with a scoffing generation, than here, drinking of wells you digged not, and eating of trees whose husbandmen you stoned;" and my ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... that the southerner makes it the great affair of his life, but does not allow himself to become disorganized. He likes the talk that goes with it, its lightness, its change. He hates the slavery of it. It furnishes a pretext for serenades, fine speeches, light scoffing, caresses. He finds it difficult to comprehend the joining together of love and death, which lies in the northern nature, and casts a shade of melancholy upon ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... almost to it alone did I owe my moral culture: and the events, the doctrines, the symbols, the similes, had all impressed themselves deeply upon me, and had influenced me in one way or another. These unjust, scoffing, and perverting attacks, therefore, disgusted me; but people had already gone so far as very willingly to admit, partly as a main ground for the defense of many passages, that God had accommodated himself to the modes of thought and power of comprehension in men; that ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... of two hours of waiting, relieved with pleas and promises from the miller, there was no word from Dylks and no token of his bodily presence. With the scoffing of the unbelievers, the prayers of the faithful rose. "Come soon, oh Lord!" "Send thy Power!" "Remember thy Little Flock!" Upon these at last broke falteringly, stragglingly, a familiar voice, the voice of Abel Reverdy, kindly and uncouth as ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... is one thing to scoff at superstition in the bright sunlight; it is quite another to listen to a tale like this on a night like this in a house a hundred years old. Miss Howes scoffed, it is true, but the scoffing ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... declared that the omens were not in favour of the marriage. Upon this Helge assembled his people to hear the word which the messengers were to carry to their master, but unfortunately King Halfdan gave way to his waggish humour, and made scoffing reference to the advanced age of the royal suitor. These impolitic words were reported to King Ring, and so offended him that he immediately collected an army and prepared to march against the Kings of Sogn to avenge the insult with his sword. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... was worthy! This man least of all! Had not he himself warned her over and over again, and she had not listened? Perhaps he had not meant her to listen. Perhaps it had only been another of his devilish artifices for ensnaring her, that attitude of humility, half-scoffing, half-persuasive, with which he had masked his ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... stand at all— His stamping hoofs in vain seek foothold, The rider dreading lest he fall! So then remain within thy paling, Read thou in Pradt or Walter Scott, Compare thy varying editions, Drink, and thy scoffing mood spare not! As the long evenings drag away So ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... and praying; the Will that is tried, and whose gold flows Purified forth from the flames; in a word, mankind by Atonement Breaketh Atonement's bread, and drinketh Atonement's wine cup. But he who cometh up hither, unworthy with hate in his bosom. Scoffing at men and at God, is guilty of Christ's blessed body, And the Redeemer's blood! To himself he eateth and drinketh Death and doom! And from this, preserve us, thou heavenly Father! Are ye ready, ye children, to eat of the bread of Atonement?" Thus with emotion he asked, and together answered ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... APOLLODORUS. Come: no scoffing, this is a noble scheme: in it Caesar is no longer merely the conquering soldier, but the creative poet-artist. Let us name the holy city, and consecrate it with Lesbian Wine—and Cleopatra shall name ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... an angry groan that she had sped Her shafts in vain; and now with scoffing speech To her in turn the son of Peleus spake: "Woman, with what vain vauntings triumphing Hast thou come forth against us, all athirst To battle with us, who be mightier far Than earthborn heroes? We from Cronos' Son, The Thunder-roller, boast our high descent. Ay, even ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... discordant, and contrary opinions in religion; it doth avert them from the church, and maketh them, to sit down in the chair of the scorners. It is but a light thing, to be vouched in so serious a matter, but yet it expresseth well the deformity. There is a master of scoffing, that in his catalogue of books of a feigned library, sets down this title of a book, The Morris-Dance of Heretics. For indeed, every sect of them, hath a diverse posture, or cringe by themselves, which cannot but move derision in worldlings, and depraved politics, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... circumstances, grew for a time in the life of an unrenewed man. In point of fact, a sneer from some leading spirit in a literary society, or a laugh raised by a gay circle of pleasure-seekers in a fashionable drawing-room, or the rude jest of scoffing artisans in a work-shop, may do as much as the fagot and the stake to make a fair but false disciple deny ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... comrades. I know a fellow who carries in his breast pocket the withered, odorless skeleton of a bouquet, that was given him on the day he left home, and who will carry it till he returns, or till it is reddened with his blood. And when I see a man, in the face of ridicule and brutal scoffing, through long marches and weary days of dispiriting labor, clinging with fond tenacity to some little memento of the past, I set him down as a man with his heart in the right place, who will do his country and God good service when there is need. And—it is well to practise ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... wearing the crown of his father.' 