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More "Ridicule" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possibly influenced by British slang 'plonk' for cheap booze] The sound a {newbie} makes as he falls to the bottom of a {kill file}. Used almost exclusively in the {newsgroup} talk.bizarre, this term (usually written "*plonk*") is a form of public ridicule. ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... in reality of the rarest kind, though it does not seem hard to practise, and meets with little recognition—the courage of the schoolmaster, who must say the same things over and over again. We all honor the man who has shed his blood on the battlefield, as you have done; but we ridicule this other whose life-fire is slowly consumed in repeating the same words to children of the same age. There is no attraction for any of us in obscure well-doing. We know nothing of the civic virtue that led the great men of ancient times to serve ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... was more amorous of corruption; not Poe was more spellbound by the scent of graveyard earth. So Beddoes has written a new Dance of Death, in poetry; has become the chronicler of the praise and ridicule of Death. 'Tired of being merely human,' he has peopled a play with confessed phantoms. It is natural that these eloquent speakers should pass us by with their words, that they should fail to move us by their sorrows or their hates: they are not intended to be human, except, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... with allusions to a god whom we cannot help identifying with the Supreme Being and the Creator of the world; his ideas and beliefs have, in consequence, been sadly misrepresented, and by certain writers he has been made an object of ridicule. What, for example, could be a more foolish description of Egyptian worship than the following? "Who knows not, O Volusius of Bithynia, the sort of monsters Egypt, in her infatuation, worships. One ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... forward to going to school with about equal measures of delight and dread; my pride and ambition longed for this first step in life, but Rupert had filled me with a wholesome awe of its stringent etiquette, its withering ridicule, and unsparing severities. However, in his anxiety to make me modest and circumspect, I think he rather over-painted the picture, and when I got through the first day without being bullied, and made such creditable friends on the second, I began to think that Rupert's experience of school ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Christians outside of the Episcopal Church, comprising almost all the learning, the evangelistic zeal, and the charitable activity and self-denial of the American church of that time, that heard these unwonted pretensions with indignation or with ridicule; in the Episcopal Church itself they were disclaimed, scouted, and denounced with (if possible) greater indignation still. But the new party had elements of growth for which its adversaries did not sufficiently reckon. The experience of other orders in the church confirms this principle: that ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Strange to say, Desargues's immortal work was heaped with the most violent abuse and held up to ridicule and scorn! "Incredible errors! Enormous mistakes and falsities! Really it is impossible for anyone who is familiar with the science concerning which he wishes to retail his thoughts, to keep from laughing!" Such were the comments of reviewers and critics. Nor were his detractors ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... that they were the object of the soldiers' ridicule, yet they were unable to make any reply, since they did not understand sufficient German to be able ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... other man, with moral enthusiasm and with intellectual grasp, has held in the modern world the same rank which was accorded to him in the old; but he cannot enjoy the same appreciation. Macaulay's ridicule has rescued from oblivion the criticism which pronounced the eloquence of Chatham to be more ornate than that of Demosthenes, and less diffuse than that of Cicero. Did the critic, asks Macaulay, ever hear any speaking that was less ornamented than that of Demosthenes, or more diffuse than that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... record of her heart and character, and to some extent a picture of the stirring times in which she lived, in the shape of letters which are of perennial value, especially to the young. "It was fashionable to ridicule female learning" in her day; and she says of herself in one of her letters, "I was never sent to any school." She adds in explanation, "I was always sick." When girls, however, were sent to school, their education seldom went beyond writing ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... me that you showed little gratitude in holding up to ridicule the institution that has done so much for you. Had you not managed to be funny I doubt if you would have been forgiven. But fortunately for you, Mr.—, that is, the gentleman who has just gone—appears to have an immoderate sense of ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... a few miles back. I've been riding since daybreak down the creek, and I'm prepared to state that the chance of crossing is as good right here as anywhere. I wanted to see your foreman, and if he'll help, we'll bridge her. I've been down to see this other outfit, but they ridicule the idea, though I think they'll come around all right. I borrowed their axe, and to-morrow morning you'll see me with my outfit cutting timber to bridge Big Boggy. That's right, boys; it's the only thing ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... expose the most important or interesting letter to the severest sarcasm and ridicule. However perfect in all other respects, no epistle that is badly spelled will be regarded as the work of an educated gentleman or lady. Carelessness will never be considered, and to be ignorant of spelling is to expose an imperfect ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... but the men also, wear much livelier descriptions of dress than we are accustomed to in the west of Europe; and whilst the frilled unmentionables of some of them would excite ridicule amongst our hardy operatives, the brocaded vests of others would perhaps be regarded by ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... help of an innate power possessed by organisms is no explanation, but is a reproduction of the absurdity, l'opium endormit parcequ'il a une vertu soporifique. It is contended, however, that this objection does not apply, even if it be conceded that there is that force in Moliere's ridicule which is generally attributed to it.[231] Much, however, might be said in opposition to more than one of that brilliant dramatist's smart philosophical epigrams, just as to the theological ones of Voltaire, or to the biological one of that other Frenchman who for a time discredited a cranial ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... Musgroves, who seemed hardly to have any eyes but for him, as to the manner of living on board, daily regulations, food, hours, &c., and their surprise at his accounts, at learning the degree of accommodation and arrangement which was practicable, drew from him some pleasant ridicule, which reminded Anne of the early days when she too had been ignorant, and she too had been accused of supposing sailors to be living on board without anything to eat, or any cook to dress it if there were, or any servant to wait, or any knife and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... streets all that night. For he fully meant to do what he had promised the child, and he did not care to go back to Charlie Swift, and face the latter's protests and ridicule. ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... of its patriotic and German tendency. At Stuttgard, the festival in commemoration of the battle of Leipzig was disallowed; and in Frankfort on the Maine, the editor of a French journal ventured, unreprimanded, to turn this festival into ridicule. ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... never occur again. These women on the plinth must be not alone of a different world, but of a different clay, since they not only did not shrink from disgracing themselves—women had been capable of that before—but these didn't even mind ridicule. Which was new. ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... reiterated attacks of medicine, of philosophy, of experience and of good sense.... Well, M. Servan, formerly the Attorney-General at Grenoble, has been proving that with talent we may recover from any thing, even from ridicule." ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... interpreter, made light of them. Absurd that Jemima Jane should imitate the bonnets of her mistress and secretly aspire to play the piano! 'Punch' and his artists, as you will find in his old volumes, were very merry about her, and no doubt his readers believed that his exquisite ridicule would kill, or his sound good sense cure, the malady in her soul. Poor misguided girl!—why was she flying in the face of Nature? Nature had decreed that some should command, others obey; that some should sit imperative all day in airy parlours, and others be executive in basements. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... expresses himself, "too literary,"—too largely a question of classic titles which appealed to the mid-nineteenth-century authors whose judgment of art the twentieth century finds particularly amusing. Henry James has somewhere held up to ridicule the early Beacon Hill Boston for its impassioned devotion to the "attenuated outlines" of Flaxman's art. But the work of Story will survive all transient variations of opinion, even of the present realistic age; for is not ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... against all of whatever rank who sought in any way to alter, and, as it was presumed, amend, the religious, philosophical, social, political, or literary creed and practice of the country, and held up to ridicule such men as Socrates and Euripides, as well as Cleon the tanner; wrote 54 plays, of which 11 have come down to us; of these the "Clouds" aim at Socrates, the "Acharnians" and the "Frogs" at Euripides, and the "Knights" at ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... return. When I was alive, I declared that I envied Achilles because he had a Homer to celebrate his exploits; and I most bountifully rewarded Choerilus, a pretender to poetry, for writing verses on mine. But my liberality, instead of doing me honour, has since drawn upon me the ridicule of Horace, a witty Roman poet; and Lucan, another versifier of the same nation, has loaded my memory with ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... neighbor on the left. They constantly find these two doors, but not a vestige of their own: their door has disappeared—vanished! Who could have taken away their door? Terror seizes them; they ask each other if they have become demented; and dreading the ridicule which would be cast upon honest citizens who could not find their own street-door, they grope about for more than an hour, feeling, poking, inspecting, measuring; but alas! there is no door; there is nothing but a wall, an ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... denounces, launches forth, Against all systems built on abstract rights, Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims Of institutes and laws hallowed by time; Declares the vital power of social ties Endeared by custom; and with high disdain, Exploding upstart theory, insists Upon the allegiance to which men are born. .... Could a youth, and one In ancient story versed, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... their separate parts, they are fifty-six: and these with the others make ninety. I shall not particularize their faults. All of them are whimsically conceived and badly written. In short, had the author artfully designed to turn English grammar into a subject of contempt and ridicule, by as ugly a caricature of it as he could possibly invent, he could never have hit the mark more exactly than he has done in this "new theory"—this rash production, on which he so sincerely prides himself. Alone as he is, in well-nigh all his opinions, behold how prettily he ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... can yield always to earnest workers, the man who has succeeded, and the man who has failed, can turn alike, as to a common mother—the one, for refuge from mean envy and slanderous hatred, from all the sorest evils which even the thriving child of Fame is heir to; the other, from neglect, from ridicule, from defeat, from all the petty tyrannies which the pining bondman of Obscurity is ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Englishman; but as the representative of a nation it may almost be said of him that he has no skin at all. Any touch comes at once upon the net-work of his nerves and puts in operation all his organs of feeling with the violence of a blow. And for this peculiarity he has been made the mark of much ridicule. It shows itself in two ways: either by extreme displeasure when anything is said disrespectful of his country, or by the strong eulogy with which he is accustomed to speak of his own institutions and ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... It was you who laughed at my letters, and took no notice of them, except to show them to your friends and ridicule ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... heads of Ravan have provoked much ridicule from European critics. It should be remembered that Spenser tells us of "two brethren giants, the one of which had two heads, the other three;" and Milton speaks of the "four-fold visaged Four," the four Cherubic shapes each ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... that he was about to die, and must prepare for it. In vain they tried to persuade him that his health was as good as ever, that he was only the subject of a nervous fancy. The physician arrived, and laughed at his fears, but he heeded neither ridicule nor entreaties. Death was not a thing to be laughed or entreated away, and to death he was doomed. What did it signify what the world said about it? He must make ready for it. His solicitor was called in, and his worldly affairs settled. Wife and children were all provided for, houses ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... "You will merely bring ridicule upon yourself," he said, "if you assert that the man you wish to protect is Amos Kilbright. We can prove by records, still to be seen in Bixbury, that said person died in seventeen eighty-five. On the other hand, if you choose to assert that he is, or was, anybody else, ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... in his cast of character, which if left to his natural destiny would have either worn out his life early in the world, or carried him to the obscure shelter of a convent. In the novelty of the secular life, and temptations of all kinds, dread of ridicule, and the flood of excitements which came with reviving health, that very sensitiveness led him astray; and the elevated aims fell with a heavier fall when diverted from heavenly palaces to earthly ones. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... few years ago Chavannes never sold a picture. Millet lived his life in penury and obscurity, but thirty years of persistent ridicule having failed to destroy Degas' genius, some recognition has been extended to it. The fate of all great artists in the nineteenth century is a score years of neglect and obloquy. They may hardly hope for recognition before they are fifty; ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... compromising himself. Yes, believe me, the honest man is as far from the base cowardice of Philinte as he is from the harsh virtue of Alceste. The genius of the poet is displayed in the mind of this true medium; certainly all minds do enjoy more the ridicule of virtue than the sovereign contempt of easy-going selfishness which underlies that picture of it; but all, nevertheless, are prompted to keep themselves ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... is the more to be lamented at this time, that unanimity with our ally was the only point on which we could form our expectations of success; besides the advantage that the enemy may take of it, and the ridicule they will of course throw ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... disturbing charm. Fixed in intent regard he became conscious that, strangely, rather than small the figure seemed diminished by a distance which yet left every feature clear. With this he grew satirical at himself; and, moving resolutely down the Avenue, treated his absorption with ridicule. But the vision of the face, the smile, the narrowed eyes, persisted in his mind; the truth was that they troubled him; and within three blocks he had turned. The second view intensified rather than lessened his feeling, and he walked quickly into the shop odorous ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... often accompanied by awkwardness, due to the fact that the muscles are developing faster than the bones, making delicate adjustment impossible. There is painful sensitiveness over this, especially with boys, as hands and feet must be in the open, and they will easily construe any criticism or ridicule into a desire to be rid ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... systematic hatred of D'Arc is this: There was a story current in France before the Revolution, framed to ridicule the pauper aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and short rent rolls: viz., that a head of such a house, dating from the Crusades, was overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis, "Chevalier, as-tu donne au cochon a manger?" Now, it ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... been expected, but he certainly lessened his influence, even among his friends and fellow-labourers, by his onslaughts upon particular individuals. There can be no manner of doubt, however, that he achieved his object of holding some of his opponents up to public ridicule, and that in at least one or two instances he was the means of affecting votes in the Assembly thereby. To what extent, if at all, his efforts in this direction contributed to the election of Mr. Willson, the Reform candidate for the Speakership in the Assembly, already ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... it a part of her education. When the Invalid has time for another essay, Ermine, it should be on the Benefits of Ridicule." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... habit were the subject of ridicule at home and abroad, even at an early period. Witness the ancient limner's jest in 1570, who, being employed to decorate the gallery of the Lord Admiral Lincoln with representations of the costumes of the different nations ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... accepted jest for all hands to greet the conclusion of this song with the simultaneous cry: "My word!" thus winging the arrow of ridicule with a feather from the singer's wing. But he had his revenge with Home, Sweet Home, and Where is my Wandering Boy To-night?—ditties into which he threw the most intolerable pathos. It appeared he had no home, nor ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... crowds opened before litters in which were visible the affected faces of women, or the heads of senators and knights, with features, as it were, rigid and exhausted from living. The many-tongued population repeated aloud their names, with the addition of some term of praise or ridicule. Among the unordered groups pushed from time to time, advancing with measured tread, parties of soldiers, or watchers, preserving order on the streets. Around about, the Greek language was heard ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... rough weather, against all reason. In winter time, all is dead, and reason says: 'It is all over with it.' But the precious seed within me sprouted and grew green, oblivious of all storms, and amid disgrace and ridicule it has ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... you rude or uncivil to other women. Every woman is her sister, and should be treated with becoming respect and attention. Your special attentions to her in society should not be such as to make her or you the subject of ridicule. Make no public exhibition of ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... was too late to think of that now; but the bitter was already stealing into my cup; and vague anticipations lay, for a few minutes, heavy on my heart. It would not have taken much to make me disclose my unmanly state of mind to my lively friend Alfred Ogle, nor even to the milder ridicule of ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... again presenting it; yet it is thought it will be delivered, and then be ordered to be laid before Parliament. The whole affair has already been talked of there on the army and navy-days; and Burke, they say, has shone with amazing Wit and ridicule on the late inactivity of Gage, and his losing his cannon and straw; on his being entrenched in a town with an army of observation; with that army being, as Sir William Meredith had said, an asylum for magistrates, and to secure the port. Burke said, he had heard of an asylum for debtors and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Raux gives credit to it—that in the early days of her reign as Queen of France, Richelieu had fallen deeply in love with her, and that she, with the mischief of an irresponsible young girl, had encouraged him, merely to betray him to a ridicule which his proud spirit had never been able to forgive. Be that or another the reason, the fact that Richelieu hated her, and subjected her to his vindictive persecution, is beyond dispute. And it was he who by a hundred suggestions poisoned against her the King's mind, and thus kept ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... perfectly hate to," he answered, and went off crossly, to dine at his college's local club. Here he found an old friend, who most fortunately said something derogatory of the firm of Benson & Honaton. The opinion coincided with certain phases of Wayne's own views, but he contradicted it, held it up to ridicule, and ended by quoting incidents in the history of his friend's own firm which, as he said, were probably among the crookedest things that had ever been put over in Wall Street. Lily would not have distracted his ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... now she told him. She had expected teasing, ridicule, sarcasm, anything but the psychological interest mixed with a sort of retrospective tenderness which he showed. "I wish I could have seen you; I always thought you danced well." He added: "It seems that you need a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... publisher to make a third venture. One reason possibly was that the subjects of most of the poems, even the gayest of them, were serious, and another may have been that the common tribe of reviewers, searching like other parasites, discovered in them material for ridicule—which to them meant food, and as such they made use of it. At the same time he was not left without friends: certain of his readers, who saw what he meant and cared to understand it, continued his readers; and his influence on such ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... them to the eye of a darling daughter,) let me intreat you not to put on a grave face, and throw down the book in a passion and declare 'tis enough to turn the heads of half the girls in England; I do solemnly protest, my dear madam, I mean no more by what I have here advanced, than to ridicule those romantic girls, who foolishly imagine a red coat and silver epaulet constitute the fine gentleman; and should that fine gentleman make half a dozen fine speeches to them, they will imagine themselves so much in love as to fancy it a meritorious ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... made up my mind to a plan that was almost as desperate as the conditions it sought to cure—a plan that was in some ways so absurd that I felt like keeping it concealed for fear of ridicule—and I went about my preparations for departure in a sort of hopeless hope. As the train drew out from Ogden, I looked back at the mountains from my car window, and saw again, in the spectacle of their power, the pathos of our people—as if it were the nation ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... and thus deviate from the path over which Omar had passed, and he would quickly pay for this carelessness, suddenly finding himself floundering helplessly up to the ears in the deadly quicksands. Then the whole of our party would halt and, amid broad laughter and much ridicule, the unfortunate one would be dragged forth from a certain and ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... E. SOUTHARD, Boston: Dr. Jelliffe has just brought into ridicule what he terms "pinhole psychiatry;" but as I remember it, there is a technical method in psychology whereby things may be more clearly visible ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... strength, he was still to be seen far oftener walking about with his hands in his pockets, and his gaze bent on the ground, or turned up to the clouds, than joining in any of the boyish sports of those of his own age. A nervous dread of ridicule would deter him from taking his part, even when for a moment the fountain of youthfulness gushed forth, and impelled him to find rest in activity. So the impulse would pass away, and he would relapse into his former quiescence. But this partial isolation ministered to the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... himself?—why, Bryan M'Mahon. Who ever defended the absent?—why, Bryan M'Mahon. Who ever and always took the part of the weak and defenceless against the strong and tyrannical?—why, Bryan M'Mahon. Who fought for his religion, too, when the young heretics used to turn it, or try to turn it, into ridicule—ay, and when cowardly and traicherous Hycy used to sit quietly by, and either put the insult in his pocket, or curry favor wid the young sneering vagabonds that abused it? And yet, at the time Hycy was a thousand times a greater little bigot than Bryan. The one, wid a juvenile ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Indians of French Canada when first observed, as among some Polynesians and some tribes of Western and Central Africa little trace of a supreme being is found, except a name, and that name is even occasionally a matter of ridicule. The highest religious conception has been reached, and is generally known, yet the Being conceived of as creative is utterly neglected, while ghosts, or minor gods, are served and adored. To this religious phenomenon (if correctly observed) we must attempt ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... music, and in the middle of the high road, cutting capers, with a countenance as solemn as any person at a burying. No one could be more quick to observe the ludicrous than he, nor more careful to avoid ridicule; therefore it said much for Moll's cajolery, or for the love he bore her even at this time, to thus expose himself to Dawson's rude mirth and mine in ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... been regarded as a sort of enigma. Professor Dowden asks: "With what intention and in what spirit did Shakespeare write this strange comedy? All the Greek heroes who fought against Troy are pitilessly exposed to ridicule?" And from this fact and the bitterness of "Timon" some German critics have drawn the inference that Shakespeare was incapable of comprehending Greek life, and that indeed he only realized his Romans so perfectly because the Roman was very like the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... His uncle Martin would certainly not give him the gold in the box for any such hare-brained scheme; whilst to appeal to Sir Richard, with nothing to back his statements but what would be looked upon as old wives' fables and gipsy delusions, would only be to provoke ridicule and scorn. The Trevlyns had long given up the treasure as lost beyond recall. They had no sort of hope of recovering it, and the present owner of the Chase and his lady were in particular very greatly averse to any sort of dealings with ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... repay him for his insults. To replace the crowns of Norway and Denmark, which he had sought to wear, she put upon his head a fool's cap, with a tail twenty-eight feet long, and repaid him for his insults and jests in other ways. After she had done her best to make him an object of laughter and ridicule she locked him up in a strong prison cell, where he was given six years to reflect ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... members of the existing Government, when the late Bill had been passed, had expressed themselves with almost burning indignation against the crime. But, through it all, there had been a slight undercurrent of ridicule attaching itself to the question of which only they who were behind the scenes were conscious. The House was bound to let the outside world know that all corrupt practices at elections were held to be abominable by the House; but Members of the House, as individuals, knew very well what had ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... deal at what they jeeringly called Jack Bugbee's marrying his grandmother. But, as if it had been specially ordered on purpose to confound these ill-natured jokers, this union, the object of their ridicule, was most signally prospered, and in due time the Doctor himself put his wife to bed with a pair of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... have been a man of good nature and a kindly heart, since he received affectionate record from Gay, Pope, and Swift. Mr. Walter Sichel quotes from "an unfinished sketch of a larger poem," by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in which Disney's worst characteristics are held up to ridicule. ("Bolingbroke and his Times," pp. 288-290). Swift often refers to him ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... and loud-tongued, but have done nothing; there are no great social efforts, no organizations, no practical projects, whether successful or futile, to which they can point. The old 'book-faiths' which you venture to ridicule have been something at all events; and, in truth, I can find no other 'faith' than what is somehow or other attached to a 'book,' which has been any thing influential. The Vedas, the Koran, the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... not entitled to the credit or ridicule, whichever people may be disposed to bestow upon them, for the extraordinary phrases with which their conversation is occasionally embellished. Some of them have good classical authority. That of "pull-foot" may be traced to ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... that noisy group was abusing Mr Rose. It had long been Brigson's cue to do so; he derided him on every opportunity, and delighted to represent him as hypocritical and insincere. Even his weak health was the subject of Brigson's coarse ridicule, and the bad boy paid in deep hatred the natural tribute which vice must ever ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... Act of Parliament was passed taxing persons using it. Pitt was in power, and being sorely in need of money, hit upon the plan of a tax of a guinea per head on those who used hair powder. He was prepared to meet much ridicule by this movement, but he saw that it would yield a considerable revenue, estimating it at as much as L200,000 a year. Fox, with force, said that a fiscal arrangement dependent on a capricious fashion must be regarded as an absurdity, but ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... at philosophy. It is said that the intellectual gymnastics of Greece were displeasing to her traditions. It is more probable that augurs had foreseen or oracles had foretold that philosophy would divest her of the sword, and with it of her sceptre and her might. Ideas cannot be decapitated. Only ridicule can demolish them. Philosophy, mistress of irony, resisted while nations fell. It was philosophy that first undermined established creeds and then led to the pursuit of new ones. Yet it may be that a contributing cause ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... while and forcing him to run to cover like a very greenhorn. Barry visited him in his cabin from time to time and at first ridiculed his weakness; but Little was undergoing a treatment in which he had a faith proof against ridicule. He waved a cheery hand at Barry, and a sickly smile puckered his ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... what is called Common Sense, which ought to teach everybody that Antipodes could not possibly exist, because they would tumble off. The best answer that astronomers could give, was, "Go and see." And I can give no better answer to those learned skeptics who try to ridicule the Science of Comparative Mythology—"Go and see!" that is, go and read the Veda, and before you have finished the first Mandala, I can promise you, you will no longer shake your wise heads at solar myths, whether in India, or in Greece, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... as the "Little Parliament."[1] The Royalists nicknamed it "Barebone's Parliament" from one of its members, a London leather dealer named Praise-God Barebone. Notwithstanding the irregularity of its organization and the ridicule cast upon it, the "Barebone's Parliament" proposed several reforms of great value, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... moderate in his denunciation of Wit in the Essay upon Wit, he does insist that even at its best it can never be noble. Wit is harmful, he states, because it is often employed in immoral subjects, raillery, ridicule, and satire. It is chiefly useful as ornamentation: "The Addition of Wit to Proper Subjects, is like the artful Improvement of the Cook, who by his exquisite Sauce gives to a plain Dish, ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... author, in his composition, then suppose, that an air, made for the purpose of levity and ridicule, should be marked for such high destinies. In twenty years from that time, the national march—now universally recognized by the patriots—inspired the heroes of Bunker's Hill; and, in less than thirty, Lord Cornwallis and his army ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... more than fifteen members, and was the object of much ridicule at the university; but it included some men who afterward played considerable parts in the world. Among them was Charles, the younger brother of John Wesley, whose hymns became the favorite poetry of the sect, and whose gentler, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... trifled with the holy damsel, whom the King had confided to their care, and who already inspired most of them with respect? Certain of them, it is true, believing her not to be in earnest, would willingly have turned her to ridicule; but if one of them had played her the trick of representing La Beauce as La Sologne, how was it there was no one to undeceive her? How could Brother Pasquerel, her chaplain, her steward, and the honest squire d'Aulon, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... would begin by carefully pulling out the threads, and afterward tear it to pieces with his teeth. His nuts he broke with a hammer precisely as a man would have done and without being shown its use. Ridicule was not pleasant to him; he strongly resented being laughed at, and would throw anything within reach at his tormentor and with a skill and force not usual with monkeys. Taking the missile in both hands and standing erect, he would extend his long arms behind his back and ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... very much. I think it was splendid how she stood up to all the reproaches, and even ridicule; she told me that she had once, and only once, in her life been untrue to herself (she meant in accepting Charlie), and since then she has spoken the absolute truth to everybody about it all. She has been very plucky, and very ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... to exemplify the difficulties of criticism in its attempts to identify the allusions in these forgotten quarrels. We are on sounder ground of fact in recording other manifestations of Jonson's enmity. In "The Case is Altered" there is clear ridicule in the character Antonio Balladino of Anthony Munday, pageant-poet of the city, translator of romances and playwright as well. In "Every Man in His Humour" there is certainly a caricature of Samuel Daniel, accepted poet of the court, sonneteer, and ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... well. He is quick to repay such entertainment from his own inexhaustible store, and he never fails to turn anything that happens, no matter how serious it may be, into jest and farce. He has even been known to fling witticisms and ridicule at a bear that was coming at him full speed. But, no; that is not quite accurate. Posey has been known to say that he said these things to a charging bruin. But ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... That Cam-u-el's posterity Must wear divided upper lips through all their solemn lives! A prodigy astonishing Reproachfully admonishing Those, wicked, heartless married men who ridicule ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... never concealed his belief that Professor Challenger is an absolute fraud, that we are all embarked upon an absurd wild-goose chase and that we are likely to reap nothing but disappointment and danger in South America, and corresponding ridicule in England. Such are the views which, with much passionate distortion of his thin features and wagging of his thin, goat-like beard, he poured into our ears all the way from Southampton to Manaos. Since landing from the boat he has obtained some ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 'Joey' or 'Joe' a person on the diggings, or anywhere else in Australia, is to grossly insult and ridicule him." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... recall a mournful feeling when one day, in going over the roll of my students at the University of Michigan, I came upon one who bore the baptismal name of Isaac Crary. Evidently, the blighted young statesman had a daughter who, in all this storm of ridicule and contempt, stood by him, loved him, and proudly named her son ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... chastiseth you for violating the five precepts, how hath he raised up the Franks who ridicule them? If he governeth the earth by the Koran, by what did he govern it before the days of the prophet, when it was covered with so many nations who drank wine, ate pork, and went not to Mecca, whom he nevertheless permitted to raise powerful empires? ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... Janissaries, how it had got there, and of the tumult it had raised, the reader may better imagine than I can describe the state of the monarch's mind. To tell the story with all its particulars he felt would be derogatory to his dignity, for it was sure to cover him with ridicule; but at the same time to let the matter rest as it now stood was impossible, because the tumult would increase until there would be no means of quelling it, and the affair might terminate by depriving him of his crown, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the hall they paused to notice the picturesque group of servants gathered near the door. There was a smile on every face, not a smile of ridicule, but ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... sit by the hour or by the day thinking out endless ultimates, for the sheer pleasure it gives him. Other men blame him, criticise him and ridicule him for this and for the most part he does fail of the practical success by which ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... is full of such persons to-day when education is too cheap. Concha steered his flock as best he could through the stormy paths of insurrection and civil war. He ruled with a rod of iron whom he could, and such as were beyond his reach he influenced by ridicule and a patient tolerance. True to his cloth, he was the enemy of all progress and distrusted ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... the new day would bring. I should have to face Cassion, and in what spirit could I meet him best? Thus far I had been fortunate in escaping his denunciation, but I realized the reason which had compelled his silence—pride, the fear of ridicule, had sealed his lips. I was legally his wife, given to him by Holy Church, yet for weeks, months, during all our long wilderness journey, I had held aloof from him, mocking his efforts, and making light of his endeavors. It had been maddening, no doubt, and rendered ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... above, she published not only her own articles and Katherine II.'s, but also the writings of many new and talented men, among them, Von Vizin and Derzhavin. This journal, "The Companion of the Friends of the Russian Language," speedily came to an end when the Princess-editor took umbrage at the ridicule heaped on some of her projects and speeches by the Empress ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... priori, are we to ridicule and condemn it? I know of none. We admit Vitruvius, Inigo Jones, Gibbs, and Chambers, into our libraries: and why not Mr. Hope's book? Is decoration to be confined only to the exterior? and, if ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... with any degree of success. It requires an individual nimble of mind and body, whose nerves are keyed to a tension, who is dominated by a mood which refuses to recognize the perils of snakes, cactus, and prairie-dog holes; forgetful of self and dignity, inured to ridicule. Such a one is ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... dismissed as contemptible chimeras. Upon the first of these dark pretensions we shall have occasion to speak at another point. Upon the other we agree with Van Dale. Yet, even here, the spirit of triumphant ridicule, applied to questions not wholly within the competence of human resources, is displeasing in grave discussions: grave they are by necessity of their relations, howsoever momentarily disfigured by levity and ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to his mother's delight. But the mother's delight lasted for just five days. She began to complain, she began to quarrel; the young wife replied, and the din of their voices greatly distressed the young man, besides making him an object of ridicule to his neighbours. One evening, in a fit of passion, both women said they would stand it no longer. They ran out of the house and up the hillside, but as there was only one path they ran away together, ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... said Nigel, who, like others of his age, was more sensible to ridicule than to reason—"Who dares laugh ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... hidden seed of things, which in time must develop or die. A garter dropt in the ballroom of Royalty gives birth to an Order of Knighthood; a movement to reform the spelling of the English language, initiated by one of the presidents of a great Republic, becomes eventually an object of ridicule. Only two instances to illustrate our point, which is applicable also to time-honoured truths and moralities. But no matter how important or trivial these, he who would give utterance to them must do so in cap and bells, if he would be ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... fear of provoking conflict with Johannesburg and the Imperial Government, however the juggling with Dr. Jameson's life afterwards and the spurious magnanimity so freely advertized, may detract from what they did and may tend to bring ridicule and suspicion upon them, one cannot review the broad facts of the Jameson invasion, and realize a position which, if only for the moment, gave the aggrieved party unlimited scope for revenge upon an aggressor who had not the semblance of personal wrong or interest nor the pretext of duty ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... light of publicity, for fear of sharing the fate of our master, Copernicus, who, although he has earned immortal fame with some, yet with very many (so great is the number of fools) has become an object of ridicule and scorn. I should certainly venture to publish my speculations if there were more people like you. But this not being the case, I refrain from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... that the King of Sweden would give him a command. The vagrant life of this general, who ran everywhere hegging employment from the enemies of his country without being able to obtain it, subjected him to general ridicule; in fact, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... much perverted, for all that one can say of the different kinds of mind meet together in the "Bel Esprit." Yet as the epithet is bestowed on an infinite number of bad poets and tedious authors, it is more often used to ridicule than to praise. ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... time, and are then sent back to the bosom of the tribes, with the elements of the knowledge of letters and history, which their parents and friends are utterly unable to appreciate, and which they, in fact, ridicule. The instructed youth is soon discouraged, and they most commonly fall back into habits worse than before, and end their course by inebriety, while the body of the tribe is nowise bettered. Whatever the defects are, there are ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... account of his being fussy in dress, when you see him face death or danger without flinching. Fine clothes seem to fit such a man, but upon one who cannot stand fire they become a proper subject for ridicule. Custer with flashing eye and flowing hair, charging at the head of his men, was a grand and picturesque figure, the more so by reason of his fantastic uniform, which made him a conspicuous mark for the enemy's bullets, but a coward in Custer's ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical imperative"—makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small amusement in ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Chiswick; after which she brought back Jemima, and erected another doll as Miss Jemmy: for though that honest creature had made and given her jelly and cake enough for three children, and a seven-shilling piece at parting, the girl's sense of ridicule was far stronger than her gratitude, and she sacrificed Miss Jemmy quite as pitilessly ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... transatlantic facts could not always be met in a laughing mood. It was too serious, too unfortunate, too obstinately persisted in to excite only ridicule. It was deplorable, upon the very verge of war, and incredible too, after all the warnings that had been had, that there should be among Englishmen such an utter absence of any desire to get accurate knowledge. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... campaign were members of the United States Senate. Calhoun sat in the Vice-President's chair; Van Buren was the leader of the Middle States group of the opposition; John Randolph was there and ever ready to turn his wonderful gifts of ridicule and sarcasm against the Puritan who sat in the "Mansion" and "wasted the money of the people"; Nathaniel Macon, one of the most popular of all the Senators, opposed the second Adams as earnestly as he had fought the first; George Poindexter, of Mississippi, ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... exertions necessary to remove these inconveniences, the main attention has been diverted to this object; the old aims have been lost sight of, and to remove friction has come to be the end. That is the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the governments generally of the world, are cities and governments of the rich, and the masses are not men, but poor men, that is, men who would be rich; ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... N. underestimation; depreciation &c (detraction) 934; pessimism, pessimist; undervaluing &c v.; modesty &c 881. V. underrate, underestimate, undervalue, underreckon^; depreciate; disparage &c (detract) 934; not do justice to; misprize, disprize; ridicule &c 856; slight &c (despise) 930; neglect &c 460; slur over. make light of, make little of, make nothing of, make no account of; belittle; minimize, think nothing of; set no store by, set at naught; shake off as dewdrops from the lion's mane. Adj. depreciating, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... emotions until at last, clenching my hands, I determined I would go on and persevere in the adventure at all hazards; though I must confess I came to this final decision more from pride and fear of ridicule than ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... critic; but when he and his successors go beyond the artistic objection, one takes leave to say, they misapprehend the thing criticised. To complain that 'love' and common morality have no place in satiric comedy is either to contemplate ridicule of them or to ask comedy to be other than satiric. We know what happened when the dramatists gave way: there followed, Hazlitt says, 'those do-me-good, lack-a-daisical, whining, make-believe comedies in the ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... on which the unfortunate scholar tiresomely balanced. Others sent out the suffering pupil to cut a branch of a tree, and, making a split in the large end of the branch, sprung it on the culprit's nose, and he stood painfully pinched, an object of ridicule with his spreading branch of leaves. One cruel master invented an instrument of torture which he called a flapper. It was a heavy piece of leather six inches in diameter with a hole in the middle, and ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... done by others. Now, at last, however, Trochu will have an opportunity to carry out his famous plan, by which he asserts that he will raise the blockade in fourteen days, and of which he has given the fullest details in his will. Ridicule kills in France—and since this eminent General, as an evidence that he had a plan, appealed to the will which he had deposited with his lawyer, he lost all influence. I need not say that this influence has not been restored by the absurd arrest to which he was subjected ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Parish Thornton with eyes blankly dumfounded, and the other two faces mirrored his bewilderment, then the spokesman broke into bitterly derisive laughter, and his followers parroted his mirthless ridicule. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... sacred things, to ridicule any portion of God's Word. Many professors of Christianity of to-day when asked if they believe in the ordinance of feet-washing will make some such answer as, "If your feet are dirty, you ought to wash them." The ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... never forgave Barneveld for drawing from him those famous letters to the States in which he was made to approve the Five Points and to admit the possibility of salvation under them. These epistles had brought much ridicule upon James, who was not amused by finding his theological discussions a laughing-stock. He was still more incensed by the biting criticisms made upon the cheap surrender of the cautionary towns, and he hated more than ever the statesman who, as he ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had commenced ere they reached the church, and as Mary had no desire of again subjecting her bonnet to the ridicule of Rose Lincoln, and as Jenny had much rather stay out doors in the shade, they sat down upon the steps, wondering where Sal Furbush had taken herself. "I mean to look in and see if she is here," said Jenny, and advancing on tiptoe to the open door, ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... are, Berkeley, I am quite aware that when you have once made up your mind to do a thing which your ideas of honor and justice require you to do, argument and reason are (for the time being,) wasted upon you—yes, and ridicule; persuasion, supplication, and command as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Julia, were the only topics on which these two friends disagreed: for Valentine, not being himself a lover, was sometimes a little weary of hearing his friend for ever talking of his Julia, and then he would laugh at Protheus, and in pleasant terms ridicule the passion of love, and declare that no such idle fancies should ever enter his head, greatly preferring (as he said) the free and happy life he led, to the anxious hopes and fears of ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... marriage. The work in which he had made his name distinguished had to do with the human brain—its vagaries as well as its normalities—and his thought was enough in advance of the general to be frequently misunderstood and sometimes a target for lay ridicule. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... intensified the belief that she was merely "stickin' up for Sparrell's judgment" without any reference to her own personal safety or that of her sisters. The warning was laughed away; the opinion of Sparrell treated with ridicule as the dyspeptic and envious expression of an impractical man. It was pointed out that the reservoir had lasted a long time even in its alleged ruinous state; that only a miracle of coincidence could make it break down that particular afternoon of the picnic; ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... imputed, and their success in this wide-spread conflict helped forward their cause. Ulrich von Hutten, one of the young knights who belonged to the literary school, and others of the same class, made effective use, against their illiterate antagonists, of the weapons of satire and ridicule. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... abstracted personages. When the handkerchief or the ball is thrown, and when his bird's name is called for, the absent little philosopher is obliged to collect his scattered thoughts instantaneously, or else he exposes himself to the ridicule of naming, perhaps, a fish or a beast, or any bird but the right. To those children, who, on the contrary, are not sufficiently apt to abstract their attention, and who are what Bacon calls "birdwitted," we should recommend a solitary-board. At ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... well-merited cold douche to the extremists on either side. It is now acknowledged that what for want of a better term I may call the Federal Solution holds the field, and any attempt to expel it will only plunge the objector still deeper in the mire and cover him with ridicule from head to foot. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... all our rebukes of tyranny abroad—the criticisms that we make upon other nations, only call forth ridicule, contempt, and scorn. In a word, we are made a reproach and a by-word to a{347} mocking earth, and we must continue to be so made, so long as slavery continues to pollute ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... exhibit himself as having a just right to the throne of David. Thus he gave a handle to imputations of intended treason.—He next entered the temple courts, where doves and lambs were sold for sacrifice, and—(I must say it to my friend's amusement, and in defiance of his kind but keen ridicule,) committed a breach of the peace by flogging with a whip those who trafficked in the area. By such conduct he undoubtedly made himself liable to legal punishment, and probably might have been publicly scourged ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... an active one in Shakespeare's time. There was a good deal of democratic feeling in the burghers of London-town, and they resented the courtly prejudices of their playwrights and their habit of holding up plain citizens to ridicule upon the stage, whenever they deigned to present them at all. The Prolog in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle" gives sufficient evidence of this. The authors adopted the device of having a Citizen leap ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... to analyse the work before us, and to examine generally the phenomena of mesmerism, we shall do our utmost to avoid the vices of partial advocacy which we censure; we moreover agree with Mr Townshend, that ridicule is not the weapon to be used. Satire, when on the side of the majority, is persecution; it is striking from a vantage ground—fair, perhaps, when the individual contends with the mass, as when an author ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... recommendation was received and treated can never be forgotten. It must at this day be a source of great comfort to that devoted friend of science that those who yet survive of the highly-excited party which attempted to cast on him reproach and ridicule for that proposition, and especially for assimilating those establishments to light-houses of the skies, have recently admitted the wisdom of his advice by making ample appropriations to accomplish the very object ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... positive about the firearms, and thought he heard the bullets whistling past his ears, but could not swear to it. At this stage the defendants' lawyer, who had been harrowing the witnesses with many questions and heaping ridicule upon their devoted heads, called for the prisoners' arms to be produced, and the sight of the toy pistols with their mutton-boned barrels provoked yells of laughter in the court, which were presently echoed in ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... words it is, in Germany, a crime to criticise or ridicule any proposition uttered by the sacred ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... of reflection I look back on that never-to-be-forgotten moment, I can form a true estimate of the poem subjected to that fiery ordeal, I wonder the paper did not scorch and shrivel up like a burning scroll. It did not deserve ridicule. The thoughts were fresh and glowing, the measure correct, the versification melodious. It was the genuine offspring of a young imagination, urged by the "strong necessity" of giving utterance to its bright idealities, the sighings of a heart looking ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Nathan, "if we are for war, let us have war in earnest; we must not carry it on with pop-guns. Let us fall upon all Classicals and Liberals without distinction of age or sex, and put them all to the sword with ridicule. There ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... devotion he could never have felt for a village Gretchen. His pride in her nobility was indeed far less than his love for herself, but it made for that love a rampart against love's deadliest enemy, which is ridicule. He certainly did not tell himself so. He would have thought it an insult to Hilda to worship her for anything but her own self; but he was none the less aware that the pedestal upon which his idol ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... my quarrel, otherwise he would inevitably make it his own, and by treating me like a boy in the matter, give the whole affair the very turn I most dreaded. Then, as to Sir Harry Boyle, he would most certainly turn the whole thing into ridicule, make a good story, perhaps a song out of it, and laugh at my notions of demanding satisfaction. Considine, I knew, was my man; but then he was at Athlone,—at least so my uncle's letter mentioned. Perhaps he might have returned; if not, to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... on the appearance of this singular document was surprise; the next, of course, was ridicule. The man must have utterly lost his senses. He has been for some months playing the most fantastic tricks in his capital: cutting off people's beards if they happen to displease his taste as a barber, cutting off coat-skirts if they offend his taste as a tailor, ordering the passers-by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... were freed from his father's presence, the talk about the disgraceful name his father had given him would sooner die out, even if only gradually. He, Cain, if he were alone, would have the courage to stay there, and bear it, if a couple of servants, men or maids, should ridicule him for a time, until—they got tired of it. But his father? What was coming over the strange man? Was it not almost certain that he was making a sacrifice for him, for Cain, by going away? Did he repent of the injury he had formerly clone him? And was he—it often seemed ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... deceived by Kelly, there is no doubt; and that he was sincere, at least in seeking his own promotion and aggrandisement, is equally certain; but we would rescue his character from the ridicule with which it has been invested. His grasp was greater than his power, and he fell, like heroes and conquerors in all ages, unable to execute, and overwhelmed with the vastness of his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... unpretending than the action of this Browning Society, or in the main more genuine than its motive, it did not begin life without encountering ridicule and mistrust. The formation of a Ruskin Society in the previous year had already established a precedent for allowing a still living worker to enjoy the fruits of his work, or, as some one termed it, for making a ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... were pretty well tired out, but Harry wouldn't hear of rest. I was eager myself for another look at the exit of that stream. So, again taking up our spears, we set out across the cavern, this time with Desiree between us. She swallowed Harry's ridicule of her fear and ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... the multitude that invincible detestation of the system by which they were governed, that has since ended in assassination and treason. His subordinate agents, who in the folly and venom of their hearts at one time charged the great body of the Catholics with disaffection, at another held up to ridicule and odium the names of individuals of the most respectable and unsullied characters—at one time sneering at the merchant, at another insulting the tradesman, them I charge with having irritated the people of Ireland wantonly and wickedly, by calling forth the personal feelings, ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... desire for public notice and attention. Persons of either of these phases of this temperament, however, have the common quality of being extremely sensitive to sneers and slights, adverse criticism and oppositions, while ridicule drives them almost beside themselves. Likewise they are nearly always found to be enthusiastic and earnest workers when their interests and sympathies are aroused; as a writer has said "they are almost invariably emotional, enthusiastic, spontaneous, ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... manner, was so ready to assist or oblige a comrade in any right and honorable way that lay in his power, so very conscientious about obeying rules and doing his duty in everything, and brave in facing ridicule, insolence, and contempt, when the choice was between that and wrong-doing, that no one of them could help respecting him, whether willing to acknowledge ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... speaker he was prolix, monotonous, and never eloquent, except, perhaps, for a few minutes when provoked into a passion by something which had fallen out in debate. But, notwithstanding these defects, and still more the ridicule which his extraordinary phraseology had drawn upon him, he was always heard with attention. He never spoke ill; his speeches were continually replete with good sense and strong argument, and though they seldom offered much to admire, they generally contained a great deal to be answered. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... my name would disappear from the papers as suddenly as it had arrived there. People would want to know why I had given up writing. "Written himself out," "No staying power," "As short-lived as a Barnum monstrosity": these would be the remarks which would herald ridicule and possibly pity. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... time I was so rash as to ridicule this interruption. I drew attention to the fact that the ancient heroes of the game had been able to dispense with it. ALFRED MYNN needed no Asiatic stimulant between lunch and the close of play. Even ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... One thing which places William at a disadvantage is his excessive frankness, which is, in him, almost a fault, for if he couched his utterances in courtly or diplomatic phrases, they would pass unchallenged, instead of being cited to ridicule him. His mistakes have largely resulted from his impulsive nature coupled with chauvinism, which is, perhaps, justifiable, or, at least, excusable, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... manners of those whom he meets in his boarding house, or with whom he is associated in his business, say in a great mercantile establishment. It requires a great deal of moral courage for him to bear in a manly way the ridicule, covert or open, of the companions who regard him as a "hay-seed" or a "greenhorn." His Sunday clothes, which he wore with pride when he attended meeting with his mother, he is apt to regard with a feeling of mortification; and, perhaps, he secretly determines to dress as well as do his companions ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... have accomplished the very slightest good. The moment that you take a crank seriously, from that very moment he imagines that his "crankiness" is divinely inspired. Far better laugh at him and let him alone. Laughter is the one unanswerable contradiction, and ridicule is a far more deadly thing to fight against than fury, no matter if fury wields a hatchet. Perhaps this utter indifference to the firebrand is our national strength—even though it comes from a too-sluggish ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... debating, I soon discovered that his scholarship and reading were both very limited, exceedingly so; and I intentionally widened the range of controversy more than was my wont, to see what he would do—and he was completely lost. His forte in debating is wit and ridicule, by which he gets his opponents angry and confused. He tried this hard for three days, till he rendered himself offensive to all. It was rumored that his brethren then held a council and told him that this must be stopped; that he must debate ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... that the dead still live. Hundreds of people are sufficiently sensitive to have some personal knowledge of the matter. The number is far beyond what it appears to be for two reasons. One is that the average person fears ridicule and keeps his own counsel about his occult experience. The other is the feeling that communications from departed relatives are too sacred and personal for public discussion. Tens of thousands of people have seen demonstrations at spiritualistic seances which, while possessing little evidential value ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... join in the same scheme to ridicule a third, and either take advantage of, or invent, some story for that purpose, and mimicry will have already produced a sort of rude comedy. It becomes an inviting treat to the populace, and gains an additional ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... Mytton and Vetch were the least part of their punishment. The incident of the dust bin brought on them open ridicule; they became the laughingstock of Shrewsbury. The school wag, who afterwards became famous for his elegant Greek verses at Cambridge, pilloried them in a lampoon which the whole town got by heart, and for days afterwards they could ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... emotion. Loerke was kept away from Gudrun, to whom he wanted to speak, as by a hedge of thorns, and he felt a sardonic ruthless hatred for this young love-companion, Leitner, who was his penniless dependent. He mocked the youth, with an acid ridicule, that made Leitner red in the face and impotent ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... that metal; and the militant effect of the costume had been heightened by a small colonial cocked hat. If the truth be told, Honora had secretly idealized Miss Wing, and had found her insouciance, frankness, and tendency to ridicule delightful. Militant—that was indeed Ethel's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... whose home had rung with laughter by the taunt and ridicule of those who made fun of her ugliness, [94] now graced her house with sweet smiles and engaging features, which drew scores of visitors to her home. Juan confessed his sins, and underwent penance for his wickedness; and the two lived together ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... stimulating condiments at table, were likewise avoided. The circle of acquaintances which had gradually formed around him, or into which, rather, he had been introduced, was a wine and brandy-drinking set of young men, and he was frequently urged to partake with them; but neither persuasion, ridicule, nor pretended anger, could, in the least, move him from his fixed resolution. Such scenes as that just presented, were of frequent occurrence, particularly with recent acquaintances, as was ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... never loved, but had only forgotten, her. How shall I express my sufferings when Grandmamma began to read my poetry aloud?—when, unable to decipher it, she stopped half-way and looked at Papa with a smile (which I took to be one of ridicule)?—when she did not pronounce it as I had meant it to be pronounced?—and when her weak sight not allowing her to finish it, she handed the paper to Papa and requested him to read it all over again from the beginning? I fancied ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... it as no very painful remedy for these absent and abstracted personages. When the handkerchief or the ball is thrown, and when his bird's name is called for, the absent little philosopher is obliged to collect his scattered thoughts instantaneously, or else he exposes himself to the ridicule of naming, perhaps, a fish or a beast, or any bird but the right. To those children, who, on the contrary, are not sufficiently apt to abstract their attention, and who are what Bacon calls "birdwitted," we should recommend a solitary-board. At the solitary-board they must withdraw ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... I knew no one among the high priests of science, and going about with a scheme for perpetual motion was, I knew, for most people the same thing as courting ridicule among high and low. After all I fixed upon Faraday, possibly perhaps because I knew where he was to be found, but in part also because the cool logic of his works made me hope that my poor scheme would be treated on some other principle than ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... especially so with those who belong to the order of baronets. In the case of a peer his Christian name, fused into his titular designation, disappears. In the case of a Mister, if his baptismal be cacophonous or provocative of ridicule, he need not ostentatiously parade it: he may drop it altogether on his visiting cards, and may be imprinted as Mr. Jones instead of Mr. Ebenezer Jones. In his signature, save where the forms of the law demand Ebenezer in full, he may only use an initial and be your obedient ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... used to say that in conceding the right of the Sultan to exclude any war-flag from the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, Russia was treating Turkey as a bag-fox, to be gently hunted occasionally, but not mangled or killed; and he felt keenly the ridicule resting on the allies, who were compelled to surrender the neutralization purchased at the cost of so much blood and treasure. He watched with much amusement the restoration of Turkish self-confidence. "Turkey believes that he is no longer a sick man, and is ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... show how so many not only fail to find health by their unreasonable methods, but bring ridicule and disrepute on certain of the measures followed. There is no need to waste further time, however, in demonstrating the obvious. One would hope that all readers are genuinely interested in health principles, and sufficiently in earnest to ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... are not sincere or earnest, but are used in jest, or irony, in ridicule, sarcasm, or mockery, in insinuation or double-meaning, demand ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... had Stull followed Brandes; and would follow to the end. Why? Neither knew. It seemed to be their destiny, surviving everything—their bitter quarrels, the injustice and tyranny of Brandes, his contempt and ridicule sometimes—enduring through adversity, even penury, through good and bad days, through abundance and through want, through shame and disgrace, through trickery, treachery, and triumph—nothing had ever broken the occult bond which linked these two. And ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... my invisible nightmare. To suffer through one's own fault is a torment worthy of the lost, for so grief is envenomed by ridicule, and the worst ridicule of all, that which springs from shame of one's self. I have only force and energy wherewith to meet evils coming from outside; but an irreparable evil brought about by myself, a renunciation for life ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Soro, who was her spiritual director. It is, however, true, that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were not all employed about the care of her soul. Afterward, to ridicule her yet more, King Albert sent her a hone to sharpen her needles, and swore not to put on his nightcap until she had yielded to him. But under perilous circumstances Margaret was never at a loss how to act. She acted here with the utmost prudence, trying first ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... OF ACQUAINTANCES is very important to the happiness of a mistress and her family. A gossiping acquaintance, who indulges in the scandal and ridicule of her neighbours, should be avoided as a pestilence. It is likewise all-necessary ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... often happens. These jokes and ridicule are quite usual occurrences. I expect he is still here. But we may ask. ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... Bunyan's hand at all, all too abrupt and all too short as that sketch is. In the absence, then, of a full-length and finished portrait of Atheist, we must be content to fall back on some of the reflections and lessons that the mere mention of his name, the spot he passes us on, and the ridicule of his laughter, all taken together, awaken in our minds. One rapid stroke of such a brush as that of John Bunyan conveys more to us than a full-length likeness, with all the strongest colours, of any other artist would ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... Charlotte's escapade had, by the confession of its Chief, placed the Cabinet. This tyrannical Government, in spite of its large majority, its strong party organization, and its bureaucratic powers, was unable to stand up against ridicule; a mere breath, and all its false pretensions to dignity would be exposed, and its dry bones, speciously clad in strong armor, would rattle down ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... and actions be what they will, your business is to have honour and honesty in your view. Let them rail, revile, censure, and condemn, or make you the subject of their scorn and ridicule, what does it all signify? You have one certain remedy against all their malice and folly, and that is, to live so that nobody ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... and these gay accomplishments were unexpectedly found in union with a moderate and cautious temper, enlightened views, and a solid understanding; and after due deliberation, Elizabeth, that penetrating judge of men, decided, in spite of ridicule, that she could not do better than make this superlatively-excellent dancer of galliards ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... left the courts and the fame there to be won, and has availed himself of all the verbal skill and proficiency so acquired for a campaign of abuse against us. We are impostors and deceivers; his audiences must ridicule and scorn us for nobodies. Did I say 'nobodies'? he has made us an abomination, rather, in the eyes of the vulgar, and yourself with us, Philosophy. Your teachings are balderdash and rubbish; the noblest of your precepts ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... outburst of 'language.' The cow went on placidly chewing till Fred got on his feet and furiously attacked her with the milking-stool. It was bad enough to be whacked on the ear with a brick by a stupid old cow, but the uproarious enjoyment and ridicule of the bystanders ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... summer affair of three months' duration for some years to come, which would give him an opportunity of keeping in continued touch with his English and European patients. The English are a practical people, and less sensitive than we to, or more careless of, ridicule, and they are likely to grasp the importance of Dr. Brinkley's work on the instant of his arrival, compelling ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... and come after me, cannot be my disciple. [14:28]For what man of you wishing to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the expense, whether he has the means to finish? [14:29]lest having laid its foundation, and not being able to finish, all who see ridicule him, [14:30]saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish. [14:31]Or what king going to engage in war with another king, does not first sit down and consult whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that comes against him with twenty thousand? ...
— The New Testament • Various
... not shrug your shoulders with impatient disdain, at my writing such things about myself. It is hard for me to do it, you may suppose, but the sequel of this narrative will prove to you that these puerile details, of which I feel the bitter ridicule, are unfortunately indispensable. I close the parenthesis, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... singing was introduced in the schools of Boston more than forty, and in Baltimore more than thirty, years ago, in the British House of Commons only twenty-five years ago, when a member proposed that singing should be taught in all schools, as in Germany, "the suggestion was received with ridicule, and was deemed deserving of no other response than a loud laugh." But there has also been, and still is, some opposition to its general introduction in this country. Only a few months ago the St. Louis press urged its removal from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Sea Fights.%—While our army on the frontier was accomplishing little, our war ships were winning victory after victory on the sea. At the opening of the war, our navy was the subject of English ridicule and contempt. We had sixteen ships; she had 1200. She laughed at ours as "fir-built things with a bit of striped bunting at their mastheads." But before 1813 came, these "fir-built things" had destroyed her naval supremacy.[1] ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... a natural gift in my case, son," said the little lamplighter modestly. "I don't know as I deserve no credit; it's like playing the organ or walking on a tight rope, the instinct's got to be there or you'll only lay yourself open to ridicule." ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... of the many points of agreement between Jack and Fred had been their aversion to girls in general. Fred judged them from his sisters, who were always nagging, always exhorting him to be a gentleman, and always holding up Jack Darcy to ridicule. Jack, on the other hand, had a bashful fear of girls, and fancied they were laughing at every little awkwardness; then they cried so easily, went off in a huff if they could not have their own way, were silly, vain, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... exceed the capacity of human intelligence,[16] and in the second century, Vettius Valens bitterly denounced the contemptible bunglers who claimed to be prophets, without having had the long training necessary, and who thereby cast odium and ridicule upon astrology, in the name of which they pretended to operate.[17] It must be remembered that astrology, like medicine, was not only a science ([Greek: episteme]), but also an art ([Greek: techne]). This comparison, which sounds irreverent to-day, was ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... Nippon—"Their temples? Those dirty, shabby places, without architecture or interest, the haunts of snotty, ragged children?" The sun-helmeted gentleman and lady, or collection of their kind, rush them by in haughty contempt, and with some ridicule and ridiculous comment. Good Sir and Madame, you are passing history on the road. At this Kwo[u]gwanji, in its rather shabby guest hall, Kusonoki Masashige and his devoted followers spoke their last defiance and then ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... his week night lectures, Beecher was speaking about the building and equipping of new churches. After a few satirical touches about church architects and their work, he went on to ridicule the usual style of pulpit—the "sacred mahogany tub"—"plastered up against some pillar like a barn-swallow's nest." Then he passed on to the erection of the organ, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... exclaimed, and his gesture was so impassioned that the promenaders, with their shining morning goblets of water, were arrested by the spectacle. Wonderful, wonderful Marienbad! was the general comment! But Krayne was past ridicule. He already saw Roeselein his bride. He saw himself a yodler. The cure? Ay, there was the rub. He laid bare his heart. She aided him with her cool advice. She was very sensible. Her brother-in-law and her sister would welcome him in their ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... their senseless struggles; to reason with them and explain how all the psychic force they waste might, if exerted in constructive thought, bring everything they wish to pass. Mrs. Bloomer assures me they only ridicule those who venture to interfere, and it will take at least a Saturn century to so much as start them in the right direction. Our settlement is their only hope, she says, and even we can help ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... deviate from the path over which Omar had passed, and he would quickly pay for this carelessness, suddenly finding himself floundering helplessly up to the ears in the deadly quicksands. Then the whole of our party would halt and, amid broad laughter and much ridicule, the unfortunate one would be dragged forth from a ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... was something in the law which seemed to stick to his opponent, Mr. Freeman. He complains that the Jaw is dull—that it is trash—a bugbear, and heaps other similar epithets upon it, and yet he appears to make considerable noise about it, and why should he attempt to ridicule me, in connection with the law. Every man in this state knows that Mr. Green himself could not pass the law without the aid of the legislature. He (Mr. Freeman) goes on to take many other positions ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... interest taken in Cuthman by a vigilant Providence. One day, for example, the cord of the barrow broke in a hayfield, where Cuthman, who supplied its place by elder twigs, was the subject of much ridicule among the haymakers. Immediately a heavy storm broke over the field, destroying the crop; and not only then, but ever afterwards in the same field—possibly to this day—has haymaking been imperilled by a similar storm. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... cut and bleeding by this sharp iron tongue, none too gently fitted by her rough torturers, and then being dragged about the town amid the jeers of the populace, or chained to the pillory in the market-place, an object of ridicule and contempt. Happily this scene has vanished from vanishing England. Perhaps she was a loud-voiced termagant; perhaps merely the ill-used wife of a drunken wretch, who well deserved her scolding; or the daring teller ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... charged with unconstitutional interference. Nevertheless neither the poet nor the Premier were as yet in a tractable mood with regard to the Rieka problem. Signor Nitti, parading his bonhomie, championed the cause in a more statesmanlike fashion; he did not, like d'Annunzio, evoke the world's ridicule by his footlight attitudes and those of his faithful supporters who, when his "Admiral" Rizzo abandoned him, when Giorati his confidant withdrew, when even Millo advised moderation, took certain piratical steps in order to keep the garrison supplied ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... etc. Others, as Ammonius and Simplicius ad Aristotelem, derive the name of Cynics given to these philosophers from the ridicule attached ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... scientific romance he achieved, by means of parables (I employ the word roughly) a criticism of tendencies and institutions which is on the plane of epic poetry. For example, the criticism of specialization in "The First Men in the Moon," the mighty ridicule of the institution of sovereignty in "When the Sleeper Wakes," and the exquisite blighting of human narrow-mindedness in "The Country of the Blind"—this last one of the radiant gems of contemporary literature, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... like that of a mediaeval alchemist, littered with retorts, bottles, and test-glasses. Before leaving school he invented a flying machine (heavier than air), and an unsuccessful attempt to start it on the high road caused him to be the victim of much chaff and ridicule. ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... discord or untidiness. But these will be but transient flashes in a general flow of harmonious graciousness; dress will have scarcely any of that effect of disorderly conflict, of self-assertion qualified by the fear of ridicule, that it has in the crudely competitive ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... heroes of these tales of chivalry were men of flesh and blood. He himself, he said, was convinced that these stories were nothing but fables and falsehoods, and that none of the personages in them ever lived. Whereupon Don Quixote began to ridicule the curate, and went on to describe his heroes, saying that his faith was so strong that he could almost swear he had seen Amadis of Gaul and some of the others he worshiped. Then he embarked on a description of these knights, ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... thrive on their own merits, the Balloon Frame has passed through and survived the theory, ridicule and abuse of all who have seen fit to attack it, and may be reckoned among the prominent inventions of the present generation, an invention neither fostered nor developed by any hope of great rewards, but which plainly and boldly acknowledges ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... club-room in the Devil Tavern. The custom of adopting his admirers and imitators, by bestowing upon them the title of Son, is often alluded to in his works. In Dryden's time, the fashion had so far changed, that the poetical progeny of old Ben seem to have incurred more ridicule than honour by this ambitious distinction. Oldwit, in Shadwell's play, called Bury Fair, is described as "a paltry old-fashioned wit and punner of the last age, that pretends to have been one of Ben Jonson's sons, and to have seen plays ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... taken back upwards of two centuries in the history of the Violin; from times wherein it is held in the highest esteem and admiration, to days when it was regarded with contempt and ridicule. Crowdero (so called from crowd, a Fiddle) was the fictitious name for one Jackson, a milliner, who lived in the New Exchange, in the Strand. He had served with the Roundheads, and lost a leg, which brought him into reduced circumstances, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... poured forth a vast profusion of tenderness towards her new lover; turned all she had said to Jones, and Jones himself, into ridicule; and vowed, though he once had the possession of her person, that none but Square had ever been master of ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... wary smile in answer: she distinctly enjoyed having both outwitted Pussy and escaped the bother of opposition to her desires and the shafts of ridicule. She stroked her master's bright red hair and kissed him again. They felt very well content with themselves this morning. Archie certainly ought to have congratulated himself. He had a young wife, who loved him to distraction and who was extremely ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... ordinary circumstances Mr. Maillot would have betrayed some discomposure at the unintentional ridicule of this remarkably pretty girl's naivete, and furthermore, that the fact of his not having done so at once perplexed and alarmed her. For a moment she contemplated his worried countenance in round-eyed bewilderment, and then glanced ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... found the hidden meaning of daily service, nor learned how he can best perform that service, until he has tasted the sorrow at the heart of it. The tears that are the pledge of harvest are not called to the eyes by ridicule or opposition. They are not the tears of disappointment, vexation, or impotence. They are tears that dim the eyes of them that see visions, and gather in the heart of them that dream dreams. To see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and the blindness of the world's heart ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... 'is sort. 'E's frightened of you. 'E want someone who pat 'is 'ead and let 'im cry on 'is shoulder. You can't 'elp 'im—and you fuss over 'im—you come 'ere and try to put 'is 'eart affaires in order and it's no use at all. C'est ridicule, enfin." ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... been despised by his more fortunate brothers. Man, of course, as a superior creature, would only look with kindness and pity upon a companion so unhappy as to have personal defects. He would never ridicule a condition which might have been his own, nor find a subject for merriment in that which to another was a cause of annoyance; but we were only inconsiderate young rats, and there was no end to our jokes on our piebald ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... sincere, that Mrs. Gordon found herself unable to ridicule the position. "My dear," she answered, "you are a miracle. But, among all these pretty things, is there nothing you ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... scattered and her feelings hurt, and she did not know how to bring herself back to the subject of her engagement. She paused, therefore, and sat with a doubtful, hesitating look, meditating some mode of escape. 'I am all ears,' said Mrs Askerton; and Clara thought that she discovered something of ridicule or of sarcasm in the tone ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... avoid the horrors of the slaughter-house? Professor Theobald has been saying what a pity it is that a man so able should waste his time over these fads. It would never bring him fame or profit, only ridicule. Every man had his little weakness, but this idea of saving pain to animals, Professor Theobald said, was becoming a sort of mania with poor Fortescue, and one feared that it might injure his career. He was greatly looked up to in the scientific world, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... supposition that each genre has a style and subject matter appropriate to it. This supposition discouraged any "mixing" of the genres: in Richard Blackmore's words, "all comick Manners, witty Conceits and Ridicule" should be barred from heroic poetry.[11] The influence of the genres theories even after Pope's death may be shown by the fact that Pope, for the very reason that he had failed to work in the major genres, was often ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... active and good- natured, hence he was esteemed by his master; and being beloved by all his companions who were good, he did not desire to be loved by the bad; nor was he at all vexed or ashamed when idle, mischievous or dishonest boys attempted to plague or ridicule him. His friend Loveit, on the contrary, wished to be universally liked, and his highest ambition was to be thought the best natured boy in the school—and so he was. He usually went by the name of POOR LOVEIT, and everybody pitied him when he got into disgrace, ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Thus only could they justify, in the eyes of the Greek people, the blockade by which the whole population suffered, and which it would otherwise not understand. There was no time to lose: the dignity of France demanded swift and drastic action: the Athenians had gone so far as to ridicule in a cinema the {102} uniform of the heroes of Verdun. If England would not join her, she must ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... speaker's hand, and said to her: "Do not fear. Misfortunes like yours must inspire compassion, not ridicule. May I not inquire for ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... impossible to talk seriously with you? Is there nothing so sacred to you that you wouldn't ridicule it? ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... indication of his standing in the community, the fact that, having lived in Bayport for some weeks and being by his own confession a poor man, he could still go gloved and caned on week days as well as Sundays and not be subject to ridicule even by the Saturday night gang in ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... camp at midnight on account of the warnings of that same horse. We had only a remuda with us at the time, but another outfit encamped with us refused to go, and they lost half their horses from an Indian surprise the next morning and never recovered them. I remember the ridicule which was expressed at our moving camp on the warnings of a horse. "Injun-bit," "Man-afraid-of-his-horses," were some of the terms applied to us,—yet the practical plainsman knew enough to take warning from his dumb beast. Fear, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... did not terminate here. The political opponents of the government did not allow so favourable an opportunity to escape for launching the shafts of ridicule. The Moderados were taunted in the cortes for their avarice and credulity, whilst the Liberal press wafted on its wings through Spain the story of the treasure-hunt at ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... of a very excellent piece of worldly advice given to him by Audley Egerton. "Never let the dandies call you a prig," said the statesman. "Many a clever fellow fails through life, because the silly fellows, whom half a word well spoken could make his claqueurs, turn him into ridicule. Whatever you are, avoid the fault of most reading men: in a word, don't be ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he is trying to make his boat go by pushing against the mast. He is like a drowning man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair of his own head. Christ held up this method almost to ridicule when He said: "Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?" The one redeeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this—that those who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the goal. ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... bewildered outside the door of the King's apartments amid the scurry of astonishment and ridicule. He was just passing out into the street, in a dazed manner, when ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... in a comic article on the singer Drabanti, who had lost his voice, there was a contemptuous allusion to Koznishev's book, suggesting that the book had been long ago seen through by everyone, and was a subject of general ridicule. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States. In entering upon the great work before us we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this convention will be followed by a series of conventions ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... days—people as well as preachers—endured ridicule and persecution, alike from church-members and from the openly irreligious who were inflamed by their misrepresentations. They were arraigned before courts of justice—such only in name, for justice was rare in the courts of that time. Often they suffered ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... the commencement of a school. This is in fact of the highest importance at all times, and is peculiarly so at the outset. A wound to the feelings is sometimes inflicted by a single transaction, which produces a lasting injury to the character. Children are very sensitive to ridicule or disgrace, and some are most acutely so. A cutting reproof administered in public, or a punishment which exposes the individual to the gaze of others, will often burn far more deeply into the heart than ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... storms, hunger,ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.... Dear Camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... should observe that our father's interest in the subject of missions to the heathen in foreign lands had lately been awakened by the visit of an old friend, one of that band of great and good men who were then endeavouring against contumely, ridicule, and every opposition which the prince of this world could raise, to send the glad tidings of salvation to the perishing millions scattered thickly on the surface of the globe, over which midnight—the ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... ridicule that hurt him most. He was unable to get away from that. Had he been at all emotional, he would have sworn a vendetta, so deep and lasting was the hurt, but he did not; he merely failed to forget, which, after all, is not ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... as in the opposite doctrine, some have gone to great extremes and brought ridicule on the subject, but as Gordon's views were strictly moderate, and eminently practical, it is not necessary to consider to what extreme lengths some may go who differ from him on either side, nor is it necessary to consider ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... expose your own life, and the fortune of the State? Or if I should make any private person believe that you were a good economist, and he should trust you afterwards with the care of his family, would not you be the ruin of his estate, and expose yourself to ridicule and contempt? Which is as much as to say, Critobulus, that the shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be: and if you observe, you will find that all human virtues increase ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... sacred ark of Israel so vulnerable that its defenders dare not challenge the great Goliath of the Philistines, who, year by year, comes forth to strut before the armies of the saints in ridicule of that they hold so dear; and thus it is to be held responsible for the loss of the young men who throw away their ancestral faith and go over to the apparently victorious ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... sons, or friends, or brothers, or father, have I none! Nor have I thee, O thou slayer of Madhu, for ye all, beholding me treated so cruelly by inferior foes, sit still unmoved! My grief at Karna's ridicule is incapable of being assuaged! On these grounds I deserve to be ever protected by thee, O Kesava, viz., our relationship, thy respect (for me), our friendship, and ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... Crusoe. The immediate popular effect of his satires gave some encouragement to this belief, but they are comparatively dull reading for posterity. The clever hits at living City functionaries, indicated by their initials and nicknames, the rough ridicule and the biting innuendo, were telling in their day, but the lampoons have perished with their objects. The local celebrity of Sir Ralph and Sir Peter, Silly Will and Captain Tom the Tailor, has vanished, and Defoe's hurried and formless lines, incisive as their vivid ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... been observed of the Egyptians that they were wont to ridicule the Greeks for regarding their gods as actual beings, while in reality "they were only the representations of the attributes and principles of Nature." Unlike the religions which succeeded it, Egyptian mythology, as understood by the learned, was essentially philosophical, and dealt with ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... placing his kingdom under the especial protection of the Virgin Mary, and from escorting the image of the patron-saint through the streets of Paris in a procession in which Marshal Soult and other regenerate Jacobins of the Court braved the ridicule of the populace by acting as candle-bearers. Another sign of the King's submission to the clergy was the publication of an edict which forbade buying and selling on Sundays ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... an unlimited submission to the authority of Narvaez. Cortes wrote also to the secretary Andres de Duero, and Lucas Vasques the oydor, taking care to accompany his letters with valuable presents of gold. On receiving the letter from Cortes, Narvaez turned it into ridicule, handing it about among his officers, speaking of us all as traitors whom he would put to death without mercy. He declared he would cut off and eat the ears of Cortes, and a great deal of such braggart nonsense, and of course made no answer to the letters. Just at this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... generals in France began their careers of conquest. He had neither eloquence nor imagination; but substituted in their stead a miserable, affected, bombastic style, which, until other circumstances gave him consequence, drew on him general ridicule. Yet against so poor an orator, all the eloquence of the philosophical Girondists, all the terrible powers of his associate Danton, employed in a popular assembly, could not enable them to make an effectual ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... her the secret beauty of. Up and down, in and out, backward and forward, she wrought it after his pattern, and discerned continually where it fell into combinations that she had never planned,—made surprises for her of effects that were not her own. There is much ridicule of mere tapestry and broidery work, as a business for women's fingers; but I think the secret, uninterpreted charm of it, to the silliest sorters of colors and counters of stitches, is beyond the fact, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... at Perry's good-natured cynicism; for how could he have imagined that I cared for her? Though I sometimes think, even now, that Perry was indeed anxious lest I should fall in love with her, and wanted to ridicule me out of the notion, and I fear, in spite of his acquaintance, that he disapproves of our engagement. I wonder if he will ever get over his prejudice against women. The dear old fellow! if he would only consent to know Lucretia better I am sure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... sending you news; as you excuse the careless manner in which I write any thing I hear. Don't think yourself obliged to be punctual in answering me: it would be paying too dear for such idle and trifling despatches. Your picture of the attention paid to Madame Pompadour's illness, and of the ridicule attached to the mission of that homage, is very striking. It would be still more so by comparison. Think if the Duke of Cumberland was to set up ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... say," imperiously repeated Sir Henry, who, from his safe position on horseback, could well afford to ridicule their fears and give ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... contrive to draw Antoine into his circle, sometimes as though it were merely to show off his cleverness before him, at other times adroitly lighting on some quaint habit or saying of Antoine's, holding it up to ridicule, now in one light, now in another, with a versatility that would have made his fortune as a comedian, and returning to the charge again and again, in the hope, as it seemed, of provoking Antoine's seldom-stirred anger: but in this entirely failing, ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... those days one heard much ridicule of the New England home and conscience. Now the ministry and its friends had begun to butt their heads against the immovable wall of character which had grown out of them and of which ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... and prcieuses had been several times attacked before, it remained for Molire to give them their death blow, and after the performance of his comedy the name became a term of ridicule and contumely. What enhanced the bitterness of the attack was the difference between Molire's natural style and the affected tone of the would-be elegants he brought upon ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... mothers and wives and daughters in America, the most intelligent and upright and pure- minded women in the land, loaded down with their hopes, wet with their tears—if they turned their hearts', prayers and deepest desires into ridicule, throwed 'em round under their feet, they wouldn't pay no attention to Dorlesky's errents, they wouldn't notice one little vegitable widow, humbly at that, and sort o' disagreeable." And says I, "I don't want Dorlesky's errents throwed round under foot, and she made ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... VII. A Dialogue of Sentiment succeeded by the Sketch of a Character, in whose Eyes Sentiment was to Wise Men what Religion is to Fools; namely, a Subject of Ridicule ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and pairs it with Sense, Reason, Genius, and even Piety. While he is moderate in his denunciation of Wit in the Essay upon Wit, he does insist that even at its best it can never be noble. Wit is harmful, he states, because it is often employed in immoral subjects, raillery, ridicule, and satire. It is chiefly useful as ornamentation: "The Addition of Wit to Proper Subjects, is like the artful Improvement of the Cook, who by his exquisite Sauce gives to a plain Dish, ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... particular attachment to a certain abbot of Soro, who was her spiritual director. It is, however, true, that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were not all employed about the care of her soul. Afterward, to ridicule her yet more, King Albert sent her a hone to sharpen her needles, and swore not to put on his nightcap until she had yielded to him. But under perilous circumstances Margaret was never at a loss how to act. She acted here with the utmost ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... tasks are preached in the Gospel, despises the Gospel as a vulgar teaching, lacking in elegance. What noteworthy thing is it to teach that servants should obey their master and children their parents? Such a common and oft-taught doctrine the learned papists not only neglect but even ridicule. They desire rather something unique, something remarkable either for its reputed wisdom or for its apparent difficult character. Such is the madness ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... entering zealously into frivolous disputes, James gave them an air of importance and dignity which they could not otherwise have acquired; and being himself enlisted in the quarrel, he could no longer have recourse to contempt and ridicule, the only proper method of appeasing it. The church of England had not yet abandoned the rigid doctrines of grace and pre-destination: the puritans had not yet separated themselves from the church, nor openly renounced Episcopacy. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... the youths who were to fight the battles of Rome might realise the presence of Rome's great protecting deity. Even in the most degenerate days of the Roman religion, though Jupiter had suffered from the ridicule of playwrights or the speculations of philosophers, an orator's appeal to the Best and Greatest looking down on the Forum from his seat above it, could not fail to move the hearers; "Ille, ille Iuppiter restitit," cried Cicero in the peril ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the West End instituted a plan of "Free Breakfasts" to be served at the Dock-Gates to men who had failed to obtain employment for the day. On one of these occasions—and very pathetic they were—I was the host, and the Saturday Review treated me to some not unkindly ridicule. ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... walked the floor, thinking of those whom she would ask to sign it. She would not subject herself to ridicule by calling upon those who sided with the king, but upon those who she knew were ready to make sacrifices for justice ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... usual in a pound near the house were more than commonly their excited, and by repeated snorting and galloping, announced the presence of some object of terror. The young man was often upon the point of awakening his brother, but was as often restrained by the fear of incurring ridicule and their reproach of timidity, at that time an unpardonable blemish in the character of a Kentuckian. At length, hasty steps were heard in the yard, and quickly afterwards several knocks at the door, accompanied ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... shrines of Nippon—"Their temples? Those dirty, shabby places, without architecture or interest, the haunts of snotty, ragged children?" The sun-helmeted gentleman and lady, or collection of their kind, rush them by in haughty contempt, and with some ridicule and ridiculous comment. Good Sir and Madame, you are passing history on the road. At this Kwo[u]gwanji, in its rather shabby guest hall, Kusonoki Masashige and his devoted followers spoke their last defiance and then cut belly. Kobe? It is ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... expulsion of Wilkes from his seat, by a vote of the House of Commons, had (in 1770) thrown the nation into a ferment. Johnson was roused to take the side of the ministry; and endeavoured in a pamphlet, called the False Alarm, as much by ridicule as by argument, to support a violent and arbitrary measure. It appears, both from his conversation and his writings, that he thought there was a point at which resistance might become justifiable; and, surely it is more advisable to check the encroachments ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... and out, backward and forward, she wrought it after his pattern, and discerned continually where it fell into combinations that she had never planned,—made surprises for her of effects that were not her own. There is much ridicule of mere tapestry and broidery work, as a business for women's fingers; but I think the secret, uninterpreted charm of it, to the silliest sorters of colors and counters of stitches, is beyond the fact, as the beauty of children's ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... think that he was quite right; and she laughed very heartily, turned the first husband into ridicule in a playful fashion for the amusement of his successor, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... the lonely ones of the earth, the neglected ones at the feast, the unappreciated workers in the homes. We are met with scorn and indifference. Our way is weary and our name is ridicule. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... religion; but her labors in the propagation of the gospel were not crowned with success; and both her family and nation adhered with obstinacy or indifference to the gods of their fathers. Her son Swatoslaus was apprehensive of the scorn and ridicule of his companions; and her grandson Wolodomir devoted his youthful zeal to multiply and decorate the monuments of ancient worship. The savage deities of the North were still propitiated with human sacrifices: in the choice ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... depends far more upon the moral agencies brought to bear than upon any system of rewards and punishments human ingenuity can devise; for Chinamen, like other mortals, love to have their prejudices respected, and fear of shame and dread of ridicule are as deeply ingrained in their natures as in those of any nation under the sun. They have a horror of blows, not so much from the pain inflicted, as from the sense of injury done to something more elevated than ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... there was something in the law which seemed to stick to his opponent, Mr. Freeman. He complains that the Jaw is dull—that it is trash—a bugbear, and heaps other similar epithets upon it, and yet he appears to make considerable noise about it, and why should he attempt to ridicule me, in connection with the law. Every man in this state knows that Mr. Green himself could not pass the law without the aid of the legislature. He (Mr. Freeman) goes on to take many other positions which he (the speaker) ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... would be better were we to heap less ridicule upon the institution. Matrimony cannot be "holy" and ridiculous at the same time. We have been familiar with it long enough to make up our minds in ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... occasion and the speaker, becomes only exaggerated bombast and nonsense from the lips of a student. Exaggeration, high sounding terms, flowery language, involved constructions, do not produce eloquence in the speaker. They produce discomfort, often smiles of ridicule, in the audience. Many a student intending to cover himself with glory by eulogizing the martyred McKinley or the dead Roosevelt has succeeded only in covering himself with derision. Simplicity, straightforwardness, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... imitated in every respect that were it not for what follows, no one would suppose it to be any other bird. It is called a Mocking-Bird here, and it well deserves the name, for it is a real scoffer at the sorrows of other birds, which it laughs to scorn and turns into ridicule by parodying them so exactly. I never heard it attempt to imitate any of the Larks or Thrushes, although I have listened to it ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... day Neil was in a penitent frame of mind, for, however much he might laugh at Blanche and her light eyebrows, and ridicule his mother's plans for him in that quarter, he was not at all indifferent to the ten thousand a year, and might perhaps wish to have it. Consequently he must not drive Blanche too far, for she ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... mentioned Voiture's name, I shall add a very droll "soi-disant" impromptu of his, composed to ridicule Mademoiselle Chapelain, the sister of the poet. Like her brother, she was most miserly in her habits, and not distinguished by that virtue which some say is next ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... expound my philosophy," replied the other, "but to distribute these cream tarts. If I mention that I heartily include myself in the ridicule of the transaction, I hope you will consider honour satisfied and condescend. If not, you will constrain me to eat my twenty-eighth, and I own to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mind and understanding a man has, so as to be able to foresee danger and measure it, the more chance there is of his brute courage giving way. The more feeling a man has, the more keen he is to feel pain of body, or pain of mind, such as shame, loneliness, the dislike of ridicule, and the contempt of his fellow-men; in a word, the more of a man he is, the more chance there is of his brute courage breaking down, just when he wants it more to keep him up, and leaving him to play the ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... surely, nothing in the world was ever more comic than this stately Don, without any music, and in the middle of the high road, cutting capers, with a countenance as solemn as any person at a burying. No one could be more quick to observe the ludicrous than he, nor more careful to avoid ridicule; therefore it said much for Moll's cajolery, or for the love he bore her even at this time, to thus expose himself to Dawson's rude mirth and mine in order to ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... antiquity of the Scottish Terrier is a thing which means that he who tries it must be prepared to meet all sorts of abuse, ridicule, and criticism. One man will tell you there never was any such thing as the present-day Scottish Terrier, that the mere fact of his having prick ears shows he is a mongrel; another, that he is merely an offshoot of the Skye or the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... cause of his sovereign. Never was there a gayer, a more prepossessing Cavalier. He could charm even a Roundhead. The harsh and Presbyterian-minded Bishop Burnet, has told us that 'he was a man of a noble presence; had a great liveliness of wit, and a peculiar faculty of turning everything into ridicule, with bold figures and natural descriptions.' How invaluable he must have been in the Common-rooms at Oxford, then turned into guard-rooms, his eye upon some unlucky volunteer Don, who had put off his clerkly costume for a buff jacket, and could not manage ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... the celebrated Carte de Tendre (Loveland), to be found in Mlle. de Scuderi's Clelie (1654, Vol. I, p. 399), and reproduced in the English folio edition of 1678. This fantastic map, which is said to have been suggested by Chapelain, aroused unbounded ridicule. In scene iv of Moliere's Les Precieuses Ridicules (1659), Cathos cries, 'Je m'en vais gager qu'ils n'ont jamais vu la carte de Tendre, et que Billets-Doux, Petits-Soins, Billets-Galante, et Jolis-Vers sont des terres inconnues pour eux.' This imaginary land ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... frame a declaration of independence, No, 2. Just think of an army of crinolines willing to take arms against the tyrant man, and sacrifice their lives, if need be, to carry out their principles! It is easier to ridicule the woman suffrage movement than to answer the arguments advanced by some of the leading advocates of that question. It is only the innate mildness of the position of women in general that has prevented a revolution on this same subject long ago. One hundred thousand such fire-eaters as Susan ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... and permitting none on the part of the lads you are with; their father says you are to be treated as their equal. But, upon the other hand, do not be ever on the lookout for small slights, and bear with perfect good temper any little ridicule your, to them foreign, ways and manners may excite. I need not tell you to be always straightforward, honest, and true, for of those qualities I think you possess a fair share. Above all things restrain any tendency ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... not to put on a grave face, and throw down the book in a passion and declare 'tis enough to turn the heads of half the girls in England; I do solemnly protest, my dear madam, I mean no more by what I have here advanced, than to ridicule those romantic girls, who foolishly imagine a red coat and silver epaulet constitute the fine gentleman; and should that fine gentleman make half a dozen fine speeches to them, they will imagine themselves so much in love as ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... Pretty gave to the less careful of the Dozen was his fondness for carrying a cane, a practice which the rest of the boys, being boys, did not affect. But Pretty was not to be dissuaded from this, nor from any of his other foibles, by ridicule, and the others finally gave him ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... history —indeed up to a comparatively recent time—if any one had suggested such a thing as a Prohibition amendment to the Federal Constitution, he would have been met not with indignation but with ridicule. It would not have been the monstrosity, but the absurdity, of such a proposal, that would have been first in the thought of almost any intelligent American to whom it might have been presented. He would have felt that ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... play the living burlesque of himself. Better to die than to face the shame of failure, the shame of reproach and ridicule; the epitaph of his business a few lines in the small type of "Business Troubles." Better to kill himself than risk the danger of going mad and killing perhaps his own children and his wife. He knew ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... what folly in me to indulge in so idle a dream," he said to himself, turning away. "I was received as Barry's friend, and treated with kindness accordingly; but I should only deservedly bring down scorn and ridicule on myself if I were ever to aspire to a greater intimacy than that which ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... half in ridicule, half in good nature, with which the crowd greeted every very gaudily dressed member, richer in symbol and obsolete finery than his neighbour, showed that the day had passed in which such things could produce their originally intended effect. Will the time ever arrive in which stars ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... distinguishing him who utters them. It may be graphic, mimetic or merely rident. Shaftesbury is quoted as having pronounced it the test of truth—a ridiculous assertion, for many a solemn fallacy has undergone centuries of ridicule with no abatement of its popular acceptance. What, for example, has been more valorously derided than ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... by an effort. His sharp glance at Blair made him keep quiet also. Neither was at all impressed at the story Crane told them, except to be moved to ridicule. Well they knew how a Ouija Board will make glib statements as startling as they ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... of wit through the buckler of ignorance, bigotry and tyranny, exposing their rotten bodies to the ridicule and hate of mankind. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... each side, attracted the gaze of the beholder, and sometimes received censure and rebuke. A stranger from the old States chose to doff his ruffles, his broadcloth, and his queue, rather than endure the scoff and ridicule ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... hobby-riders, booted and spurred, who imagine they are leading a grand race to a golden goal, forgetful of the truth that their steeds are tethered to a single idea, around which they are revolving only to tread down the grass and wind themselves up, where they may stand at last amid the world's ridicule, and starve ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... qui m'a tombe sous la main m'a toujours revolte par l'emphase ridicule de l'eloge, ou par l'impudeur du blame. II semble que cette nature d'hommes ait toujours ote la raison a ses amis et a ses ennemis. Je voudrais leur consacrer dix annees d'etudes, ne fut ce que pour mon plaisir propre; mais Dieu nous donne et nous prepare une bien autre besogne, et il ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... continue the greatest for many, many years to come. It is only a little song, "I stood on a tower in the wet." I have found few men who, whether from the influence of those prints which are always on the outlook for something to ridicule, or from some other cause, did not laugh at the poem. I thought and think it a lovely poem, although I am not quite sure of the transposition of words in the last two lines. But I do not approve of the poem, just because there is no hope in it. It lacks that touch or hint ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... wrong in supposing that a serious cleft had opened between the late allies, and in the war of words with which the Forum was soon filled, Memmius seems to have been no match for his opponent. Crassus surpassed himself, and the keen but humorous invective with which he held Memmius up to the ridicule of his former followers,[1213] was balanced by the grand periods in which he formulated his detailed indictment of the methods pursued by the existing courts of justice, and of the terrible dangers to the public security produced by their methods of administration. He did not ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... instruction. Abigail says of herself, in one of her letters:—"I never was sent to any school. Female education, in the best families, went no further than writing and arithmetic; in some few and rare instances, music and dancing. It was fashionable to ridicule female learning." But the household was bookish. Her mother knew the "British Poets" and all the literature of Queen Anne's Augustan age. Her beloved grandmother Quincy, at Mount Wollaston, seems to have had both learning and wisdom, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... give the slightest indication of a change. He paid, if anything, more attention to his old friend than usual, and yet in no way held him up to that subtle ridicule which a lover in favour may so secretly practise before the mistress of his heart. If anything, he felt the injustice of the game as it stood, and was not cheap enough to add to it ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... accordingly he pays his court, as a favoured Knight, to two married ladies, who lay their heads together and agree to listen apparently to his addresses, for the sake of making him the butt of their just ridicule. The whole plan of the intrigue is therefore derived from the ordinary circle of Comedy, but yet richly and artificially interwoven with another love affair. The circumstance which has been so much admired in Moliere's School of Women, that a jealous ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... promptly belabours the idle or the stupid. Any neglect of duty or act of disobedience is inevitably Punished, sometimes by hard labour in digging trenches, sometimes by a fine, sometimes by stripping the soldier of his armour and making him stand for hours in civilian attire as a butt for ridicule in the middle of the camp, sometimes by a lowering of his rank corresponding to the modern taking away of a "man's stripes." If a soldier proves a hopeless case he is expelled with ignominy from the camp and army. If he deserts or plays ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... capricious love of rule, which nature had planted and habit had nourished in her heart, was not subdued. She could not now deny herself the gratification of tyrannizing over the innocent and helpless Emily, by attempting to ridicule the taste she could ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... had encouraged her in singing from her youth. One day, before she had received much instruction, she innocently asked me to listen to a song she was studying, when I was cruel enough to laugh at her and ridicule the idea of her ever learning to sing correctly. This rudeness made such an impression on her girlish mind that, although she forgave the offense and continued to love the offender, she could never be induced again to try her ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... the object of the cross-examining counsel is to ridicule the art and get the expert to admit the possibility of other writers possessing the same peculiarities which are said to distinguish ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... and the officer in the rear who was to relieve him that he could at any time be found at that spot. It was a matter of pride, too. If he abandoned his post he feared they would think he feared the corpse. He was no coward and he was unwilling to incur anybody's ridicule. So he again seated himself, and to prove his courage looked boldly at the body. The right arm—the one farthest from him- -was now in shadow. He could barely see the hand which, he had before observed, lay at the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... though this great master of condensed meaning and brilliant point is now less read than he was in the days of our grandfathers, you will all remember the elegant stanzas in which he states the usual claims of the species only to ridicule them. It is human pride personified that ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... at by the assembled gods and goddesses for the contortions which her countenance assumed during these musical efforts, she hastily ran to a fountain in order to convince herself whether she deserved their ridicule. Finding to her intense disgust that such was indeed the fact, she threw the flute away, and never raised it ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... crowd the recognition of it. The multitudinous voices died away in the distance with a peculiar effect. No firing of guns. While on this part of the subject, I may mention my strong impression, that in no place is the government so much respected as in America. The public press may ridicule and joke upon certain acts of individuals; but whatever side is taken, there is nothing that can bring the laws, or those who administer them, into disrespect. This produces order to an extent unknown elsewhere. No one seems to question the law or the commands of its officers ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... servilely conformed to the taste of the mob, with Sordello, the true poet, who despised it. In Popularity, Browning returns to the same theme, of the public's misplaced praises, and in Pacchiarotto he outdoes himself in heaping ridicule upon his readers. Naturally the coterie of later poets who have prided themselves on their unique skill in interpreting Browning have been impressed by his contempt for his readers. Perhaps they have even exaggerated it. No less contemptuous of his readers than ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... grow on hedges, still she knew that it would be much to be a marchioness. And the man himself was good, and not only good but very handsome. There was a nobility about him beyond that of his family. Those prone to ridicule might perhaps have called him Werter-faced, but to Mary there was a sublimity in this. But then was she in love ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... partaking so much of the theatrical, that a person ignorant of the language of his address, might readily suppose that he was taking off John Kemble and Liston alternately, and therefore the uneducated Irish emigrants might very well conclude his sole object was to turn their creed into ridicule. I certainly never heard or saw a person, lecturing on sacred subjects, whose tone and manner were so ridiculously yet painfully at variance with the solemnity due to such a theme. The excitement produced, the constant calling out of the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... will have none. At the north, were it possible for a duel intended to be conducted on such savage terms to be matter of notoriety, the very horror of the thing would create a feeling of grotesqueness, and the antagonists in such a proposed encounter would simply incur an immense amount of ridicule and obloquy. But here nobody is astonished and nobody ashamed of such preliminaries to a mortal combat between two gentlemen, who propose firing at marks over each other's hearts, and cutting off each other's heads; and though this agreeable party of pleasure ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... that this false shame, inspired by an unwholesome terror of public ridicule, plays a very important part in tying people to the apron-strings of education, and warping ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... Review for December 1785 there is the following notice: "Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. Small 8vo, IS. (Smith). This is a satirical production calculated to throw ridicule on the bold assertions of some parliamentary declaimers. If rant may be best foiled at its own weapons, the author's design is not ill-founded; for the marvellous has never been carried to a more whimsical and ludicrous extent." The reviewer had probably read ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... warm in winter days. Unluckily, in the exertions necessary to remove these inconveniences, the main attention has been diverted to this object; the old aims have been lost sight of, and to remove friction has come to be the end. That is the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the governments generally of the world, are cities and governments of the rich, and the masses are not men, but poor men, that is, men who would ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Saturday and Sunday, were devoted by the island prisoner to the sending out of further calls, for help, and these calls were met by a campaign of ridicule, similar to that begun by his nemesis on the first day of his imprisonment, according to the diary read by Hal to his companions. A few listeners-in indicated a willingness to come to his rescue, in spite of the plausible ridicule from anonymous source, but when asked where ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... and literature, and above all contemporary politics, domestic and foreign. All this farrago of miscellaneous subjects is treated in a frank, uncompromising spirit of criticism and satire, a spirit of broad fun, side-splitting laughter and reckless high spirits. Whatever lends itself to ridicule is instantly seized upon; odd, eccentric and degraded personalities are caricatured, social foibles and vices pilloried, pomposity and sententiousness in the verses of the poets, particularly the tragedians, and most particularly in Euripides—the pet ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Grant Colleges was the biggest piece of constructive legislation that Congress has enacted during the past century. By means of higher education thus redirected and vitalized, industrial independence will ultimately be realized. But the work moves slowly. However, in spite of ridicule and unmerited handicaps, and even the contempt of too many of the farming class, these institutions have grown steadily ...
— The Stewardship of the Soil - Baccalaureate Address • John Henry Worst
... of laughter and of fun, which, had it been published and explained in Locke's lifetime, would have tainted his whole philosophy with suspicion. It relates to the Aristotelian doctrine of syllogism, which Locke undertook to ridicule. Now, a flaw, a hideous flaw, in the soi-disant detecter of flaws, a ridicule in the exposer of the ridiculous—that is fatal; and I am surprised that Lee, who wrote a folio against Locke in his lifetime, and other examiners, should have failed in detecting this. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... common origin and primitive impulse, showing the crack in the gay gilding and veneer they have laboured to cover me with?... I cannot.... I could endure the disgrace myself; I cannot disgrace them. Think of the ridicule they would suffer if it became known that for two years I had been married, and now wanted a public divorce? No! No! There is nothing to do, nothing to hope for.... If it is—advisable—I will tell them, and take your name openly.... I am so uncertain, so frightened at ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... accustomed to see much that was strange in the busy streets of their crowded city; but this vehicle attracted every eye, and excited astonishment, admiration and mirth, wherever it appeared, and not unfrequently the bitterest ridicule. The handsome Roman stood in the middle of his gilt chariot, and himself drove the four white horses, harnessed abreast; on his head he wore a wreath, and across his breast, from one shoulder, a garland of roses. On the foot-board of the quadriga sat ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... grabbed his trusty weapon, which he had hardly learned to shoot, strung it, nocked an arrow, and ran back to take a shot at the animal in question. His eagerness and obvious incapacity so amused the gay company in the machine, that they cheered him on with laughter and ridicule. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... from her dying grasp. As two Indian men pursued this unfortunate victim, I solicited very hard for her life; but the murderers made no reply till they had stuck both their spears through her body, and transfixed her to the ground. They then looked me sternly in the face, and began to ridicule me by asking if I wanted an Eskimo wife; and paid not the smallest regard to the shrieks and agony of the poor wretch, who was twining round their spears ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... he secure greater pains? By stern commands and threats? By going from desk to desk, scolding one, rapping the knuckles of another, and holding up to ridicule a third, making examples of such individuals as may chance to attract his special attention? No; he has learned that he is operating upon a little empire of mind, and that he is not to endeavor to drive ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... apparition," says Walpole, who was present. "The moment was so well timed, the importance of the man and his services, the languor of his emaciated countenance, and the study bestowed on his dress were circumstances that struck solemnity into a patriot mind, and did a little furnish ridicule to the hardened and insensible. He was dressed in black velvet, his legs and thighs wrapped in flannel, his feet covered with buskins of black cloth, and his hands with thick gloves." Not for the first time, he ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... blind confidence on my part, or you may cry over it. I don't pretend to know whether I am an object for ridicule or an object for pity. Of one thing only I am certain: I mean to win you back, a man vindicated before the world, without a stain on his character or his name—thanks ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... in securing a refuge for the Quakers, the most active was William Penn, who had suffered ridicule and persecution for his faith, and who now desired a clearer field than the Jerseys offered for his political and religious experiments. In 1681 he therefore procured from the king a proprietary grant of the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... I'm called.' The man's face was an unhappy one, and he seemed to be the butt of his comrades, for they poured forth such a volley of good-natured ridicule on his appearance that Teddy looked from one to the other in ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... a little indignant to think of the renown Judd was getting. Why, all the fellows were beginning to pay attention to him now. And he, a rube! Benz's one desire was to do something which might make Judd the laughing stock of the college; something which would provoke ridicule whenever ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... on us and we don't know it," remarked Heavy, who was easily angered by ridicule, too. "There! Mr. Tingley has gone off with the lawyer. I guess we'll know what it's ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... young men in our office. They liked me well enough, but used to guy me unmercifully for my simplicity and clumsiness. One of them, Harry by name, was something of a scapegrace, and soon acquired quite a power over me. I stood in much fear of his ridicule, and frequently did things for which my conscience reproached me, rather than stand the fire of his raillery. The greatest harm he did me was in firing my imagination with stories of Wall street, of the fortunes that were and could be made in ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... a disgrace, is among the deadliest errors. Without depth of thought, or earnestness of feeling, or strength of purpose, living an unreal life, sacrificing substance to show, substituting the factitious for the natural, mistaking a crowd for society, finding its chief pleasure in ridicule, and exhausting its ingenuity in expedients for killing time, fashion is among the last influences under which a human being, who respects himself or who comprehends the great end of life, would desire to be placed. I use strong language, because I would combat the disposition, too common in ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... it does, Jasper; it means fun, ridicule, jest; it is an ancient Norse word, and is found in ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... not help inwardly acknowledging the justness of the comparison. He was resolved, however, as far as he could, to check his niece's inclination to ridicule the ugliness of her intended bridegroom, although he was not a little pleased to observe that she appeared totally exempt from that mysterious dread of the stranger which, he could not disguise it from himself, considerably affected him, as also ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... possessions on the equipage. They seemed to occupy very little room in the huge structure. Murdoch, shouldering his rifle, followed it, and I, rather ashamed of the grotesque appearance of my caravan, marched on as quickly as I could in front, hoping to escape the ridicule which I knew would be heaped upon me by all ranks of my beloved brigade. A man we met told us that the battalion had gone to Steenvoorde, so thither we made our way. On our arrival I was taken to the Chateau and kindly ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... that his three brothers had resolved to act in this outrageous manner he did not hesitate to reproach them; but not being able to contend against him honourably, they met him with ridicule. "Do not attempt to rule us with your wooden staff," they cried contemptuously. "Sacrifice IT if your inside is really sincere. And, in the meanwhile, go and sit under your paper umbrella and wield your ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... assembly in which they must ultimately sit, and by conferring English titles on some Scotch and Irish Lords, he might be able to secure a majority without ennobling new men in such numbers as to bring ridicule on the coronet and the ermine. But there was no extremity to which he was not prepared to go in case of necessity. When in a large company an opinion was expressed that the peers would prove intractable, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sit out of regard to the proprieties of the occasion; but I do not expose myself to ridicule by going about among the neighbors and talking of a sitting hen! Everywhere, but in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... increased their good humour, though Tupman assisted him from within to stand up and address the mob. We are told that "all Mr. Tupman's entreaties to have the lid of the vehicle closed" were unattended to. He felt the ridicule of his position—a sedan chair carried along, and a stout man speaking. This must have produced friction. Then there was the sense of injustice in being charged with aiding and abetting his leader, which Mr. Pickwick did not attempt to clear him from. When Mr. Pickwick fell through the ice, Tupman, ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... over. It was a biography of Mrs. Ada T. P. Foat, the celebrated trance-lecturer, and was embellished by a portrait representing the lady with a surprised expression and innumerable ringlets. Ransom said to himself, after reading a few pages, that much ridicule had been cast upon Southern literature; but if that was a fair specimen of Northern!—and he threw it back upon the table with a gesture almost as contemptuous as if he had not known perfectly, after so long a residence in the North, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... yo' Honah! I object!" cried the State's attorney, springing to his feet. "This is bringin' the dignity o' the law into ridicule, sah! into ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... the national manners. In his preface to "The American Spelling-Book," he says: "To diffuse an uniformity and purity of language in America, to destroy the provincial prejudices that originate in the trifling differences of dialect and produce reciprocal ridicule, to promote the interest of literature and the harmony of the United States, is the most earnest wish of the author, and it is his highest ambition to deserve the approbation and encouragement of his countrymen." His spelling-book, ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... old in poverty, wretchedness, and contempt? Can you consent to wade through the vile mire of dependency, and owe the miserable remnant of that life to charity which has hitherto been spent in honour? If you can—go—and carry with you the jest of tories, and the scorn of whigs;—the ridicule, and, what is worse, the pity of the world. Go,—starve and be forgotten. But if your spirit should revolt at this; if you have sense enough to discover, and spirit enough to oppose, tyranny under whatever ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... off, her face was red, her eyes glared with crazy boldness. He looked mildly into them while she called him a wretch, a traitor and a murderer many times in succession. This did not annoy him so much as the conviction that in her scurries she had managed to scratch his face abundantly. Ridicule would be added to the scandal of the story. He imagined it making its way through the garrison, through the whole army, with every possible distortion of motive and sentiment and circumstance, spreading a doubt upon the sanity of his conduct and the distinction of his taste ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... positive irreverence towards the laws of the Commonwealth, and towards the occupants of high political positions. Mayor, Judge, Governor, Senator, or even President, may be the butt of such indecorous ridicule as shocks or disgusts the foreigner; but nevertheless the personal joke stops short of certain topics which Puritan tradition disapproves. The United States is properly called a Christian nation, not merely because the Supreme Court has so affirmed it, but because the phrase ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... understand me, my dear. I am speaking very seriously now. I mean, do not let Master Pawson think that you ridicule his love of music. It would be very weak and foolish, and lower you ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... he did so," was the king's reply, "for the tie that binds us is sacred in the sight of Heaven, while in the eyes of the world I am spared the ridicule of placing Scarron's widow upon the throne of Charlemagne the Great. In your own reception-room you act as queen, and I am perfectly willing that you should do so, for it proves that you are the wife of the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... matter contained in the publication. What constitutes libel is equally far-reaching. It is any published matter that tends to disgrace or degrade a person generally, or to subject him to public distrust, ridicule, or contempt. Any written article that implies or may be generally understood to imply reproach, dishonesty, scandal, or ridicule of or against a person, or which tends to subject such a person to social disgrace, public distrust, ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... time to time the crowds opened before litters in which were visible the affected faces of women, or the heads of senators and knights, with features, as it were, rigid and exhausted from living. The many-tongued population repeated aloud their names, with the addition of some term of praise or ridicule. Among the unordered groups pushed from time to time, advancing with measured tread, parties of soldiers, or watchers, preserving order on the streets. Around about, the Greek language was ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... youth and manhood had been inextricably planned before they were born. Dick was in a higher grade and made the fact known to Pan. He had grown into a large boy, handsomer, bolder, with a mop of red hair that shone like a flame. He called Pan "the little skunk tamer," and incited other boys to ridicule. So the buried resentment in Pan's depths smoldered and burst into blaze again, and found fuel to burn it into hate. He told his mother what Dick had got the boys to call him. Then he was indeed surprised to see his sweet soft-eyed mother give way to quick-flashing passion. Somehow this ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... a city as London, to which the best of everything, physical and other, gravitates, I could not but pass, now and then, beautiful persons, who made me proud of those "grandes Anglaises aux joues rouges," whom the Parisiennes ridicule—and envy. But I could not help suspecting that their looks showed them to be either country-bred, or born of country parents; and this suspicion was strengthened by the fact, that when compared with their mothers, the ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... the unpardonable sin of both Reviews: that mediocrity was applauded, but that, whenever a man of genius came before them, the chances were ten to one that he would be held up to ridicule and contempt. The very first number of the Edinburgh lays this down as an article of faith. Taking post on the recent appearance of Thalaba, the reviewer opens fire by a laboured parallel between poetry and religion. [Footnote: Edinburgh ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of Euphuism. When Lodge wrote "Rosalynde," euphuism was already on the wane. Even among Lodge's contemporaries the fashion was becoming an object of frequent ridicule. Thus Warner, in his "Albion's England" (1589), complains in the preface, which, by the way, is written wholly in the euphuistic manner: "Onely this error may be thought hatching in our English, that ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Madame de Remusat, I., 106; II., 247, 336: "His means for governing man were all derived from those which tend to debase him. ... He tolerated virtue only when he could cover it with ridicule."] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... verse of worth. Manuel BRETON DE LOS HERREROS (1796-1873) was primarily a humorist and satirist, who turned from page xxxix lyric verse to drama as his best medium of expression. He delighted in holding up to ridicule the excesses of romanticism. Mention should be made here of two poets who had been, like Espronceda, pupils of Alberto Lista. The eclectic poet MARQUES DE MOLINS (Mariano Roca de Togores: 1812-1889) wrote passively ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... hastily began, "I wish to Heaven I had the gift of humour! I lose my temper and grow positive. I'd kill these stupid superstitions with ridicule, if I had the gift. It's a great gift. My God, I do hate ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... water alongside. Flint told me with a chuckle, that once upon a time the English Government sent some ships of war in frame out to the lakes, and also a supply of water-tanks, forgetting that they would have a very ample one outside. A little forethought would have saved the ridicule they gained for this mistake, and the expense to which they put the country. As my intention is to describe my adventures afloat rather than those on shore, I shall be very brief with my account of the life we led in ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the spirit of the Washington press, as manifested in their reports of the Convention. The sole exception was the Daily Chronicle, which was fair and friendly. The other reports amounted to little more than a burlesque, and the editorial comments consisted chiefly of denunciation and ridicule. The N.Y. Tribune, finding nothing to ridicule in our proceedings, suppressed all mention of the Convention, not publishing even the brief notices of the Associated Press. Having charged woman suffrage with hostility to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... garden of the cotton-growing region. Beyond this point the President's description of Louisiana became less confident, as reliable sources of information failed him. His credulity, however, led him to make one amazing statement, which provoked the ridicule of his political opponents, always ready to pounce upon the slips of this philosopher-president. "One extraordinary fact relative to salt must not be omitted," he wrote in all seriousness. "There exists, ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... Michelet, a disciple of Hegel, followed his example, and, in a work published in 1840, strove vigorously to aggrandize the earth and man at the expense of the accepted teachings of astronomy.34 With argument and ridicule, wit and reason, he endeavored to make it out that the stars are no better than gleaming patches of vapor. We are the exclusive autocrats of all immensity. Whewell has followed up this species of thought with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... didn't know he was a tragedy. Your farmer is not given to introspection. For that matter, anyone knows that a farmer in town is a comedy. Vaudeville, burlesque, the Sunday supplement, the comic papers, have marked him a fair target for ridicule. Perhaps one should know him in his overalled, stubble-bearded days, with the rich black loam of the Mississippi bottomlands clinging to ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... against the Pharisees, his opponents forcing him, as generally happens, to adopt their tone.[3] His exquisite irony, his arch and provoking remarks, always struck home. They were everlasting stigmas, and have remained festering in the wound. This Nessus-shirt of ridicule which the Jew, son of the Pharisees, has dragged in tatters after him during eighteen centuries, was woven by Jesus with a divine skill. Masterpieces of fine raillery, their features are written in lines of fire upon the flesh of ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... its antidote. For so vast and absurd were his vain boastings, and so needless his exaggerations of his own recklessness, blood-thirstiness, and crime, that hitherto his vaporings had excited rather ridicule than fear. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... toward sarcasm touching the well-meant attempts to entertain the Governor and his lady in the provincial town of Halifax,—a disposition to turn, in short, upon the demonstrations of loyal worship the faint light of ridicule. There were those upon the boat who were journeying to Halifax to take part in the civic ball about to be given to their excellencies, and as we were going in the same direction, we shared in the feeling of satisfaction which proximity ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that not a single one of the earnest, hearty workers who would come back to us with a blessing for themselves and us, is able to go; instead, we have four representatives who will turn the whole thing into ridicule, and dish it up for the entertainment of their friends during ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... on their dirty scales to attract the attention of some possible purchaser. Smiles and quaint greetings of endearment would welcome the housewife as she came up; but if she found prices too high and passed on, a deluge of filthy epithet would follow after her, and the insolent ridicule would be taken up by the whole crew of vendors, instinctively standing together against ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... The origin of this nickname is traced to a satire written in the reign of Queen Anne, by Dr. Arbuthnot, to throw ridicule on the politics ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... was not always of the same cast. It varied as greatly as were the moods of the composer. The sublimity of Ossian had its opposite in the biting sarcasm and trenchant ridicule of some of the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... cherish animosities towards seniors in age possessed of superior qualifications, and while the latter, possessed of virtue and merit, used to speak upon proper topics in the midst of assemblies, the former began to ridicule or laugh at them. When reverend seniors in age came, the younger individuals, seated at their ease, refused to adore the former by rising up and saluting them with respect. In the presence of sires, sons began to exercise power (in matters that concerned sires alone). They ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... as with the person of the Metropolitan of Moscow, or with that of the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad. She had her dignity. It was undeniable. He imagined the surprise in her large blue eyes and the torrent of ridicule of which her tongue could be capable. He had felt the sting of its humor at their first meeting. He had no wish to ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... gentlemen still continue to do, but stopped at some one:—to nudge him on the shoulder and say, as was done by the servant of a Scottish gentleman, "What ails you at her in the green gown?" It will be better to leave the lady unnoticed than for the servant thus to turn his master into ridicule. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... talk might have discouraged ordinary people, but Barnwell and his companions had long since become accustomed to it. They had learned to brave ridicule before leaving their homes, and they classed the expressions of the hunters who had called upon them with the utterances of those who failed ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... reign had adjusted themselves to meet opposition. Those of the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth were prepared to meet ridicule.[77] "There are some," says the narrator of a Yorkshire story, "who are of opinion that there are no Divells nor any witches.... Men in this Age are grown so wicked, that they are apt to believe there are no greater Divells than themselves."[78] Another writer, to bolster up his story ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... depreciation &c. (detraction) 934; pessimism, pessimist; undervaluing &c. v.; modesty &c. 881. V. underrate, underestimate, undervalue, underreckon[obs3]; depreciate; disparage &c. (detract) 934; not do justice to; misprize, disprize; ridicule &c. 856; slight &c. (despise) 930; neglect &c. 460; slur over. make light of, make little of, make nothing of, make no account of; belittle; minimize, think nothing of; set no store by, set at naught; shake off as dewdrops from the lion's mane. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and window stakes, and turned everything topsy-turvy; so that the poor schoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country held their meetings there. But, what was still more annoying, Brom took all opportunities of turning him into ridicule in presence of his mistress, and had a scoundrel dog whom he taught to whine in the most ludicrous manner, and introduced as a rival of Ichabod's, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... which some of those enthusiastic men who undertake to legislate on Irish subjects so frequently commit, would excite feelings of ridicule, if the observations in which they see fit to indulge were not calculated to produce mischief in quarters where their insignificance is not known, and where their flippant fallacies may be mistaken for facts. Thus, Mr Poulett Scrope exclaims,—"What! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Amarendra Babu, with his son and an uncle named Rashbehari, arrived at Jogesh's house in a second-class cab. No procession attended them, partly because the last had cost so much money, partly owing to the fear that another hitch might cover them with ridicule. After exchanging hearty salutations with Jogesh, they asked him to exhibit the ornaments prepared for the bride-elect. He took them to a side room and left them there a while, presently introducing a well-dressed man as his family goldsmith. The latter unlocked a tin box which he was carrying ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... entirely unforeseen aspect; for those whom he approached as being the most likely to possess what he required either became very immoderately and disagreeably amused at the nature of the request, or regarded it as a new and ill-judged form of ridicule, which they prepared to avenge by blows and by base remarks of the most personal variety. At length it became unavoidably obvious to the youth that if he was to obtain the articles in question it would first be necessary that he should become adept in the art of slaying tigers, for in no other ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... advance of his boyish writing of that year. It is an interesting document, enthusiastic and gay in a manner hardly to be met with again in its author, and diversified with graceful praise of St John's College, defence of good poetry, and wholesome ridicule of those who were trying to introduce the "Thrasonical huffsnuff" style of which Phaer and ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... stone, you're a prisoner,' he replied, and seeing Ammiani coming, 'Net him, my sling-stone! my serpent!' he signalled to his wife, who threw herself right round Ammiani in a tortuous twist hard as wire-rope. Stung with irritation, and a sense of disgrace and ridicule and pitifulness in one, Ammiani, after a struggle, ceased the attempt to disentwine her arms, and dragged her clinging to him. He was much struck by hearing her count deliberately, in her desperation, numbers from somewhere about twenty to one ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in any other man, with moral enthusiasm and with intellectual grasp, has held in the modern world the same rank which was accorded to him in the old; but he cannot enjoy the same appreciation. Macaulay's ridicule has rescued from oblivion the criticism which pronounced the eloquence of Chatham to be more ornate than that of Demosthenes, and less diffuse than that of Cicero. Did the critic, asks Macaulay, ever hear any speaking that was less ornamented ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... imperfect, inaccurate observer of forms and outlines, he attached himself chiefly to the idea of prominences (or bumps) at certain localities, and to his mode of presenting the subject we are mainly indebted for the ridicule of phrenology as a science of bumps. I have taken much pains to assure my students that cerebral science has little or nothing to do with bumps, that bumps upon the skull belong to its osseous structure, which presents certain protuberances with which they should ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... to find men, who in their speculations deny the reality of moral distinctions, forget in detail the general positions they maintain, and give loose to ridicule, indignation, and scorn, as if any of these sentiments could have place, were the actions of men indifferent; or with acrimony pretend to detect the fraud by which moral restraints have been imposed, as if to censure a fraud were not already ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... the various groups of men still discussing the events of the evening, Scott, followed only by Bill Dancing, made his way, nodding and patiently or pleasantly grinning as the greetings or ridicule of the crowd were thrown at him. He went to the rooms of the sheriff only to find them locked, and made his way down town again looking through the resorts in ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... supposed from this little sketch of a characteristic scene that I wish to ridicule any form of religion. I saw precisely what I state, and am in no way responsible for it. If people imagine this sort of thing does them any good, they are quite welcome to enjoy it; but they must not expect every body ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... somebody?" said Joyce trying not to let her voice betray the laughter which was choking her, for Mary showed a grief too deep to ridicule. ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... question: How can God be just and not justify "him that hath faith in Jesus"? Again men may quibble and warp, and ridicule, but no one will ever answer the question. And the reason why this question will never be answered leads ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... terminate here. The political opponents of the government did not allow so favourable an opportunity to escape for launching the shafts of ridicule. The Moderados were taunted in the cortes for their avarice and credulity, whilst the liberal press wafted on its wings through Spain the story of the treasure- ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Briarfield; of the natives of Yorkshire generally; complaints of the want of high society; of the backward state of civilization in these districts; murmurings against the disrespectful conduct of the lower orders in the north toward their betters; silly ridicule of the manner of living in these parts—the want of style, the absence of elegance, as if he, Donne, had been accustomed to very great doings indeed, an insinuation which his somewhat underbred manner and aspect ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... of the Congress made a great impression at home and abroad, in spite of the attacks and ridicule with which the Spaniards tried to discredit it. On that eventful day Bolvar saw his dream of a great nation, Colombia, take shape, even though it were in danger of dying shortly after ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... reconsidered this, and negatived its vote of the previous evening; but publicity was still given to it, and it echoed through the provinces, carrying with it the disquietude, derision, and hatred attached to the Royal Veto. The constitution, handed over to ridicule and hooted in full assembly, had now become the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Could they but have turned their attention to systematic methods of investigation based upon facts logically stated, the vast intellectual energy of the Middle Ages might have been turned to more permanent account. It is idle, however, to deplore their ignorance of these conditions or to ridicule their want of learning. When we consider the ignorance that overshadowed the land, the breaking down of the old established systems of Greece and Rome, the struggle of the church, which grew naturally into its power and ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... words with that kind of low, dogged ridicule and scorn which so frequently accompany stupid and wanton brutality; and which are, besides, provoking, almost beyond endurance, when the mind is chafed by a consideration ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... than perhaps any Christian ever did. I explained to him the difference between the religion of England and Rome; and he Was pleased to hear there were Christians that did not worship images, or adore the Virgin Mary. The ridicule of transubstantiation appeared very strong to him.—Upon comparing our creeds together, I am convinced that if our friend Dr —— had free liberty of preaching here, it would be very easy to persuade the generality to Christianity, whose notions are very little different from his. Mr Whiston would ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... the place of execution the scene grew still more shocking, and the clergyman who attended was more the subject of ridicule than of their serious attention. The Psalm was sung amidst the curses and quarrelling of hundreds of the most abandoned and profligate of mankind, upon them (so stupid are they to any sense of decency) ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Fashion, of which we have heretofore given an illustration, is said to increase, and as it is graceful and convenient it would be more popular but for the ridicule cast on all innovations by the vulgar or profligate women who expose their natural shamelessness and ambition of notoriety by appearing in what is called the Bloomer costume—a costume which, it is scarcely necessary to say, has never yet been assumed ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... and oppressed; ever, with god-like fearlessness, he stood for Right against Might—for purity against corruption. In church, in state, in society— he tore the painted mask from the face of hypocrisy and exposed it, in all its festering hideousness, to the world's ridicule. ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... had made her disobey her father back in Howrah City—the spirit that had kept her in Howrah City and had given Jaimihr back cool stare for stare—rallied her to resist—to ridicule—to rival Cunningham's pretensions. He saw her flush beneath his gaze, and turned away to where Mahommed Gunga ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... yourself or the simple deserts of an old man such as I am. I accepted it, sir, the more readily, because it was entirely unsolicited by me, and seemed to be the spontaneous offering of your own heart. If I have presumed upon it to express myself freely on other matters in a way that only excites your ridicule, I can but offer you an apology, sir. If I have accepted a favor I can neither renounce nor return, I must take the consequences to myself, and even beg YOU, sir, to put up ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... not to encroach on the special preserve of the Physiologists and, as he did not pay any heed to the warning, misrepresentations began. Even the evidence of his supersensitive appliances failed to convince many. And the Royal Society withheld publication of his researches. He was recompensed with ridicule and reviling. The limited facilities that he had in the prosecution of his researches were in danger of being withdrawn. But he had a burning Faith in the Vision and was not to be boggled at with these difficulties. He became stronger in his determination. Realising ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... English madrigal, deploring the loss of old instruments. Riviere, not wholly ingenuously, undertook to explain to Jimmy the triumph of the French mechanicians. The resonant voice of the Hungarian was about to prevail in ridicule of the spurious lutes of the romantic painters when Segouin shepherded his party into politics. Here was congenial ground for all. Jimmy, under generous influences, felt the buried zeal of his father wake to life within him: ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... who comes up the stairway furtively, with a manuscript he wants printed, is in dead earnest; and he has excited the ridicule, wrath or pity of editors for three hundred years. Such a one was Samuel Adams. His wife did her own work, and the grocer with bills in his hand often grew red in the face ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... object ideal or general, abstract, impersonal, or, so to speak, invisible intangible subjects, wanting all the vivacious pungent stimulus that belongs to real individual absurdity, and the direct ridicule of it, judiciously and dexterously applied; the only efficient—I had almost said legitimate—object of a rational creature's amusement. If Dorothy depends upon you for her entertainment (otherwise than as you involuntarily, unconsciously, naturally, and simply furnish it to me), I pity her; and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... ten days. Count Zerbst said sulkily that it was not the children who would baffle him, but the caves and the woods they were using. At last they began to discuss the measure of summoning to their aid the local police; and for some time debated whether it was worth the risk of the ridicule it ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... sleeves, some eccentricity of cut, or some discord or untidiness. But these will be but transient flashes in a general flow of harmonious graciousness; dress will have scarcely any of that effect of disorderly conflict, of self-assertion qualified by the fear of ridicule, that it has in the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... with the different tone in which my gradual causes was treated by all, even including De la Beche, from that which they experienced in the same room four years ago, when Buckland, De la Beche(?), Sedgwick, Whewell, and some others treated them with as much ridicule as was consistent with ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... strangers come. 'How can there,' said he, 'be a physical effect without a physical cause?' He added, laughing, 'the arrival of a ship full of strangers would kill them; for, if one stranger gives them one cold, two strangers must give them two colds; and so in proportion.' I wondered to hear him ridicule this, as he had praised M'Aulay 247 for putting it in his book: saying, that it was manly in him to tell a fact, however strange, if he himself believed it. He said, the evidence was not adequate to the improbability of the thing; ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... desk, with half studied lesson, but with bright hopes of passing the twenty minutes safely, before the slow hand of the old clock had marked but half the time, his hopes would be blasted by a call to the board where he would bring upon himself the ridicule of his schoolmates, the condemnation of the teacher, and would take his seat to hear, with burning cheeks, the awful sentence: "You may ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... God has not so ordained it. Our men sin and boast in it. Consorting with the women of the alien race to them is only an indiscretion. While even to acknowledge that in the Negro man are the elements of genuine manhood would make a Southern white women a social exile, and make her the butt of ridicule. Does not this account for the human sacrifices that have shocked the nation? If the Negro's life is cheap and a frank acknowledgement of preference for him means so much to her, and knowing that her word is judge and jury, is it not likely that she would pursue the easiest course? ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... understand and appreciate the motives by which I was actuated. The generality looked on the course I had taken as a proof of a restless and ill-regulated mind, and instead of following my example, treated me and my teetotalism with ridicule. Some were angry, and scolded me in right good earnest. They supposed that it was I that had sent them the Paper containing my letter, and seemed to think themselves called upon to resent my interference with their ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... considered the constitutions of the empire as the title-deeds of his crown; and he was afraid, if he annulled them, that he should effect a sort of novation, that would give him the appearance of beginning a new reign. For Napoleon, such is human weakness, after having devoted to ridicule the pretensions of "the King of Hartwell," was inclined to persuade himself, that his own reign had not been interrupted by his residence in the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... of Christmas." But these "fine and subtle disguisings, masks, and mummeries," too often degenerated into abuse, as indeed was to be expected, when such pastimes had for their object to turn all lawful authority into ridicule, and more particularly to burlesque the services of the Church. On such occasions, "the rude vulgar occupied the Churches, profaned the holy places by a mock imitation of the sacred rites, and sung indecent parodies of the hymns ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... point with poor Robbie. Bill had not only cast doubts upon his religious sincerity, which the little man could not endure, but he had also held him up to the ridicule of the community, which was painful to his pride. But when he understood, some days later, that Bill was taking steps to back up his offer and had been heard to declare that "he'd make them pious ducks take water if he had to put up a year's pay," Robbie went quietly ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... decamped—had scummed off, so to speak—leaving the more rectified spirits behind them, to recover at leisure, as best they might, from all that ferment of dissipation. So, then, there was now neither ridicule, nor interest, to stand in the way of a young and wealthy ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... mean public speaking, nor yet the rhetorical writing too often associated with the word. Rhetoric is the dressing-up of conventional sentiment, eloquence the fearless expression of real emotion. And this gift of the fearless expression of emotion—fearless, that is, of ridicule, or of indifference in the hearer—has been an inestimable strength to France. It is a sign of the high average of French intelligence that feeling well-worded can stir and uplift it; that "words" are ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... Trevelyan's mother had been bosom friends, and Lady Milborough had on this account taken upon herself to be much interested in Trevelyan's wife. But Louis Trevelyan himself, in discussing Lady Milborough with Emily, had rather turned his mother's old friend into ridicule, and Emily had, of course, followed her husband's mode of thinking. Lady Milborough had once or twice given her some advice on small matters, telling her that this or that air would be good for her baby, and explaining that a mother during ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... of the wild, lawless bushmen, gold diggers, and convicts of the Australian world. His manners were gentlemanlike but slightly old-fashioned, and, doubtless, many a young Englander would have found matter for ridicule in some of his doings and sayings. Not so, however, the good and cultivated Englishman of the nineteenth century. He would have found abundance to love and respect in the man who left the luxury, science, learning ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... troubled over his rash promise that he would meet Sibley at daylight on Monday morning. After Miss Burton's words he felt that he could not keep his appointment, and yet he shrank from the ridicule he believed Sibley would heap upon him. His perturbation was so great that he hunted up Van Berg before retiring, and told him of his dilemma. The artist greatly relieved ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... off into musings on the flight of Time; a steamer on the Thames or lines of telegraph inevitably suggest the benefits of Civilization, man's triumph over Nature, the heroism of Inventors, the courage, amid ridicule and poverty, of Stephenson and Watt. Like faint, rather unpleasant smells, these thoughts lurk about railway stations. I can hardly post a letter without marvelling at the excellence and accuracy ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... regimen for possession, and thence speak of one word "as possessing" an other, a mode of expression occurring twice in the foregoing note, is not only unscholarlike, but positively absurd. But, possibly, the author may have meant by it, to ridicule the choice phraseology of the following Rule: "A noun or pronoun in the possessive case, is governed by the noun it possesses."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 181; Frazee's, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... mimic, flout, taunt, imitate, gibe, ridicule, jeer, schout; balk, disappoint, delude, tantalize, elude; defy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... defective but valuable class without humour, which in England is exceedingly well cared for. American letters, American journalism, and American speech are so coloured by pleasantries, so accentuated by ridicule, that the silent and stodgy men, who are apt to represent a nation's real strength, hardly know where to turn for a little saving dulness. A deep vein of irony runs through every grade of society, making it ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... are admissible, and they carry perhaps only too much weight in an oration. Of them there are two kinds,—facetiousness and raillery,—and the orator will employ both; but he will use the one in relating anything neatly, and the other in darting ridicule on his adversaries. And of this latter kind there are more descriptions than one; however, it is a different thing that we are discussing now. Nevertheless we may give this warning,—that the orator ought to use ridicule in such a way as ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... departed—all these things had yielded such "comedy" as they possess to many others before Ibsen, and an Ibsen was not needed to evoke it. But if we ask what, then, is the right way from which these "cosmic" personages in their several fashions diverge; what is the condition which will secure courtship from ridicule, and marriage from disillusion, Ibsen abruptly parts company with all his predecessors. "'Of course,' reply the rest in chorus, 'a deep and sincere love';— 'together,' add some, 'with prudent good sense.'" The prudent good sense Ibsen allows; but he couples with it the startling paradox that the ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... Low-countries appear to have afforded ample room for ridicule at all times. In "A brief Character of the Low-countries under the States, being Three Weeks Observation of the Vices and Virtues of the Inhabitants," written by Owen Feltham, and printed Lond. 1659, 12mo, we find them epitomized as a general sea-land—the great bog of Europe—an ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... stay in Paris are "Il Candelajo" and "Umbrae Idearum." The former, says Levi, is a work of criticism and of demolition; in this comedy he sets in groups the principal types of hypocrisy, stupidity, and rascality, and exhibiting them in their true colours, he lashes them with ridicule. In the "Umbrae Idearum" he initiates the work of reconstruction, giving colour to his thought and sketching his idea. The philosophy of Bruno is based upon that of Pythagoras, whose system penetrates the ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... was always in her eyes, as they followed me wherever I went with a mute, pathetic anxiety. No assurances of mine, no assumed cheerfulness and fortitude could remove it. I even tried to laugh at it, but my laugh only brought the tears into her eyes. Neither reason nor ridicule could root it ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... you pain; but I doubt if your humility exceeds your knowledge. Fascinated by harmony of tone and grace of manner, you perceive not a deficiency in energy—a want of moral courage. You close your eyes against every token of an over-sensitiveness to ridicule, veiled beneath the more graceful cloak of fastidious taste. You will not understand that pride and weakness fashion a character which, however seemingly amiable in many other points, is not such as to repay the devotion ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... that you showed little gratitude in holding up to ridicule the institution that has done so much for you. Had you not managed to be funny I doubt if you would have been forgiven. But fortunately for you, Mr.—, that is, the gentleman who has just gone—appears to have an immoderate sense of humour. On the strength of ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... generally greeted the convention and its work with a chorus of ridicule, though certain Democratic newspapers, from motives harmlessly transparent, gave it solemn and unmeasured praise. General Fremont, taking his candidacy seriously, accepted the nomination, but three months later, finding no response from the ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... and courtesy as well as defiance in a bow; I put all three into this one, with a touch of ridicule in the shrug which accompanied it. It was at this moment that he struck me. The room spun round me. I fell upon my back. But in an instant I was on my feet again and had rushed to a close combat. His ear, his hair, his nose, I seized them each in ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... two of the cardinal virtues of a thinker, courage and candour. No fear of ridicule deterred him from pushing his premises to their last conclusion; no false shame restrained him in a controversy from recanting an error. He discarded the wilder developments of his theory of "universal benevolence," and gave it in the end a form which has ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... to any one whether, if Lord George Bentinck had, as a general (and had he continued in the army he might have been one), caused the positive loss for ever of sixteen millions to this country, in a campaign at the other end of the world, he would have been visited with such a torrent of ridicule as that poured upon him on account of his plan for laying out that sum at home, with an absolute certainty of its return? No; his destruction of that amount of capital would have been rewarded ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... was easy to make fun of her without her taking it ill. Athalie took special delight in making the poor child an object of ridicule before gentlemen. If young men were present, she encouraged them to pay court to Timea, and it amused her highly when she saw that Timea accepted these attentions seriously; how pleased she was to be treated like a grown-up lady, to be asked to dance at balls, or ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... injured by a want of patience and self-control in those who govern them. Such children often possess a morbid sensibility which they strive to conceal, or a desire of love and approbation, which preys like a famine on the soul. And yet, they become objects of ridicule and rebuke to almost every member of the family, until their sensibilities are tortured into obtuseness or misanthropy. Such children, above all others, need tenderness and sympathy. A thousand instances of mistake ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... up I could feel that his eyes were critically scanning my face in search of ridicule or sarcasm, but I managed to preserve a stolid demeanour, and purposely dropping further discussion of the matter, went in search of cigars and stimulants to help us while away the afternoon. At length he again broached the subject, ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... commonly their excited, and by repeated snorting and galloping, announced the presence of some object of terror. The young man was often upon the point of awakening his brother, but was as often restrained by the fear of incurring ridicule and their reproach of timidity, at that time an unpardonable blemish in the character of a Kentuckian. At length, hasty steps were heard in the yard, and quickly afterwards several knocks at the door, accompanied ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... is one of those writers who attempt to deal in wit—and to bear down every Republican principle by satire—but he miserably fails in both, for his wit is as stale as his satire, and his satire as insipid as his wit. He attempts to ridicule Dr. Franklin, but can any man of sense conceive any poignancy in styling this great philosopher, "poor Richard," or "the old lightning rod." Franklin, whose researches in philosophy have placed him preeminent among the first characters in this country, or in Europe: is it possible ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... thrown on to the horse's neck. The power which controls and disciplines sensational experience is, in modern literature, daily denied; the counterpart of this power which envisages the ideal in the conduct of one's own or the nation's affairs and unfalteringly pursues it is held up to ridicule. Opportunism in politics has its complement in opportunism in poetry. Mr Lloyd George's moods are reflected in Mr ——'s. And, beneath these heights, we have the queer spectacle of a whole race of very young ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... and Wordsworth, why should not humbler folks have the courage of their own opinions? They cannot possibly be more wrong than Johnson and Macaulay were, and it is surely better to be honest, though it may expose one to some ridicule, than to lie. The more we agree with the verdict of the generations before us on these matters, the more, it is quite true, we are likely to be right; but the agreement should be an honest one. At present ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Nellie in J.C.'s admiration for herself, that she failed to see his growing preference for Maude, whom she frequently ridiculed in his presence, just because she thought he would laugh at it, and think her witty. But in this she was mistaken, for her ridicule raised Maude higher in his estimation, and he was glad when at last an opportunity occurred for him to declare ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... elicit acts [that spring from our mind], of what benefit is Christ? If we can be justified by reason and the works of reason, wherefore is there need of Christ or regeneration [as Peter declares, 1 Pet. 1, 18 ff.]? And from these opinions the matter has now come to such a pass that many ridicule us because we teach that an other than the philosophic righteousness must be sought after. [Alas! it has come to this, that even great theologians at Louvain, Paris, etc., have known nothing of any other godliness or righteousness (although every letter and syllable ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... of serious subjects gives many readers a false and distorted view of life. Humor does not depend on ridicule or satire. The fads and foibles of humanity can be good-naturedly exposed in humorous articles that have no sting. Although many topics may very properly be treated lightly, others ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... since sent out more line-of-battle ships and heavier frigates. Surely we must now mean to smother the American navy. A very short time before the capture of the Guerriere an American frigate was an object of ridicule to our honest tars. Now the prejudice is actually setting the other way and great pains seems to be taken by the friends of ministers to prepare the public for the surrender of a British seventy-four to an opponent lately ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... hesitate in the middle of a course after indulging in much pomp and pageantry at the beginning will result in ridicule and derision and that the dignity of the Chief Executive will be lowered. But do they even know whether the Great President has taken the least part in connection with the phantasies of the past four months? Do they know that the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Maximilian, do not shrug your shoulders with impatient disdain, at my writing such things about myself. It is hard for me to do it, you may suppose, but the sequel of this narrative will prove to you that these puerile details, of which I feel the bitter ridicule, are unfortunately indispensable. I close the parenthesis, and ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... 2, being Good-Friday, I visited him in the morning as usual; and finding that we insensibly fell into a train of ridicule upon the foibles of one of our friends, a very worthy man[1149], I, by way of a check, quoted some good admonition from The Government of the Tongue[1150], that very pious book. It happened also remarkably enough, that the subject of the sermon preached to us to-day by Dr. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... clamours of intemperance. In the neighbourhood of Lichfield, the sportsmen of the party appeared in the Highland taste of variegated drapery; and their zeal descending to a very extraordinary exhibition of practical ridicule, they hunted, with hounds clothed in plaid, a fox dressed in a red uniform. Even the females at their assembly, and the gentlemen at the races, affected to wear the chequered stuff by which the prince-pretender and his followers had been distinguished. Divers noblemen on the course were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... countenance had become like those Oriental faces amid which he had found unheard-of griefs and joys. In Venice, his birthplace, instead of a greeting that might ease his nostalgia, he encountered disbelief in his identity, and ridicule of his tales. He could not make them credulous of that delicious Cambulac where he had dwelt like a god: his tidings of unearthly felicities—free to all who would make that journey—fell upon brutish ears. The very children came to laugh him to scorn. So finally, stunned by this ingratitude, cut ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... degree of speculation, and even of alarm, in different quarters of the schooner, and I saw distinctly that no little impression had been made upon the mind of Captain Guy. He was exceedingly sensitive to ridicule, however, and I finally succeeded in laughing him out of his apprehensions. The variation was now very trivial. In the course of the day we saw several large whales of the right species, and innumerable flights of the albatross passed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... example. If they believe any custom or fashion of the world to be evil in itself, or to be attended with evil, neither popular applause nor popular fury can make them follow it, but they think it right to bear their testimony against it by its disuse, and to run the hazard of all the ridicule, censure, or persecution, which may await them for ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... forces were hurried forward to Washington, where everything was in the wildest confusion. The contemptible Peace Party had done all by way of ridicule and argument to keep off the war, and were now doing all in their power to prevent its prosecution. General Winder and Commodore Barney were in command of the land and naval forces of the United States, for the defence of Washington. In vain Winder had ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... measures suggested by me for the future emancipation, and for the present benefit, of the slave, the proposition of "a proper instrument for flogging, to be established by law," and that with the evident intention of throwing ridicule on the idea. If the critic were occasionally subject to the discipline of the various instruments used for the punishment of the negro, his instinct would soon teach him that which appears to be at present ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... which those diversions inspire, were altogether inconsistent with that temper of mind which was fittest for their purpose, or which they could best work upon. Dramatic representations, besides, frequently exposing their artifices to public ridicule, and sometimes even to public execration, were, upon that account, more than all other diversions, the objects of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... is simply absurd," says the young man, taking now the superior tone that is meant to crush the situation by holding it up to ridicule. "You forget, perhaps, that we shall have to meet sometimes. I suppose the people down here give balls occasionally, and tennis-parties, and that; and when I meet you at them, is it your wish that I shall pretend never to have seen you ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... inroad on many of our old, venerated Dutch names; names that the English, direct from home, have generally respected. Indeed, change—change in all things, seems to be the besetting passion of these people. We, of New York, are content to do as our ancestors have done before us; and this they ridicule, making it matter of accusation against us, that we follow the notions of our fathers. I shall never complain that they are deserting so many of their customs; for, I regard the changes as improvements; but I beg that they ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... opinion! It will ridicule me, that's all! It will accuse me of desiring to make a stir, to cut off my dog's tail. To-day, Alcibiades would thus cut off his, but the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would bring ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... because they could control it by law. A gentleman from the country, who had joined the minute-men, came in one day to the Charleston Hotel, with a huge cockade on his hat, expecting to be received with great applause; but, to his astonishment, he was greeted with laughter and ridicule. ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... and Isabella. Alfonso, whose character always had a spice of Quixotism in it, seems to have completely lost his wits at this last reverse of fortune. Overwhelmed with shame at his own credulity, he felt himself unable to encounter the ridicule which awaited his return to Portugal, and secretly withdrew, with two or three domestics only, to an obscure village in Normandy, whence he transmitted an epistle to Prince John, his son, declaring, "that, as all earthly vanities were dead within his bosom, he resolved ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... friend paid the tax for him, and he was released. The like annoyance was threatened the next year. But, as his friends paid the tax, notwithstanding his protest, I believe he ceased to resist. No opposition or ridicule had any weight with him. He coldly and fully stated his opinion without affecting to believe that it was the opinion of the company. It was of no consequence, if every one present held the opposite opinion. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... dignity and honour; and so loved by the Saviour, that he came to save those who otherwise would have been lost; and still bearing much of the original impress in which he was created. She explained to him how wrong it is to make game of the peculiarities of any human being, ridicule his infirmities, or win a reputation by exhibiting his defects; bidding him always, at the close of her lecture, to read the sermon delivered on the mount, and to walk by its rule, and he would ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... edge of all our rebukes of tyranny abroad—the criticisms that we make upon other nations, only call forth ridicule, contempt, and scorn. In a word, we are made a reproach and a by-word to a{347} mocking earth, and we must continue to be so made, so long as slavery continues ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... merely nominal are sought and invented, not by governors, but by the lowest of the people, which are found sufficient to hold mankind together in little fraternities and copartnerships: weak ties indeed, and what may afford fund enough for ridicule, if they are absurdly considered as the real principles of that union: but they are in truth merely the occasions, as anything may be of anything, upon which our nature carries us on according to its own previous bent and bias; which occasions ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... does not appear: he wrote the Lord Mayor's Pageant in 1605; but he had certainly earlier been similarly employed, as Ben Jonson introduces him in that capacity in "The Case is Altered," which was written in the end of 1598 or beginning of 1599.[149] He there throws some ridicule upon Don Antonio Balladino (as he calls Munday), and Mr Gifford was of opinion that Middleton meant to censure him in his "Triumphs of Truth," as the impudent "common writer" of city pageants; but this is hardly consistent with the mention Middleton introduces of Munday ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... discomfort of being immersed, not to speak of the ridicule that such an event aroused on the part of the people assembled to witness the punishment, no doubt had a very sobering effect on tempers. There was also a ducking stool on Wormeley's Creek in York County, and another at Lynnhaven in Lower Norfolk. ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... circulation; and much has been said of its utility and its elegance. I mean the project for coining into money the bells of the suppressed churches. This is their alchemy. There are some follies which baffle argument, which go beyond ridicule, and which excite no feeling in us but disgust; and therefore I say ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... they are never sincere, but the compliments are not meant to deceive, they only profess to be forms. Why do the English talk of the beautiful sentiment of the Bible and pretend to feel it so much, and when they come and see the same life before them they ridicule it. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... connection it will have in the future with what is called the Negro Problem in our own country. There have been and are thoughtful men who see in colonization the only solution of its difficulties. Others ridicule the very suggestion. It is a question into which we do not propose to go. But there is scarcely any doubt that when the development of Liberia is a little more advanced, and when communication with her ports becomes less difficult, and when the population of the United States grows ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... power has been the saving of the principal French historians, notably of Michelet. It has furnished them with the key by which alone the history of their country could be made plain. Nothing is easier than to ridicule or deny so mystical a thing. Taine, by temperament intensely anti-national, ridiculed it as he ridiculed the mysteries of the Faith; but with this consequence, that his denial made it impossible for him to write the history of his country, and compelled him throughout ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... in ranch practice was the keeping up of my bulls in winter-time and not putting them out with the cows till the middle of July. This also met with the ridicule of all the "old-timers"; but it was entirely successful! The calf crop was not only a very large one but the calves were dropped all about the same time, were thus of an even age (an important matter for dealers), and they "came" when ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... the Mystery of the Resurrection, not being understood, is made a subject of ridicule among unbelievers. In these circumstances, to speak of the Christian doctrine as a secret system is altogether absurd. But that there should be certain doctrines, not made known to the multitude, which are divulged after the exoteric ones have ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... from Carpenter's Hall, after slavery-loving planters of the South and money-loving ship-owners of the North had, as they thought, made it neutral, and we all, North and South, recognize in it the boldest anti-slavery document extant. Why else do Northern demagogues ridicule it, and Southern demagogues revile it? Yet Jefferson made it far stronger and sharper against negro slavery than it is now. Look ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... chapters, by the time the writer had got such an inimitable personage as Parson Adams before the reader, it was seen that the book was to be more than a jeu d'esprit: rather, the work of a master of characterization. In short, Joseph Andrews started out ostensibly to poke good-natured ridicule at sentimental Mr. Richardson: it ended by furnishing contemporary London and all subsequent readers with a notable example of the novel of mingled character and incident, entertaining alike for its lively episodes ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... one of whom she had rejected a week before, another of whom she expected to dispose of similarly, and the last of whom was Joseph Frowenfeld, she began such a merry raillery at Clotilde and such a hilarious ridicule of the "Professor" that Clotilde would have wept again had not Aurora, all at once, in the midst of a laugh, dropped her face in her hands and run from the room in tears. It is one of the penalties we pay for being joyous, that nobody thinks us capable of care or the victim of trouble until, in some ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... and made such a speech[1]—but I wish anybody was to give you the account except me, whom you will think partial: but you will hear enough of it, to confirm anything I can say. Imagine fire, rapidity, argument, knowledge, wit, ridicule, grace, spirit; all pouring like a torrent, but without clashing. Imagine the House in a tumult of continued applause, imagine the Ministers thunderstruck; lawyers abashed and almost blushing, for it was on their quibbles ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... philosophy of Descartes, in which she was a believer, than our poet; but she dreaded the reputation of a "blue-stocking," and for this reason La Fontaine addresses her as if she might be ignorant of the Cartesian theory.—Translator. Moliere's Femme Savante, the object of which was to ridicule the French "blue-stockings," had been only recently produced upon the stage (1672), hence Madame de la Sabliere's fears, and La Fontaine's delicate forbearance. [3] Beasts are mere machines.—At this time the discussion ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... old Luddy's door. The Gray Seal? Oh, yes, they would know it was the Gray Seal—the insignia was familiar enough; familiar to the crooks of the underworld, who held it in awe; familiar to the police, to whom it was an added barb of ridicule. He was placing it now, that insignia, a diamond-shaped, gray paper seal, on the panel of the door; and now, a black silk mask adjusted over his face, Jimmie Dale bent to insert the little steel instrument in the lock—a pitiful, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day were playing, pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily bore with his father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and listened ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and spurred, who imagine they are leading a grand race to a golden goal, forgetful of the truth that their steeds are tethered to a single idea, around which they are revolving only to tread down the grass and wind themselves up, where they may stand at last amid the world's ridicule, and ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... sacrifice. Thereupon he ordered the troops to get their evening meal, after which they were to present themselves in front of the camp. But by the time darkness had closed in, not one half of them had come out. To abandon the project was to call down the ridicule of the rest of the Thirty. So he set out with the force to hand, and about daylight, falling on the camp of Pharnabazus, put many of his advanced guard of Mysians to the sword. The men themselves made good their escape in different ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... avail in the case of a daughter-in-law, then in a dying state abroad. After that day, I met them frequently, and was at their house, when I could go. On occasion of my first visit, I was struck by an incident which explained the ridicule we have all heard thrown on the old poet for a self-esteem which he was merely too simple to hide. Nothing could be easier than to make a quiz of what he said to me; but to me it seemed delightful. As he at once talked of his poems, I thought I might; and I observed that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... women, but the men also, wear much livelier descriptions of dress than we are accustomed to in the west of Europe; and whilst the frilled unmentionables of some of them would excite ridicule amongst our hardy operatives, the brocaded vests of others would perhaps be regarded by ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... quarrel was something about his lodgings in the town. The squires, it seems, knowing that the knights and nobles generally disliked Sir Miles, were encouraged to be very bold and insolent to him in expressing their ill-will, and when the archers came up they were following him with taunts, and ridicule, and abuse, while Sir Miles was making the best of his way ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Nuneham, mentioned one morning having had an agitating dream, but was met with ridicule. Later in the day Lord Harcourt—her husband's father—was missing. She exclaimed, "Look in the well," and fainted away. He was found there with a dog, which he had been trying ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... explain myself then. Moral courage, as I understand it, is shown when a person has the bravery and strength of character to act from principle, when doing so may subject him, and he knows it, to misunderstanding, misrepresentation, opposition, ridicule, or persecution." ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... to temper their hate. They may dislike the priests, but they revere the Church. The young men of to-day are bred in a different school, and all their thoughts are of opposition to the government and of war upon the Church, which they detest and ridicule. The fact that their education is still in the hands of the priests in some measure, does not render them more tractable. They have no fears to be wrought upon by their clerical professors, who seldom have sought to act upon their nobler qualities. The influence ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... would hurt Irene Lepelletier's amour propre to make herself conspicuous, to be held up to ridicule or blame. She does not care for marriage; her position is infinitely more delightful in its variety. She can make a world of her own without being accountable to any one, but she has come perilously near to loving Floyd Grandon, when she considered love no longer a temptation, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... told her so much of his history with Mary Westbrook as commenced with his hasty and indecorous marriage,—attributing the haste to love! made her comprehend his scruples in owning the child of a union the world would be certain to ridicule or condemn; he expatiated on the inestimable blessings she could afford him, by delivering him from all embarrassment, and restoring his daughter, though under a borrowed name, to her father's roof. At this ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which are not sincere or earnest, but are used in jest, or irony, in ridicule, sarcasm, or mockery, in insinuation or double-meaning, demand the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the rise of the Gaelic League, the number learning the language began to increase, Government put its foot down and proceeded to discourage it by a withdrawal of grants. The order effecting this was withdrawn by Mr. Bryce. The signal failure of the attempts made to kill the Gaelic movement with ridicule, on the part of those who saw in it an evil-disposed attempt to stop the Anglicising of the country, was as conspicuous as has been the ill success of the petty tyranny of the Inland Revenue authorities, who took out summonses against those who had their names engraved ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... readers may fancy that I have exaggerated my state of mind: far from it, I have purposely softened down the more distressing particulars, apprehensive, if not of being discredited, at least of incurring ridicule. Towards the close of the third day my fever began to abate, I became more sobered in my turn of thought, could contrive to answer questions, and listen with tolerable composure to my landlord's details of my miraculous preservation. The storm was slowly rolling off ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... a certain abbot of Soro, who was her spiritual director. It is, however, true, that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were not all employed about the care of her soul. Afterward, to ridicule her yet more, King Albert sent her a hone to sharpen her needles, and swore not to put on his nightcap until she had yielded to him. But under perilous circumstances Margaret was never at a loss how to act. She acted here with the utmost prudence, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... therefore, in escaping from such ridicule," said Hardenberg, gravely. "A minister who is taken home by his servants vi et armis, because he takes the liberty not to return at an early hour—what a splendid farce that would be! Pray be kind enough to tell my servants that their anxiety was very foolish. The greatest cordiality prevails ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... thousands of the best mothers and wives and daughters in America, the most intelligent and upright and pure- minded women in the land, loaded down with their hopes, wet with their tears—if they turned their hearts', prayers and deepest desires into ridicule, throwed 'em round under their feet, they wouldn't pay no attention to Dorlesky's errents, they wouldn't notice one little vegitable widow, humbly at that, and sort o' disagreeable." And says I, "I don't want Dorlesky's errents throwed round under foot, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... he didn't only preach righteousness, he acted it. He went through water and didn't melt. He breasted the current of the popular opinion of his day, scorning alike the hatred and ridicule of the scoffers who mocked at the thought of there being but one way of salvation. He warned the unbelieving and, entering the ark himself, didn't open the door an inch when once God had shut it. A real hero untained by the fear ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... with fine linen, and a tall silk hat carefully placed on the floor of the pew; while Deacon Baxter wore homespun made of wool from his own sheep, spun and woven, dyed and finished, at the fulling-mill in the village, and carried a battered felt hat that had been a matter of ridicule these dozen years. (The Deacon would be buried in two coats, Jed Morrill always said, for he owned just that number, and would be too mean to leave either ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... die than to play the living burlesque of himself. Better to die than to face the shame of failure, the shame of reproach and ridicule; the epitaph of his business a few lines in the small type of "Business Troubles." Better to kill himself than risk the danger of going mad and killing perhaps his own children and his wife. He knew a man once, a faithful, devoted, gentle struggler with the world, whom a sudden ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... swept over the listeners brought the hot blood to Cameron's face. A deliberate insult a Highlander takes with calm. He is prepared to deal with it in a manner affording him entire satisfaction. Ridicule rouses him to fury, for, while it touches his pride, it leaves him ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... the Orchid whom I desire to charm, therefore I will be rational. Your Capitaine Gates will lower a boat, we row to the scoundrel's yacht, I present my authority, he surrenders, and we bring him back. There is no bloodshed, and my two young friends who are disposed to ridicule ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... appearance, but the thinking what others think of us, which excites a blush. In absolute solitude the most sensitive person would be quite indifferent about his appearance. We feel blame or disapprobation more acutely than approbation; and consequently depreciatory remarks or ridicule, whether of our appearance or conduct, causes us to blush much more readily than does praise. But undoubtedly praise and admiration are highly efficient: a pretty girl blushes when a man gazes intently at her, though she may know perfectly well that he ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... with a spirit suitable to the boldness of his character, addressed him in the following words: "As you are a stranger, sir, you may perhaps be excused for the indecency of your behaviour; yet give me leave to tell you that none but a Bear would ridicule any religious ceremonies in the presence of those ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... night, storms, hunger,ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.... Dear Camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination Or whether we shall be victorious, or ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the importance of the influence which was wielded by Carlyle, and especially by his Sartor Resartus. His was a gigantic power, both in literature and in morals. At first, as we have already noted, he met with neglect and ridicule in abundance, but afterwards these passed into sheer wonder, and then into a wide and devoted worship. Everybody felt his power, and all earnest thinkers were seized in the strong grip of reality with which he laid hold upon ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... spontaneous statement of our group, in which we gave a solemn proof of our willingness to conclude a just peace and one acceptable by our enemies, a fresh and larger minefield was laid down in the North Sea on the route of the world's traffic, and, casting ridicule on the noble initiative of the United States, a war of destruction against our groups of Powers was announced by ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... nor the dignity, nor the ridicule of the supposed victim—not Julie's angry eyes, nor all her mocking words from tremulous lips—had availed in the least to silence the tumult of alarmed affection in the Duchess's breast. Her Julie had been flouted and trifled ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dogs, and after having been accustomed to horse-flesh, felt no disrelish for this new dish. The Chopunnish have great numbers of dogs, which they employ for domestic purposes, but never eat; and our using the flesh of that animal soon brought us into ridicule as dog-eaters." ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... would therefore be unwilling that we should have credit for them, as for an equal number of white troops; and would also give occasion to our enemies to suspect that we are not able to procure our own people to oppose them in the field; and to retort upon us the same kind of ridicule we so liberally bestowed upon them, on account of Dunmore's regiment of blacks; or possibly might suggest to them the idea of employing ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... form sometimes grotesque. It is true also that a complete record of a conversation held under these circumstances—perhaps a full record of a commonplace conversation held under any circumstances—readily lends itself to cheap ridicule; nevertheless, the evidence of intimate knowledge thus displayed becomes often of extreme interest to the few persons for whom the disjointed utterances have a personal meaning, although to the outsider they must appear ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... vanity! And yet it is the light feather that wings many a poisoned dart; it is the harlequin leader of a vile crew of evils. Generally, vanity is looked upon as merely a harmless weakness, whose only penalty is ridicule; but examine its true character, and you will find it to be one of the most dangerous, and at the same time one of the most contemptible failings of humanity. There is not a vice with which it has not been, time and again, connected; ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... his shoulders. "What's it matter? Probably to that cottage of mine to play hermit and scourge myself for having allowed you to mortify me and hold me up to the ridicule of ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... especial favorite of my father. Its minor strains and its expressions of womanly doubts and fears were antipathetic to his sanguine, buoyant, self-confident nature. He was inclined to ridicule the conclusions of its last verse and to say that the man was a molly-coddle—or whatever the word of contempt was in those days. As an antidote he usually called for "O'er the hills in legions, boys," which exactly expressed his love ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... parts of the country where the traditions of the "best parlor" are still kept? Does the early life in New York appear to you attractive or uninteresting? Does the description seem like ridicule? The descendants of the old Dutch families resented Irving's way of making fun of their ancestors. Point out passages which might justify this complaint. Compare this sketch with "A Pine Tree Shilling" in the style of writing, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... we can imagine the whole assemblage falling into one as soon as she takes her seat, and thus enjoying, each in turn, the coveted delight.—But we mistake; other information respecting French society is communicated, unwittingly however, by her Ladyship. It is this: that they are as fond of ridicule in 1830, as they were in 1816, and as they have ever been. We have little difficulty in believing, that her Ladyship received a vast deal of attention in Paris; still, we must confess, that it appears to us impossible not to ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Zeokinizul's Amours, which had so greatly disgusted the Kofirans, because they had been disappointed in the Effect they wish'd and expected from them, were indifferent Matters to them, now he manifested a Genius for Glory; instead of Ridicule and Invective about his Irregularities, War was all the Subject of Discourse, and every one according to the Fertility of his Invention, laid magnificent Schemes to raise their King to an unparallell'd Glory. This general Complacency and Zeal were duly reported ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... Baptist, but he wrote two books in support of paedobaptism, and his congregation had separated from a larger one of Baptists on that point of controversy. Later he belonged to the sect of Fifth Monarchy men. He was the object of the abuse and ridicule of the opposite party, and his meetings were frequently disturbed by riots. On the 20th of December 1641 his house was stormed by a mob and he narrowly escaped with his life. Barbon, who was a man of substantial property, was summoned by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... scorched into barrenness.(127) The world is to him a scene unguided by a Providence: death is uncheered by the hope of a future life. An example of the flippant sceptic is found in Lucian in the second century, A.D. The great knowledge of life which travel had afforded him created a universal ridicule for religion; but his unbelief evinced no seriousness, no sadness. His humour itself is a type of the man. Lacking the bitter earnestness which gave sting to the wit of Aristophanes, and the courteous playfulness exhibited ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... well aware that he was acting wrongly; and one day, moved by the angry look of the captain, he went back and put the tempting fruit in the dish, from which he had taken it. He had as great an objection to being made the subject of ridicule as have most human beings; and if any one laughed at his ludicrous actions at dinner, he would utter a hollow barking noise, looking up at them with a most serious expression till they had ceased, when he would quietly resume his dinner. He and I got on very well; but he was most attached ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... encounter, Douglas came in for his share of public ridicule. Considering himself insulted by a squib in the Sangamo Journal, Douglas undertook to cane the editor. But as Francis was large and rotund, and Douglas was not, the affair terminated unsatisfactorily for the latter. Lincoln described the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... alligator eat you up. But it is different in society, where you cannot mistake the character of those you converse with, or suffer your fancy to exaggerate their qualities, good or bad, without exposing yourself not only to ridicule, but to great and serious inconveniences. Keep guard, therefore, on your imagination, my dear Darsie; and let your old friend assure you, it is the point of your character most pregnant with peril to its good and generous ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... He had feared the man's ridicule. He had expected to see his lean shoulders go up in silent contempt. And then, he knew, would have followed a storm of sarcasm and "jollying" from Sandy and the others. With quick wit he seized his opportunity, bent on using Bill's influence to its utmost. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... she enters the large army of those poor beings who have missed the purpose of life, and, in view of the lack of safe material foundation, generally fall a prey to want and misery, and but too often to ridicule also. But few know what the discrepancy in numbers between the two sexes is due to; many are ready with the hasty answer: "There are too many girls born." Those who make the claim are wrongly informed, as will be shown. Others, again, who admit the unnaturalness of celibacy, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... I was reading a book, a story, last winter, and one of the characters, an old maid, was held up to ridicule in it for many little peculiarities that—that I recognized as my own. They had grown upon me without my knowing that they made me ridiculous, and now I—I have tried, but ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... one shilling to six, gratis, 'to such as are in extreme need, and have not wherewithal to endeavour their subsistence, whereas week by week they may drive on some trade.' By-and-by, however, Sir Balthazar was probably more disposed to borrow than to lend. His Academy met with little support—with ridicule rather than encouragement; was indeed a total failure; and he left England for America. For some years nothing was heard ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... implies ridicule, sharp, corroding ridicule. The comedy of the Greeks ridiculed everything,—persons, characters, opinions, customs, and sometimes philosophy and religion. Comedy became, therefore, a sort of consecrated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... figured, it may be), win with ease The youth's consent to any scheme you please; Danger, discomfort, ridicule—all three This gallant wooer scorns, and smilingly Consents to crowd his noble length of limb Within ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... town records, we plainly discover that each laic, deacon, elder, criminal, singer, and even the ungodly boy had his alloted place as absolutely assigned to him in the old meeting-house as was the pulpit to the parson. Much has been said in semi-ridicule of this old custom of "seating" and "dignifying," yet it did not in reality differ much from our modern way of selling the best pews to whoever will pay the most. Perhaps the old way was the better, since, in the early churches, age, education, dignity, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... people want teachers —that's my experience in the pulpit and the parish; a world in miniature, after all—but they won't listen to a teacher who hasn't got it. There are no great poets to-day, only great discoverers. The poets, the interpreters of discovery, are gone—starved out of life by ridicule, and by questions to which exact answers are impossible. With your imagination and belief you might help a world far larger than this parish of mine at any rate. I ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... cannot be my disciple. [14:28]For what man of you wishing to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the expense, whether he has the means to finish? [14:29]lest having laid its foundation, and not being able to finish, all who see ridicule him, [14:30]saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish. [14:31]Or what king going to engage in war with another king, does not first sit down and consult whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that comes against him with ...
— The New Testament • Various
... soberly set forth in their report, a most convincing document which, even now in 1919, after the lapse of fifty years, is far more intelligent than the greater part of current opinion upon this subject. None the less, it was greeted by a chorus of ridicule by the ignorant Press of that day, who, if the same men had come to the opposite conclusion in spite of the evidence, would have been ready to hail their verdict as the undoubted end ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on the chancel-steps, and so unexpected was the apparition that her weary nerves leapt with violence out of all proportion to the event, and she sprang to her feet with a startled cry that echoed weirdly through the empty place. Then with a rush of self-ridicule she recognized Piers Evesham. "Oh, it is you!" she said. "How stupid ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... sprung, the bell rung violently. The launch running alongside came into contact with the row of logs, and sheered off to make a dash over it. Cushing, who on these dangerous expeditions was like a schoolboy on a holiday, answered with ridicule all hails. "Go ashore for your lives," "Surrender yourselves, or I shall sink you," he cried, as the gunners on the ram trained a heavy gun on the little launch. Now she was headed straight for the ram, and had ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... produce this revolution of manners among the Romans. The vast inequality of ranks, the enormous fortunes of individuals, the ridicule, affixed by the imperial court to moral ideas, all contributed to hasten the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... social, if not of her moral position (so long as the first was not forfeited) as well as the strictest duenna alive. Though she might choose to defy the world's censure, she never dreamed of giving an opening to its ridicule; she was less capable of gaucherie than of a crime. In her bearing toward others she was just the same as ever; if any thing, rather more brilliant and fascinating, and, if crossed or interfered with, perhaps a shade more ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... from that hour. It was perhaps a pity. Had he but talked - talked freely - let himself gush out in words (the way youth loves to do and should), there might have been no tale to write upon the Weirs of Hermiston. But the shadow of a threat of ridicule sufficed; in the slight tartness of these words he read a prohibition; and it is likely that ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... myself to his wishes, I ought to say it, I have not had the merit of making a sacrifice; the emperor wished me to commit a meanness, but a meanness entirely useless; for at a time when success was in a manner deified, the ridicule would not have been complete, if I had succeeded in returning to Paris, by whatever means I had effected it. To satisfy our master, whose skill in degrading whatever remains of lofty mind is unquestionable, it was necessary that I should ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... eccentricity of cut, or some discord or untidiness. But these will be but transient flashes in a general flow of harmonious graciousness; dress will have scarcely any of that effect of disorderly conflict, of self-assertion qualified by the fear of ridicule, that it has in the crudely ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Alighieri, the Portinari, the Bardi. "If the statement was false," argues Dr. Edward Moore, England's foremost Dantian scholar, "it must have been so glaring and palpable that its assertion could only have covered Boccaccio with ridicule." The second authority for the statement that Beatrice Portinari had a real existence and was the object of Dante's love is furnished by Dante's own son Pietro, who wrote a commentary on the Divine Comedy nineteen years after his father's demise—a commentary ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... turned Christian, and, to obliterate the memory of his youthful ill practices, divided his inheritance among the people. Ultimately he burned himself to death in public at the Olympic games, A.D. 165. Lucan has held up this immolation to ridicule in his Death of Peregrinus; and C. M. Wieland has an historic romance in German entitled Peregrinus ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... whoop, which would have brought down the fishing canoes outside, and given warning to every Indian within sound of his voice; but, when he saw them stop and begin to fish, he hesitated. If he gave the alarm, he might prove to be mistaken, and he shrank from facing the ridicule which a false alarm would bring upon him. Should they really prove, as he believed, to be spies, he would, if he gave the alarm, lose the honour and glory of their capture, and their scalps would fall to other hands—a risk not to ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... profane her? It is not that men have not the power of restraint, the power to do right; it is that they lack the motive. They have lost the sense of right; they are even impelled to do wrong by the pressure of opinion around them. Boys and young men are driven into libertinage by the ridicule of their companions. Vice is considered manly. They seek sensuality in an evil emulation, as they learn to smoke, or gamble, or drink; and, later on, vanity has often more to do with excess than the force of lust. Young men seduce ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... power possessed by organisms is no explanation, but is a reproduction of the absurdity, l'opium endormit parcequ'il a une vertu soporifique. It is contended, however, that this objection does not apply, even if it be conceded that there is that force in Moliere's ridicule which is generally attributed to it.[231] Much, however, might be said in opposition to more than one of that brilliant dramatist's smart philosophical epigrams, just as to the theological ones of Voltaire, or to the biological one of that other ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... faith; many beings and becomings, but all emanating from one Paternity, cohering through one Presence, and converging to one Perfection, in Him who is the Author and Former and Finisher of all things which exist. Let no man therefore ridicule a myth as puerile if it be an aid to belief in that commonweal of humanity for which the Founder of the purest religion was a witness and a martyr. We have sought out the man in the moon mainly because it was one out of many scattered stories which, as Max Mueller nobly says, "though they ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... in their report, a most convincing document which, even now in 1919, after the lapse of fifty years, is far more intelligent than the greater part of current opinion upon this subject. None the less, it was greeted by a chorus of ridicule by the ignorant Press of that day, who, if the same men had come to the opposite conclusion in spite of the evidence, would have been ready to hail their verdict as the undoubted end of ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Nor did Napoleon like her any better than she liked him,—not that he was envious, but because she stood in his way. He expected universal homage and devotion, neither of which would she give him. He was exceedingly irritated at the reports of her bitter sayings, blended with ridicule and sarcasm. He was not merely annoyed, he was afraid. "Her arrows," said he, "would hit a man if he were seated on a rainbow." And when he found he could not silence her, he banished her to within forty leagues of Paris. He was not naturally cruel, but he was not the man to allow ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... to it? The movers of all those questions about apostolical succession, church patristic authority, primitive usage, postures, vestments—questions so passionately debated, and on which he would not seek to cast ridicule—did not they all begin by taking for granted something no longer possible or receivable, build on this basis as if it were indubitably solid, and fail to see that their basis not being solid, all they built upon it ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... too clever to give the slightest indication of a change. He paid, if anything, more attention to his old friend than usual, and yet in no way held him up to that subtle ridicule which a lover in favour may so secretly practise before the mistress of his heart. If anything, he felt the injustice of the game as it stood, and was not cheap enough to add to it ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... VIII's reign "maydens did wear silken callis to keep in order their hayre made yellow with dye." For a like reason the Yellow Bedstraw has become known as "Petty mugget," from the French petit muguet, a little dandy, as applied in ridicule to effeminate young men, the Jemmy Jessamies, or "mashers" of the period. Old herbalists affirmed that the root of this same Bedstraw, if drunk in wine, stimulates amorous desires, and that the flowers, if long smelt at, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... humorous writers than the life of poor Harlequin, who possesses with these the power of making you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories you have curiosity and sympathy appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness; your scorn of untruth, pretension, imposture; your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... confounded together, that some of the bridegrooms went to bed to those who belonged to others; and when the mistake was discovered next morning, each took back his own wife, all being equal in regard to the point of honour. This gave occasion to some of the gentlemen to throw ridicule on the measures pursued by Albuquerque; but he persisted with firmness in his plans, and succeeded in establishing Goa as the metropolis or centre of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... I expected our audience to laugh at and ridicule the idea of its taking cold, and was surprised that not a single person cracked a smile, but, on the contrary, every one seemed to gaze at the instrument with a look ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... sense is justly regarded as a comparatively permanent element in society. Always and everywhere men seek honor and dread ridicule, defer to public opinion, cherish their goods and their children, and admire courage, generosity, and success. It is always safe to assume that people are ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... is at once open to attack. The most that we can do is to indicate one or two points in which the true Victorians had a certain resemblance to one another, and were unlike their successors of our own day. They were more evidently in earnest, less conscious of themselves, more indifferent to ridicule, more absorbed in their work. To many of them full work and the cares of office seemed a necessity of life. It was a typical Victorian who, after sixteen years of public service, writing a family letter, says, 'I feel that the interest of business ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... was a great relief to Sylvia Jackson. She still entertained a tender admiration for him, but, as he continued to resist her fascinations, she preferred that he should not be present to frustrate or ridicule her plans. Mrs. Quirk and Kathleen were easily duped, but she feared the penetration of Denis Quirk. Nevertheless she made pretence of a ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... whom he dubbed La Romantica, was the special victim of his wrath and ridicule. Where had she picked up so many tastes which he and his good China never had had? Music books were piled on the piano. In a corner of the absurd parlor were some wooden boxes that had held preserves, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... followed by the casting out of demons, which showed Him as the Lord of still wider and darker realms, and the Peace-bringer to spirits tortured and torn by a mysterious tyranny. His meek power sways all creatures; His 'word runneth very swiftly.' Winds and seas and demons hearken and obey. Cheap ridicule has been plentifully flung at this miracle, and some defenders of the Gospels have tried to explain it away, and have almost apologised for it, but, while it raises difficult problems in its details, the total effect of it is to present a sublime conception of Jesus and of His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... himself the master of savage tribes; he had conquered the supernatural, and overcome for ever those powers of darkness that had been thought to brood over the vast Atlantic. He had sailed away in obscurity, he had returned in fame; he had departed under a cloud of scepticism and ridicule, he had come again in power and glory. He had sailed from Palos as a seeker after hidden wealth, hidden knowledge; he returned as teacher, discoverer, benefactor. The whole of Spain rang with his ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... for some years to come, which would give him an opportunity of keeping in continued touch with his English and European patients. The English are a practical people, and less sensitive than we to, or more careless of, ridicule, and they are likely to grasp the importance of Dr. Brinkley's work on the instant of his ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... stood Latona with her two children, watching what was taking place in distant Thebes. "See, my children," she said, "I, your mother, who am so proud of your birth, who yield place to no goddess except Juno, I am held up to ridicule by an upstart mortal, and if you do not defend me, my children, I shall be driven away from the ancient and holy altars. Yes, you too are insulted by Niobe, and she would like to have you set aside ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... be so as a matter of professional duty. The priest, whose place it is to be chaste as it is that of the soldier to be brave, is, according to this view, almost the only person who can, without incurring ridicule, stand by principles over which morality and fashion are so often at variance. There can be no doubt that, upon this point, as on many others, adherence to my clerical principles has been injurious to me in the eyes of the ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... wholesale purchasers will countervail the double voyage. They hope that after a while they can have them imitated here. Will you be so good as to mention this to Mr. Izard? I fear that my zeal will make me expose myself to ridicule in this business, for I am no merchant, and still less knowing in the culture of rice. But this risk becomes a duty by the bare possibility of doing good. You mention in your letter, your instalment law as needing apology. I have never heard the payment by instalment complained ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... dis-je!... (A lui-meme.) Mais s'il n'y est pas ... mon expedition va me couvrir de ridicule ... sans compter que le credit de la comtesse est considerable et qu'elle peut me perdre.... Si je repartais?... oui, mais s'il est ici! si une heure apres mon depart la comtesse fait passer la frontiere a monsieur de Flavigneul, me voila perdu de reputation.... ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... blind and lame had been healed inside the temple walls; and Lazarus, the living testimony of the Lord's power over death and the grave was before them. To ask a further sign would have been to flagrantly expose themselves to the ridicule ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the humble people, over the entrance way of the kashim or assembly house. The other people thought he was foolish, and he was despised and ill-treated by everyone. After the shamans had tried very hard to bring back the sun and moon and had failed, the boy began to ridicule them. ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... motive than to please the prevailing taste, must beware of touching upon topics which are likely to rouse the hostile feelings of self-importance, and to disgust would-be statesmen and intuitive divines. Ridicule will never disprove those opinions which were held by the wisest and most illustrious persons that England ever produced. Should I be so unfortunate as to provoke hostility where I look for co-operation; erroneous or undeserved censure shall not induce ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the poet "was much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits," the unluckiness probably consisting in getting caught himself, and not in any lack of luck in catching the rabbits. The ridicule heaped upon the Lucy family in Henry IV and the Merry Wives of Windsor gives some weight to this tradition. Nicholas Rowe, who published the first life of Shakespeare,[148] is the authority for this story; but there ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the cold world; which was, however, warmed for them by the watchful interest taken in Cuthman by a vigilant Providence. One day, for example, the cord of the barrow broke in a hayfield, where Cuthman, who supplied its place by elder twigs, was the subject of much ridicule among the haymakers. Immediately a heavy storm broke over the field, destroying the crop; and not only then, but ever afterwards in the same field—possibly to this day—has haymaking been imperilled by a similar ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... account of my faithful services, he has given me a warrant to go straight to Paradise, without tarrying one moment in Purgatory." At these words the king and all the haggard train gave a ghastly grin, to escape from laughing outright; but the other full of wrath at their ridicule, commanded them aloud to show him the way. "Peace, thou lost fool!" cried Death, "Purgatory lies behind you, on the other side of the wall, for you ought to purify yourself during your life; and on the right hand, on the other side of that gulf is Paradise. But there is ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... Great of Prussia. She claimed that "The King of Prussia is certainly a bad prince who has no fear of God before his eyes; he turns holy things into ridicule, and he never goes to church." The real reason was that Frederick had expressed his opinion about Elizabeth's private life, and she was not the woman to forgive his remarks. Then again, Frederick had an excellent army of 200,000 men; Elizabeth's chancellor, on that account, ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... may be the consequence of a mission; wars may be the consequence of a mission: we go on with our work, irrespective of every human consideration which moves the world outside us. We are above reason; we are beyond ridicule; we see with nobody's eyes, we hear with nobody's ears, we feel with nobody's hearts, but our own. Glorious, glorious privilege! And how is it earned? Ah, my friends, you may spare yourselves the useless inquiry! We are the only people who can earn it—for we are the only ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... a mes principes. Ce livre conduit a l'atheisme que je deteste. J'ai toujours regarde l'atheisme comme le plus grand egarement de la raison, parce qu'il est aussi ridicule de dire que l'arrangement du monde ne prouve pas un artisan supreme qu'il serait impertinent de dire qu'une horloge ne prouve ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... long as the Roman manners preserved their pristine simplicity, but degraded[22] and vilified in proportion as the morals of that people became corrupted, the very sanctuary itself of Priapus failed to protect him from obloquy and ridicule. Christian writers added their indignant invectives to the biting sarcasms of the poets, and the worship of Priapus would have been annihilated had not superstition and the force of habit, that most indestructible of all human affections, come to the rescue. ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... had seen her, you could not comprehend how I could have made such a confounded mistake. This lovely being is—is—is—don't prepare to laugh. I shall be tempted to knock you down if you do, for really my feelings are so much interested that I could not bear even a friend's ridicule." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... past us for hours without bringing with it a single glance of recognition or kindness. Here round games and Casino still find refuge and support amidst a steady band of faithful partizans; here old maids escape ridicule from being numerous, and old bachelors acquire importance from being scarce. It is, indeed, to this latter description of persons that I would especially recommend a residence in a country town; and, as Dr. Johnson ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... received it as such; he transmitted it to Mr. Hastings; and it was not till this hour, till the counsel were instructed (God forgive them for obeying such instructions!) to treat these things with ridicule, that we have heard this Hoolas Roy called a common news-writer of anonymous information, and the like. If the information had come in any way the least authentic, instead of coming in a manner the most authentic in which it was possible to come ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... cut and carved with initial letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, having received a coat of varnish over the inscriptions, form really curious and interesting articles of furniture. I have seldom (though I do not, personally adopt this mode of illustrating my bumble name) felt inclined to ridicule the natural impulse of most people thus to record themselves at the shrines ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... noble a spirit certainly does not deserve the ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished upon it. Curiously, indeed, one of the most contemptuous of these criticisms has been recently made by one of the most strenuous defenders of orthodoxy. No less eminent a standard-bearer of the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... to do anything by talking of it. The Reverend Mr. Hector Maclean. Bayle. Leibnitz and Clarke. Survey of Col. Insular life. Arrive at Breacacha. Dr. Johnson's power of ridicule. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... may be a blank; but it is your duty not to let any one perceive it. Imitate the young Spartan, who smiled although the fox, hidden under his cloak, was gnawing his vitals. Let us avoid ridicule, my friend. In society there is nothing that provokes laughter more than a disappointed lover, who rolls his eyes about and looks woe-begone. And, then, you-see, suffering is a human law; the world is an arena, life is a conflict. Material obstacles, moral griefs, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... appoint a Come to be ready to communicate with ours1 when ready. This would at once discover an Union of Sentiments thus far & have its Influence on other Towns. It wd at least show that Boston is not wholly deserted, & might prevent "its falling a Sacrifice to the Rage or ridicule of our (common) Enemies." I shall be pleasd with your further Sentiments & ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... Free to do the thing you crave to do and that craves the doing. Free to live in that higher realm where none is fit to criticise save one's self. Free to scorn ridicule, to face contempt, to brave remorse. Free to give life to the one human soul that can demand and grant ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... the typical American school. It is so long since I have heard any rote learning in a schoolroom that I am wondering if it is not almost time for some one to show that a little rote learning would not be at all a bad thing in preadolescent education. We ridicule the memoriter methods of Chinese education and yet we sometimes forget that Chinese education has done something that no other system of education, however well planned, has even begun to do in ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... but, dwelling on an island, he oft times betrays an ignorance of the world, and of himself, so that we cannot help laughing at him, once in a while, for his conceitedness. His ignorance of America, and Americans, is a source of ridicule among us all. An English lady said to one of the officers, who had the care of American prisoners in England, "I hear, Sir, that the Americans are very ingenious in the manufactory of many little articles, and should like to have some of them."—The officer replied that she might ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... concept of freedom responsible for the failure of his very acute inquiry. All previous writers on the passions have either derided, or bewailed, or condemned them, instead of investigating their nature. Spinoza will neither denounce nor ridicule human actions and appetites, but endeavor to comprehend them on the basis of natural laws, and to consider them as though the question concerned lines, surfaces, and bodies. He aims not to look on hate, anger, and the rest as flaws, but as necessary, though troublesome, properties of human nature, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... directed their eyes toward the crestfallen Bill, who seemed so painfully embarrassed that Fanny regretted what she had said, and as soon as school was out for the morning she went to him and told him she was sorry for so thoughtlessly exposing him to ridicule; "but," added she, "Billy, I'll tell you what, you mustn't write me any more love letters, for 'tis not right to do such things at school; neither need you bring me any more candy or raisins. I don't object to your giving me a nice big apple occasionally, but candy and raisins you had better ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... in the efficacy of the charm, but there was an undercurrent of sentiment in favor of the supernatural. Against this I had fought. Perhaps it was merely for the joy of the argument that so often I had turned a fire of ridicule on the dearest traditions of the valley. Time and again, when some credulous one had lifted his voice in honest support of a silly superstition, I had jeered him into a grumbled, shamefaced disavowal. Once I sat in the graveyard at midnight, in the full of the moon, just ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... leave the train, nor have they anything in common with those who remained behind at previous stations, least of all can we consider them as the offspring of those that remained behind. This is only a simile, and should not provoke ridicule. Of course it will be said that those who can journey to Cologne may go on to Paris, and once in Paris may easily cross the Channel. We must not ride a comparison to death, but always adhere to the facts. Why does not grass grow as high as a poplar, why is care taken, as Goethe says, that ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Miss Ashton take it? Could she ever forgive him if it were possible for Langhorne to turn the tables and point with scorn at the man who had once been his rival for her hand? What might be the effect on her of any disillusionment, of any ridicule that Langhorne might artfully heap up? As we left Carton, I shared with Kennedy his eagerness to get at the truth, now, and win the ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... young Lincoln's wit, wisdom and power of ridicule made him known in that campaign as one of the greatest orators in the State, or that he was elected by such an astonishing plurality that the county, which had always been strongly Democratic, elected Whig representatives ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... play was written by Shakespeare to ridicule the two poets, Ben Jonson (in the person of Ajax) and John Marston (in the person of Thersites). Those two poets were engaged, with others, in the years 1601-2, in what is called the War of the Theatres, that is, they wrote plays to criticise and mock each other. These plays are often scurrilous ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... few as possible might see. The doings of the Fenton crowd, as they were known locally, were the talk of the town in those first days after Roger departed. Would they meet? Would they keep it up? Would they bear the ridicule of the other boys of their own age? And how in the ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... without risk to the government, and to the ultimate prosperity of the colony. Heathenism could not exist in such a state of affairs; it would die out. Minds exalted by education upon such a system would look with ridicule upon the vestiges of former idolatry, and the rocky idols would remain without a worshiper, while a new generation ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... choose between being too fat or too lean, the wise woman would certainly take the smaller allowance of flesh. Jack Sprat might incite pleasant ridicule, but Jack Sprat's wife—lo! there would be naught but pity and tears for her! It is better by far to be the butt of jokes concerning "walking shoestrings" or "perambulating umbrella cases" than to waddle through life burdened to death with an excessive amount of flesh. The thin sister can pad ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... with this particular soul; for, though he certainly found salvation, he was such a weakling that he was ever leaning upon the arm of flesh; in consequence of which I endured much persecution. He haunted me much of the time, morning, noon, and night, so that I was subjected to unkind remarks and ridicule; but, remembering the words of our Master in Matt. 5:11, 12 and Paul's in Phil. 2:7, I endeavored to bear this for the sake of his soul. Much later, when I was in the work in San Francisco, he took up his abode there, and shortly afterward ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... did you ever see a ghost? No; but you have heard—I understand—be dumb! And don't regret the time you may have lost, For you have got that pleasure still to come: And do not think I mean to sneer at most Of these things, or by ridicule benumb That source of the sublime and the mysterious:— For certain reasons ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... in haste, fearing a rescue of the prisoners, and while waiting at the tolbooth till the magistrates came to receive them, one John Nisbet, the arch-bishop's rector, said to Mr. Cargil in ridicule, three times over, Will you give us one word more, (alluding to an expression he used sometime when preaching) to whom Mr. Cargil said with regret, "Mock not, lest your hands be made strong. The day is coming, when you will not have one ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... date Germany entered the lists and tackled the problems presented with that thoroughness so characteristic of the nation. It is just twenty-one years ago since Count Zeppelin, regardless of public ridicule, commenced building his rigid airships, and in that time such enormous strides were made that Germany, at the outbreak of the war, was ahead of any other country in ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... has gone forth she has acquitted herself creditably, and successfully lived down all attempts to ridicule and cast opprobrium upon her adventure. This forward march, which has been likened to a great tidal wave, has carried in its course higher education for woman, including her entrance to the medical, legal, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... the reader's sympathies. It was the old, old story of the gallant who woos and rides away, leaving the maiden to weep. The poetry was poor, and at another time its conventionality would have excited only my ridicule. But, reading it in conjunction with the quaint, naive notes scattered about its margins, I felt no inclination to jeer. These hackneyed stories that we laugh at are deep profundities to the many who find in them ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... were the first to ridicule and abandon the self denying principles in which the young knight was instructed and to which he was so carefully trained up, Louis XI of France was the chief. That sovereign was of a character so purely selfish—so guiltless ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... of Glover's face, returning somewhat the ridicule heaped on him, was intended to pique the interest of the sightseers it was effective. He was restored, provisionally, to favor; his suggestion that after dinner they take horses for the ride up Pilot Mountain to where the Gap could be seen by moonlight ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... facility which, under the circumstances, amazed me. Often he read over his effusions to me; and well worth the hearing they were. He had wit, imagination, feeling, and humour in abundance; and out of the very ridicule with which some persons regarded him, he made rare metrical sport, which we two together enjoyed by ourselves; or ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... regards their satirical tone, and their plainness of speech, I will only say, that, in my pastoral experience, I have found that the Arch-Enemy loves nothing better than to be treated as a religious, moral, and intellectual being, and that there is no apage Sathanas! so potent as ridicule. But it is a kind of weapon that must have a button of good-nature on ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... "Memoirs of Sir Frederic Beaumantle," which, some future day, were to console the world for his decease, and the prospect of which (for he saw them already in beautiful hot-pressed quarto) almost consoled himself for the necessity of dying? The intended love-letter!—this would have an air of ridicule, while the real declaration of Sir Frederic Beaumantle, which would not only adorn the Memoirs above mentioned, but would ultimately form a part of the "History of the County of Huntingdon." We hope ourselves, by the way, to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... were soon put to the test. He had been a bar favourite so long that his absence was soon noticed, and the men he had so often entertained and treated were loud in their complaints and jeers. The ridicule was hard enough to bear, but the sneers at his stingy ways ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... woman who marries a man much younger than herself there is the inevitable picture of later life to be faced. The ridicule of society will be felt if it is not heard. The advance of age is relentless and will make her an old woman when he is just in his prime. She may pray for death to come and set him free, or she may paint her face and wear a golden wig, accentuating the ruthless ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... Christian—a new creature; not reformed; you cannot reform a drunkard; I have tried that a hundred times; but I am regenerated, born again by the grace and power of God. I have reported sermons many a time, simply to ridicule them, but never had the least idea what true religion meant till I heard Mr. Moody's address on 'Love and Sympathy,' ten days ago, and I would not have believed there could be so much sweetness in a lifetime as has been condensed into those ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... Mind her!" burst out Kathleen, hotly, as she got up to go. "Well, I guess not!" Kathleen backed to the door and opened it. Then making a frightful face at Lenore, most expressive of ridicule and revenge, she ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... enough, mademoiselle. Ah! How you do ridicule an unfortunate lover, in spite of his income of forty thousand francs! The longer I stay here, the more I regret it. What a lucky fellow M. ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... pupils were secured, and but one of these received any benefit from the tutor; and this benefit came, according to the scholar, from the master's supplying an excellent object for ridicule. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and which since then has made such warm friends and such bitter enemies for the Brandenburg government? For two centuries neither Germans nor foreigners ceased to set their hopes on this new State, and for an equally long time neither Germans nor foreigners ceased to call it—at first with ridicule, and then with spite—"an artificial structure which cannot endure heavy storms, which has intruded without justification among the powers of Europe." How did it come about that impartial judges finally, soon after the death of Frederick the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... romances." In the scientific romance he achieved, by means of parables (I employ the word roughly) a criticism of tendencies and institutions which is on the plane of epic poetry. For example, the criticism of specialization in "The First Men in the Moon," the mighty ridicule of the institution of sovereignty in "When the Sleeper Wakes," and the exquisite blighting of human narrow-mindedness in "The Country of the Blind"—this last one of the radiant gems of contemporary literature, and printed in the Strand Magazine! In "Tono-Bungay" ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... and quibbles of the understanding with which persons of intelligence, imbued with affected culture, sometimes amuse themselves; and in defence of the truth Pepe Rey employed at times, and not always with moderation, the weapon of ridicule. This was almost a defect in the eyes of many people who esteemed him, for our hero thus appeared wanting in respect for a multitude of things commonly accepted and believed. It must be acknowledged, although it may lessen him in the opinion of many, that Rey did not share the mild toleration of ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... amiable temper ['Draw it mild, old fellow!' interrupted the young gentleman in question] have interested us so much in his favour that we cannot but view with regret a habit he has of late fallen into, of turning everything into ridicule ['What a pity!' from the same individual], together with a lamentable addiction to the use of slang terms. Let me hope his association with such a polished young gentleman as Mr. Fairlegh may improve ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... few reviews that reached him contained nothing but ridicule. So he had no place even ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... In the meantime, as Shadwell relates, the rakes "live as much by their wits as ever; and to avoid the clinking dun of a boxkeeper, at the end of one act they sneak to the opposite side 'till the end of another; then call the boxkeeper saucy rascal, ridicule the poet, laugh at the actors, march to the opera, and spunge away the rest of the evening." And he goes on to say that "the women of the town take their places in the pit with their wonted assurance. The middle gallery is fill'd with the middle part of the city, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... compliments are not meant to deceive, they only profess to be forms. Why do the English talk of the beautiful sentiment of the Bible and pretend to feel it so much, and when they come and see the same life before them they ridicule it. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... amorous of corruption; not Poe was more spellbound by the scent of graveyard earth. So Beddoes has written a new Dance of Death, in poetry; has become the chronicler of the praise and ridicule of Death. 'Tired of being merely human,' he has peopled a play with confessed phantoms. It is natural that these eloquent speakers should pass us by with their words, that they should fail to move us by their sorrows or their hates: ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Chandler received a letter from Dr. Finley, President of the College in that province, relating the same experiment. It was read at the Royal Society, Nov. 21, of that year, but not printed in the Transactions; perhaps because it was thought too strange to be true, and some ridicule might be apprehended if any member should attempt to repeat it in order to ascertain or refute it. The following is a copy of ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... I was partial to him; indeed, his pomposity, as I considered it, was to me a source of ridicule and dislike. He took more notice of me than he did of anybody else; but he appeared to consider that his condescending patronage was all that was necessary; whereas, had he occasionally given me a half-crown I should have cherished better feelings towards him: not that I wanted money, for ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... Montpellier Smollett indulged in two more seemingly irresistible tirades against French folly: one against their persistent hero-worship of such a stuffed doll as Louis le Grand, and the second in ridicule of the immemorial French panacea, a bouillon. Now he gets to Nice he feels a return of the craving to take a hand's turn at depreciatory satire upon the nation of which a contemporary hand was just tracing ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... notwithstanding the triviality of the subjects which he has chosen in common with other painters of his school. But he has this peculiarity, that the remarkably ugly girls in his pictures are taken from his own family, which, according to tradition, was a group of little monstrosities, whom he held up to the ridicule of the world. Thus nearly all the Dutch painters chose to paint the least handsome of the women whom they saw, as if they had agreed to throw discredit on the feminine type of their country. Rembrandt's "Susanna," to cite ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... defended himself in his preface from this imputation. It was particularly laid to his charge, that in the characters of Bartoline, an old corrupt lawyer, and his wife Lucinda, a wanton country girl, he intended to ridicule a certain Serjeant M—— and his young wife. It was even said that the comedian mimicked the odd speech of the aforesaid Serjeant, who, having lost all his teeth, uttered his words in a very peculiar manner. On this, Crown tells us in his defence, that the comedian must not be blamed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... sure just how the two continents lay to each other, Cook now scuds across Bering Strait thirty-nine miles to the Chukchee land of Siberia in Asia. How he praises the accuracy of poor {194} Bering's work along this coast: Bering, whose name had been a target for ridicule and contempt from the time of his death; whose death was declared a blunder; whose voyage was considered a failure; whose charts had been rejected and distorted by the learned men ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... of delicacy, the bloom of virtue, is not peculiar to the females, it is characteristic of all the varieties of the metropolitan mind. The artifices of the medical quacks are things of universal ridicule; but the sin, though in a less gross form, pervades the whole of that sinister system by which much of the superiority of this vast metropolis is supported. The state of the periodical press, that great organ of political instruction—the unruly tongue of liberty, strikingly ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... upon which occasions, I observed the gentleman who furnished our entertainment was commonly the best pleased of the company; who, though they were pretty civil to him to his face, seldom failed to take the first opportunity of his absence to ridicule him. Now I made some remarks which probably are too obvious to be worth relating. "Sir," says Adams, "your remarks if you please." First then, says he, I concluded that the general observation, that wits are most inclined to vanity, is not true. Men are equally vain ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... systematic manner the entire catalogue of vices, public and private, which were assailing the welfare of the state. They constitute luridly powerful pictures of a debased and shamelessly corrupt condition of society. Keen contemptuous ridicule, a sardonic irony that held nothing in reverence, a caustic sarcasm that burned like an acid, and a vituperative invective that ransacked the language for phrases of opprobrium—these were the agents enlisted by Juvenal into the service of ...
— English Satires • Various
... clothes, also the cutlasses I have already mentioned; and it was then that the armourer and carpenters called out to me to remember that they had no hand in the transaction. After having undergone a great deal of ridicule, and been kept for some time to make sport for these unfeeling wretches, we were at length cast ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... Dodge and Bayliss were not mentioned by name, but described only as a pair of amateur jokers whose plans had miscarried. Yet the plain, unvarnished story cast complete ridicule over Bert and ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... sufficient to condemn me. Oh, if you knew with what vermin I have been publicly calumniated and accused! After doing their utmost to make me odious to the world, and fearing they might perhaps still fail, they resorted to another expedient to compass my ruin, and endeavored to kill me with their ridicule. Soffri e taci, this Italian proverb was then the motto of my life. And believe me, it is hard to obey this seemingly so dry maxim; it has a ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... word—you'd better be content as you are; for, believe me, you will find that, in the opinion of the world, there is not a fairer subject for contempt and ridicule than a knave become the ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... and many, if not all of them, deserved ridicule. But see how even this trivial superstition illuminates our knowledge of the human mind! A mere residuum of a forgotten impression, a lost memory which Brown would have sworn, in a court of justice, had never been in his mind at all, can work his muscles, while he supposes that they are ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... such people, in that his civilized inhibitions restrain him from pushing them off the cliffs or entombing them in a crevasse. I was too small to do them physical violence anyway, so I had to resort to more subtle weapons, the most effective being ridicule. If a joke could be turned on the disturber he generally subsided. The rest of the crowd were profuse in their expressions of gratitude to me ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... to return and apologise. But no; it was too late. I could have fallen upon my knees, and begged forgiveness. It was too late. I should only subject myself to further ridicule from ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... rifles, were in attendance. Bacheet, who had so ingloriously failed in his first essay at Wat el Negur, had been so laughed at by the girls of the village for his want of pluck that he had declared himself ready to face the devil rather than the ridicule of the fair sex; and, to do him justice, he subsequently became a first-rate lad in ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... as it was a marvel for them to see a Spaniard who didn't know how to read and write. Every one ridiculed him and the payment of the tax was the occasion of broad smiles. He knew that he was an object of ridicule and this tended to sour his disposition even more, rough and bad as it had formerly been. They would purposely hand him the papers upside down to see his efforts to read them, and wherever he found a blank space ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... business. Now and again there rose above the din the shrill voice of some radical who declared that the stock collapses had been brought about deliberately; but such statements seemed so preposterous that they were received with ridicule whenever they were heeded at all. To Montague the idea that there were men in the country sufficiently powerful to wreck its business, and sufficiently unscrupulous to use their power—the idea seemed to him sensational ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... Australian city, especially in Adelaide, where they are so numerous as to excite the ridicule of the less devout Victorians. I forget how many there are; but, at any rate, they bear a very small proportion to the public-houses, against which I think they may fairly be pitted. Still, there are plenty ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... Cody as an aviator and aeroplane constructor that we wish to speak. For some reason or other he was generally the object of ridicule, both in the Press and among the public. Why this should have been so is not quite clear; possibly his quaint attire had something to do with it, and unfriendly critics frequently raised a laugh at his ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... by this most aggravating species of ridicule, took the carpenter's measure for a kick—but judiciously refrained from ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... with me lost his voice and had to return home for treatment. When I was a student at Yale the professor in elocution was an eccentric old gentleman named North. The boys paid little attention to him and were disposed to ridicule his peculiarities. He saw that I was specially anxious to learn and said: "The principal thing about oratory is to use your diaphragm instead of your throat." His lesson on that subject has been of infinite benefit ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... mirth was increased, it being evident that the woman was his wife. The man seemed too simple and obtuse to comprehend the ridicule of his situation, or to be rendered very miserable by it. Nevertheless, he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... I think ridicule is the only answer such a work is entitled to.' The ablest, answer which you can make (which would be the ablest answer that could be made) would never have any authority with the cabal, yet would allow a sort of dignity to the author. His patrons will always maintain ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... which, they become so weather-worn from exposure to the most rigorous climate in the world, that their natural hues are rarely to be recognised. Their customary mode of saluting one another is to hold out the tongue, grin, nod, and scratch their ear; but this method entails so much ridicule in the low countries, that they do not practise it to Nepalese or strangers; most of them when meeting me, on the contrary, raised their hands to their eyes, threw themselves on the ground, and kotowed most decorously, bumping their foreheads three times on the ground; even ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... they offer all the rites of hospitality, but do not open their hearts. If you ask them they will tell you a story, but it will not be such a story as they tell when alone. They will fear your ridicule and suppress their humor and pathos: so thoroughly have they learned to distrust pale faces, that when they know that he who is present is a friend, they will still shrink from admitting him within the ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... rushing after Cooper he attempted the peace-maker. He knew the attempt would mean no more than some hustling in the doorway, and some ineffectual protestation, and he returned a few minutes after to join in the ridicule heaped upon the unfortunate Cooper, and to vow inwardly that this was his ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... of the woods! thou motley fool! Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe? Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. Wit—sophist—songster—Yorick of thy tribe, Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school, To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, Arch scoffer, and mad Abbot of Misrule! For such thou art by day—but all night long Thou pour'st a soft, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... the celebrated trance-lecturer, and was embellished by a portrait representing the lady with a surprised expression and innumerable ringlets. Ransom said to himself, after reading a few pages, that much ridicule had been cast upon Southern literature; but if that was a fair specimen of Northern!—and he threw it back upon the table with a gesture almost as contemptuous as if he had not known perfectly, after so long a residence in the North, that it was ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... and beautifully wrought fabric to prove that it has not the wearing qualities of a blacksmith's apron, Hazlitt seized upon the ethereal story of Christabel, with its wealth of mediaeval and romantic imagery, and held up to ridicule the incidents that did not conform to modern English conceptions of life. It requires no great art to produce such a critique; the same method was applied to Christabel with hardly less success by the anonymous hack of the Anti-Jacobin. Whatever may have been Hazlitt's motives, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... to come to England, and you remain fixed in your present way, and can give me encouragement, I hope rather to follow your example, than to ridicule you for it. This will [for I had given him a copy of it] I will make the companion of my solitary hours. You have told me a part of its melancholy contents; and that, and her posthumous letter, shall ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... latter; but I do not venture to bring them to the light of publicity, for fear of sharing the fate of our master, Copernicus, who, although he has earned immortal fame with some, yet with very many (so great is the number of fools) has become an object of ridicule and scorn. I should certainly venture to publish my speculations if there were more people like you. But this not being the case, I ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... to drop in on Hutchins at his own home. Now, Louis, enough of the honest old man for one night. I have a lovely thing by Eumenes that I want to show you. To-day is—Tuesday. Come to dinner on Sunday and pour the vials of your ridicule on ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... cheat, he was much displeased; and as Romulus was casting up a ditch, where he designed the foundation of the city wall, he turned some pieces of the work to ridicule, and obstructed others: at last, as he was in contempt leaping over it, some say Romulus himself struck him, others Celer, one of his companions; he fell, however, and in the scuffle Faustulus also was slain, and Plistinus, who, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... intimacy between the two men which grows from closeness of position rather than from any social desire on either side, and it was natural that Burgess should say a word of farewell. On the previous evening Miss Stanbury had relieved her mind by turning Mr. Gibson into ridicule in her description to Brooke of the manner in which the clergyman had carried on his love affair; and she had at the same time declared that Mr. Gibson had been most violently impertinent to herself. He knew, therefore, that Miss Stanbury and Mr. Gibson had ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... same state as when it was first buried. There is also a story that the coffin of Mohammed rests somewhere between heaven and earth, suspended in the air. But this fable was invented by enemies to bring ridicule on the ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... But when the inevitable crises arrive, the sufferer believes that, after all, he made a mistake in taking up the natural regimen, especially so when friends and relatives do their best to destroy his confidence in the natural methods of cure by ridicule and dire prophesies ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... little stranger in our midst—the foreigner—is viewed with heartless curiosity, or contempt, and subjected to ridicule. Patriotism to many a child means nothing more than a belief that our own country is the best, our own people the smartest, and that we can whip any and every other ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... years to have been thrown into the stream of life, and he had been kept instead in artificial seclusion. And now the magic circle was broken, but he continued to remain within it, prisoned and pent up within himself. It was ridiculous at his age to put on a student's dress, but he was not afraid of ridicule; his Spartan education had at least the good effect of developing in him a contempt for the opinion of others, and he put on, without embarrassment, the academical uniform. He entered the section of physics ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the thing which has produced such a change in my life. You know the kind of character I have been in this community. You know how violent and sinful I have been and you know at this time how I am living. A religion which can produce such a change as this does not deserve ridicule." The man turned and slunk away. In the meantime, there had gathered around them a number of people, because they knew how serious a matter it was for anyone to oppose him, and they expected to see something violent take place that day. Being emboldened by the mild answer which he ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... was from the servants, from the upper window. The women poured down a quick succession of pails of water; and Charles returned, with good aim, such stones as had found their way in. The gentlemen were little aware, for some time, that the cries of vexation or ridicule, which were uttered now and then, were caused by the feats of their own coadjutors overhead: and it was in consequence of seeing Hester and Margaret laughing in the midst of their panic that the fact became known ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... for so the witling throng Oft called him when at school, And hitch'd him up in many a song To sport and ridicule. ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... faith so lightly overset were justly obnoxious to Arnold's ridicule; but Colenso's negations went deeper than the doorway and the pigeons; and the faithful of his diocese, being untrammelled by the State, politely dismissed him from his charge. In England steady-going Christians had been not less perturbed by that queer collection ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... deportment, are often essentially injured, by a want of patience and self-control in those who govern them. Such children, often possess a morbid sensibility, which they strive to conceal, or a desire of love and approbation, which preys like a famine on the soul. And yet, they become objects of ridicule and rebuke, to almost every member of the family, until their sensibilities are tortured into obtuseness or misanthropy. Such children, above all others, need tenderness and sympathy. A thousand instances of mistake or forgetfulness should be passed over, in silence, while opportunities for commendation ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... may ridicule our old-fashioned, honest, quiet Mohammedan country gentlemen, but for common sense I will back them against all the brilliant paradoxical young fellows ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... sharp as the bill of a loon, and her ears as large as those of a deer. Altogether she was a very odd and strangely formed woman, and wherever she went she never failed to excite much laughter and derision among those who thought that ugliness and deformity were fit subjects for ridicule. ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... dubious a moment, but immediately began to laugh. He is rather apt to fly off on such tangents. We have to sprinkle him with ridicule a little: that always brings him out of it ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... own church. We are so situated, or we think ourselves so situated, that not a single one of the earnest, hearty workers who would come back to us with a blessing for themselves and us, is able to go; instead, we have four representatives who will turn the whole thing into ridicule, and dish it up for the entertainment of their friends ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... eulogist? The horse is universally admired. The Arab poet sings of the beauties of his camel. The bull, the cow, the dog, and even the cat have all been praised in prose or verse; but the poor donkey still remains an ass, the butt of ridicule, the symbol of stupidity, the object of abuse. Yet if there be another and a better world for animals, and if in that sphere patience ranks as a cardinal virtue, the ass will have a better pasture-ground than many of its ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... could be more unpretending than the action of this Browning Society, or in the main more genuine than its motive, it did not begin life without encountering ridicule and mistrust. The formation of a Ruskin Society in the previous year had already established a precedent for allowing a still living worker to enjoy the fruits of his work, or, as some one termed ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... growth of the British Empire as a mere succession of wanton and brutal outrages on helpless and benighted peoples, that the immediate impulse of the vast majority of American readers will be to treat a comparison between the two with ridicule. Minnesota Massacres and the Indian Mutiny—Cetewayo and Sitting Bull—Aguinaldo and the Mahdi—Egypt and Cuba; the time will come when Americans will understand. It is a pity that prejudice should blind ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... her after history we gather little, and the time of her death is not mentioned. One affliction, not uncommon in this evil world, fell to her lot. Her husband's family were unfriendly and unkind to her, and she was the occasion of their reproach and ridicule. But she was happy in being the wife of one meek above all the men upon the earth, and she was vindicated by God himself. What were her hopes in prospect of seeing the promised land, in common with all the nation, or whether she lived to hear the terrible command of God to Moses, "Avenge Israel ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... hobble out was Ketch. In his own fashion, almost ignoring the presence of the bishop, he made known the tale. It was received with ridicule. The college boys especially cast mockery upon it, and began dancing a jig when the bishop's back was turned. "Let a couple of keys drop down, and, when picked up, you found them transmogrified into old rusty machines, made in the year one!" cried Bywater. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... murmured; "this evidence is conclusive. My presumptions were only chimeras; my deductions the playthings of chance! All I can now do is to withdraw, with the least possible damage and ridicule, from the ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... from his lips in a discussion with Aristodemus, (2) "the little," as he was called, on the topic of divinity. (3) Socrates had observed that Aristodemus neither sacrificed nor gave heed to divination, but on the contrary was disposed to ridicule those who did. ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... resolution passed declaring the entire matter settled with the mere reading. However in order to save their faces and to avoid the appearance of having refused the Confutation as well as "the scorn and ridicule on that account" (as the Emperor naively put it), and "lest any one say that His Imperial Majesty had not, in accordance with his manifesto, first dealt kindly with" the Lutherans, the estates resolved on August ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... sadly pale. She now held the two chickens in her lap, caressing them, laying their heads against her cheek, and enwreathing them in the folds of her great shawl. I could only close the bargain with the utmost speed, to be safe from ridicule. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... with a person's character than the chair he sits in; that a man can write like a god and live like the beasts in the fields. Can speak of Christian charity like the disciples of old, and hold the next person who offends him up to the ridicule of the whole parish! That he can write lines surpassing—aye!" she cried, "surpassing Polonius's advice to his son, and leave them uncopied on an ale-house table to go off with the first loose woman who comes by, and be carried home, ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... about the beginning of your career. He said that if only the spirit of your first days could come back—" Her tone grew quicker, as though she feared ridicule in Loder's silence. "He asked me to use my influence. I know that I have little—none, perhaps—but I couldn't tell him that, and ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... to inspire disgust in the sight of the native of the Orient, and if ever he adopts it, it is because it is supposed to cover him with protection against the injustice of his own rulers, and not from any preference or even choice. It is always an object of ridicule, and serves to point many a remark of derision and contempt against the wearer. On the other hand, what is more noble and dignified than the turban, with its snowy white folds, or its varied hues of green or red? Just as the external appearance of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Clark was haunted with the belief that the last day was approaching; and considering himself called upon to announce to his acquaintance and neighbours that this "terrible judgment of God was at hand," he got but contempt and ridicule for his pains:—more than that, indeed, for those raising the cry that he was a madman, they procured the poor man's expulsion from his situation. Under all these discouraging circumstances, he maintained ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... refreshments. In consequence of which, I, the next morning, gave every one leave to purchase what curiosities and other things they pleased. After this, it was astonishing to see with what eagerness every one caught at every thing he saw. It even went so far as to become the ridicule of the natives, who offered pieces of sticks and stones to exchange. One waggish boy took a piece of human excrement on the end of a stick, and held it out to ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... reply, but she admired the ease with which he now turned from her, and took one book after another from the table at his elbow, saying some words of ridicule about each. It gave her a still deeper sense of his intellectual command when he finally discriminated, and began to read out a poem with studied elocutionary effects. He read in a low tone, but at last some responsive noises came from the room overhead; he closed the book, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... luxurious living; and Payne, conscious of his dirt-smudged overalls, envied him the elegance with which he played the role. That Garman was interested in the crudities of business seemed an improbability; that he was connected with things dark and hidden, a thought to ridicule. His purpose in life just then was that of the luxurious idler, to escort two ladies of his class for a leisurely ride, to serve them gracefully as their chevalier. And yet, beneath the silken coat of manners the tiger force of him was evident. From where he stood Payne could ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... re-cross the awful interval between us and the invisible, for purposes apparently still less important—so trivial, indeed, that for the present I had rather not mention them, lest I should expose their memories to the ridicule of the unreflecting. I shall now proceed to my narrative, with the repeated assurance, that the reader will no where find in it a single syllable that is not most ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... city as London, to which the best of everything, physical and other, gravitates, I could not but pass, now and then, beautiful persons, who made me proud of those grandes Anglaises aux joues rouges, whom the Parisiennes ridicule- -and envy. But I could not help suspecting that their looks showed them to be either country-bred, or born of country parents; and this suspicion was strengthened by the fact that, when compared with their mothers, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
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