'A greater than Solomon is here; this is the king who is preparing a wedding feast for his son.' Thus did they turn into ridicule those eternal truths which he had taught under the from of parables to those whom he came from heaven to save; and whilst repeating these scoffing words, they continued to strike him with their fists and sticks, and to spit in his face. Next they put a crown of reeds upon his head, took off his robe and scapular, and then threw an old torn mantle, which scarcely reached his knees, over his shoulders; around his neck ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... Sage, and this notion was encouraged by the retired fashion in which he of Chelsea lived, showing himself but rarely. Browning was seated near his host, but I noticed a sort of affected and strained empressement on both sides. Later I heard a loud scoffing laugh from Forster, but the other, apparently by a strong effort, repressed himself and made no reply. Alas! as was to be expected, the feud broke out again and was never healed. Though Browning would at times coldly ask ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... And made of something which the world has not, Unless its substance can devour my spirit. And it hath devoured me! In Holofernes It seized me, fed on me; and then gibed on me, With show of his death scoffing at my rage,— His death!—He lay there, drunken, glutted with me, And his bare falchion hung beside the bed,— Look on it, and look on the blood I made Go pouring thunder of pleasure through his brain!— And like a mad thing hitting at the madness Thronging upon it in ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... Though the form of their speech was as if they were speaking to equals, yet in their tone there was something of fear. I am sure my husband was their superior, or captain, or somewhat. He replied to them almost as if he were scoffing at them, saying it was such an expenditure of labour having to do with fools; that, ten to one, the woman was only telling the simple truth, and that she was frightened enough by discovering her master in his room to be thankful ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... who deem themselves most free When they within this gross and visible sphere Chain down the wingd thought, scoffing ascent, Proud in their meanness: and themselves they cheat 30 With noisy emptiness of learned phrase, Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences, Self-working tools, uncaused effects, and all Those blind Omniscients, those Almighty Slaves, Untenanting ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... although I die! Yet one thing, if I may, I fain would ask, Before I make the venture;—if this task Prove fateful as it threatens,—do you care?" "Perhaps," said Elfinhart, "you do not dare!" Lightly she laughed, and scoffing tossed her head, Yet spoke as one who knew not what she said, With random words, and with quick-taken breath; Then turned again, ere that same look of death Should steal upon her and betray her heart Despite all stratagems of woman's art. And Gawayne heard but saw not; and the night Descended ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... Instead thereof, scoffing Scurrility And scorning Folly with Contempt is crept, Rolling in Rhimes of shameless Ribaudry, Without Regard or due Decorum kept; Each idle Wit at will presumes to make, And doth the Learned's Task ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... 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 and society are moving and progressing, will some day recognize that these women were in the right, just as the men who ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... and care; if the choice dishes were fewer, pain was more rare; if there was less turmoil, there was less grief and more undoubtedly of true joy. I wondered at the silence and sweet tranquility there, when thinking of what was going on below. Instead of the cursing and swearing, the scoffing, debauchery and drunkenness, instead of the pride and vanity, the torpitude of one quarter and the violence of another, yea, for all the bustle and the pomp, the hurly-burly and the brawl which there unceasingly bewildered men, and for the innumerable and unvarying sins, there was nothing to be ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... Rorke." Her tone still held its scoffing note; but her words voiced the genuine enough, that had come flashing upon her. "An' if it is, after last night, an' he finds youse an' me together, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... me," said Pobloff, with his ever-scoffing courtliness. "A mere glance will be necessary, to make sure that we ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... with eager eyes upon the ground. Jesus drew nearer, and thereon he found A noisome creature, a bedraggled wreck,— A dead dog with a halter round his neck. And those who stood by mocked the object there, And one said scoffing, "It pollutes the air!" Another, jeering, asked, "How long to-night Shall such a miscreant cur offend our sight?" "Look at his torn hide," sneered a Jewish wit,— "You could not cut even a shoe from it," And turned away. "Behold his ears that bleed," A fourth ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... always been averse to parading before the eyes of the careless, scoffing world the sufferings of the victims of abuse or excess, even when by doing so we might profit largely by such a course. We have a large number of letters from persons who have been cured by this treatment ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... understood thing; the heart's not an apple; you can't divide it. If you're in love, you're justified. And I wasn't thinking of scoffing. My heart's as soft at this moment as if it had been melted.... I only wanted to explain why nature has the effect on us you spoke of. It's because she arouses in us a need for love, and is not capable of satisfying it. Nature is gently driving us to other living embraces, but ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... it needs not this To make me shun thy wiles, Renounce thy triumph and thy bliss, Thy honours and thy smiles! Bright as thou art, and bold, and strong, That fierce glance wins not me, And I abhor thy scoffing tongue— ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell |
