"Flout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afternoon Who strut and sun themselves and see around 'em A world made out of more that has a reason Than his, I swear, that he sees here to-day; Though he may scarcely give a Fool an exit But we mark how he sees in everything A law that, given we flout it once too often, Brings fire and iron down on our naked heads. To me it looks as if the power that made him, For fear of giving all things to one creature, Left out the first,—faith, innocence, illusion, ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... this quiet port and its brooding solitude with religious veneration. Then he recalled the miraculous stories with which his mother used to lull him to sleep—the great miracle wrought upon these waters by a servant of God to flout the hardened sinners. Saint Raymond of Penafort, a virtuous and austere monk, became indignant with King Jaime of Majorca who was basely enamored of a certain lady, Dona Berenguela, and who remained deaf to holy counsels. The friar determined to abandon this ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... than many of her friends, that in time she seemed to forget it and didn't rebel at Malcolm's advent, or Elizabeth's, but by that time I had been practically ostracized from the nursery; governesses were empowered to flout and insult me; I scarcely saw my children, and what I did see made me furious, so I vetoed more orphans bearing my name, and gave up doing anything. Then came the tragedy of Elizabeth. Surely you understand 'just how' it ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... one do her disdain, Her father is ready with might and with main To prove she is come of noble degree, Therefore let none flout at my pretty Bessee.' ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... Dare you to flout me?— Was he not my betrothed, that noble Irish knight? For his sword a blessing I sought; for me only he fought. When he was murdered no honor fell. In that heartfelt misery my vow was framed; ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... without coming home to any man. I knew two noblemen, of the west part of England, whereof the one was given to scoff, but kept ever royal cheer in his house; the other would ask of those that had been at the other's table, "Tell truly, was there never a flout or dry blow given?" To which the guest would answer, "Such and such a thing passed." The lord would say, "I thought he would mar a good dinner." Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... indignity, outrage, discourtesy &c. 895; practical joking; scurrility, scoffing, sibilance, hissing, sibilation; irrision[obs3]; derision; mockery; irony &c. (ridicule) 856; sarcasm. hiss, hoot, boo, gibe, flout, jeer, scoff, gleek|, taunt, sneer, quip, fling, wipe, slap in the face. V. hold in disrespect &c. (despise) 930; misprize, disregard, slight, trifle with, set at naught, pass by, push aside, overlook, turn ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... anomalous position, he would not for the world have brushed the dew off her belief that she could trust him. And, now that he had fixed his own gaze elsewhere, and she was in this bitter trouble, he felt on her account the rancour that a brother feels when Justice and Pity have conspired to flout his sister. The voice of Frith the chauffeur ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... them," he thought proudly. "Them" was the town-folk, and what he would show them was what a big man he was. For, like most scorners of the world's opinion, Gourlay was its slave, and showed his subjection to the popular estimate by his anxiety to flout it. He was not great enough for the carelessness ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... thou raise such woeful wail, And waste in briny tears thy days? 'Cause she that wont to flout and rail, At last gave proof of woman's ways; She did, in sooth, display the heart That might have wrought thee ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... forswear it, So they say, And the circle - they will square it Some fine day; Then the little pigs they're teaching For to fly; And the niggers they'll be bleaching By-and-by! Each newly joined aspirant To the clan Must repudiate the tyrant Known as Man; They mock at him and flout him, For they do not care about him, And they're "going to do without ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... thousand livres, as well as all criminal cases of the third order (estate). The representations of the provincial assembly of Dauphiny severely criticised the impropriety of this measure. "The ministers," they said, "have not been afraid to flout the third estate, whose life, honor, and property no longer appear to be objects worthy of the sovereign courts, for which are reserved only the causes of the rich and the crimes of the privileged." The number of members of the Parliament of Paris was reduced to sixty-nine. The registration ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... President that "his ear was always to the ground." But he kept it there because it was his sincere conviction that it belonged there, ready to apprize him of the vibrations of the popular will. Roosevelt was the born leader with an innate instinct of command. He did not scorn or flout the popular will; he had too confirmed a conviction of the sovereign right of the people to rule for that. But he did not wait pusillanimously for the popular mind to make itself up; he had too high a conception of the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... playing a march, Footman standing stiff as starch; Savans, lorettes, deputies, Arch- Bishops, and there together range Sous-lieutenants and cent-gardes (strange Way these soldier-chaps make change), Mixed with black-eyed Polish dames, With unpronounceable awful names; Laces tremble and ribbons flout, Coachmen wrangle and gendarmes shout— Bless us! what is the row about? Ah! here comes Rosy's new turnout! Smart! You bet your life 'twas that! Nifty! (short for magnificat). Mulberry panels,—heraldic ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... "What does a man who loves as I do, care for the conventions of the sham world you and I have left so far behind. I adore you. And you flout me." ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... time a grimy sweep Was creeping down the street, When Quartern Loaf, the biker's boy, Below he chanced to meet: "Sweep!" sneered the baker: and the sweep Gave Puff a sooty flout; But Puff-crumb did not deal in soot, So turned his face about; Nor did he care to soundly drub The imp of dirty flues: "Go change your clothes!" said he, "and then "I'll thrash you when you choose! "It will not do for me to fight ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the dreamy rush Of the rain: Touch not the marring doubt Words bring, to the certainty Of its soft refrain, But let the flying fringes flout Their gouts against the pane, And the gurgling throat of the water-spout ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... in the matter of the Regency Bill as if the dearest wish of his heart were to flout the King's wishes and to wound his feelings. The King wished, lest he should again be stricken with illness while the heir-apparent was still an infant, to be given the right to name a regent by will. Grenville and Grenville's colleagues, who were now as jealous of the authority ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... new critics, who never heard Thalberg, have the impertinence to flout him, to make merry at his fantasias. Just compare the Don Juan of Liszt and the Don Juan of Thalberg! See which is the more musical, the more pianistic. Liszt, after running through the gamut of operatic extravagance, began to paraphrase ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... to forget that you advised me to flout the law; to do just the things I have been doing, roving the world, shooting and plundering! There's a policeman at the other end of the platform; call him and turn ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... to be Judas Iscariot. In other parts of France the wild huntsman is known as Harlequin or Henequin, and in some parts of Brittany he is "Herod in pursuit of the Holy Innocents." (Alas, that no such Herod visits London! How welcome would he be, were he only to flout a few of the brawling brats who, allowed to go anywhere they please, make an inferno of every road ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... at each pause. "Nor play cards of a Sunday, nor ever play high. And my Aura must be deaf to rakish young beaux and their compliments. They never mean well by poor pretty maids. If you believe them, they will only mock, flout, and jeer you in the end. And if the young baronet should seek converse with you, promise me, oh, promise me, Aurelia, to grant him no favour, no, not so much as to hand him a flower, or stand chatting with him unknown to his mother. Promise me again, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whispered about that I owed money to the brewer, they presently left off all that kind of thing; and now, during the last three days, since the tale of my misfortune with the cocks has got wind, almost everybody has left off coming to the house, and the few who does, merely comes to insult and flout me. It was only last night that fellow, Hunter, called me an old fool in my own kitchen here. He wouldn't have called me a fool a fortnight ago; 'twas I called him fool then, and last night he called me old fool; what do you think of that? the man that beat ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... "Look for the truth in everything, and follow it, and you will then be living justly before God. Let nothing flout your sense of a Supreme Being, and be certain that your understanding wavers whenever you chance to doubt that He leads to good. We grow to good as surely as the plant grows to the light. Do not lose the habit of praying to the unseen Divinity. Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless, ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... be kind to little Ellen Mingott, though her dusky red cheeks and tight curls gave her an air of gaiety that seemed unsuitable in a child who should still have been in black for her parents. It was one of the misguided Medora's many peculiarities to flout the unalterable rules that regulated American mourning, and when she stepped from the steamer her family were scandalised to see that the crape veil she wore for her own brother was seven inches shorter than those of her sisters-in-law, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... least. His father's an honest man, a worshipful fishmonger, and so forth; and now does he creep and wriggle into acquaintance with all the brave gallants about the town, such as my guest is (O, my guest is a fine man!), and they flout him invincibly. He useth every day to a merchant's house where I serve water, one master Kitely's, in the Old Jewry; and here's the jest, he is in love with my master's sister, Mrs. Bridget, and calls her mistress; and there he will sit you ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... the judicious, he had made a happy escape, for the cruelty involved in the lady's methods and the careless flout of the opinion of the sober, decorous world were not indicia of worthy traits; but he was of sensitive fibre, and tingled and winced with the consciousness of the cheap gibe and the finger of scorn. He often said to himself ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a mild kind of lunacy, an everlasting opium dream without the opium; but I am grateful to him for living such a life, since it has bequeathed us some exquisite poetry,' said Lesbia, who had been too carefully cultured to fleer or flout ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Avignon. The district of Venaissin, still belonging at that time to the pope and being governed by a vice-legate, was considered as foreign territory. There he found his daughter, Madame d'Urban, who did all she could to induce him to stay with her; but to do so would have been to flout Louis XIV's orders too publicly, and the marquis was afraid to remain so much in evidence lest evil should befall him; he accordingly retired to the little village of l'Isle, built in a charming spot near the fountain of Vaucluse; there he ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... circle a story which modern pedantry is inclined to flout. This is, that when an irate nobleman wanted the painter punished for an affront, the King hotly exclaimed:—"Understand, my lord, that I can make seven earls out of as many hinds, any day; but out of seven earls I could not ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... hosts combine to offer sacrifice; Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high; Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies;[64] The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory! The Foe, the Victim, and the fond Ally That fights for all, but ever fights in vain,[65] Are met—as if at home they could not die— To feed the crow on Talavera's plain, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... futile, petty cry, Of lips that lie and flout, I saw the slow sun dim and die And the slim dusk slip out . . . Life held no ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... were bid to credit from our poet, Whose true scope, if you would know it, In all his poems still hath been this measure, To mix profit with your pleasure; And not as some, whose throats their envy failing, Cry hoarsely, All he writes is railing: And when his plays come forth, think they can flout them, With saying, he was a year about them. To this there needs no lie, but this his creature, Which was two months since no feature; And though he dares give them five lives to mend it, 'Tis known, five weeks fully penn'd it, From his own hand, without a co-adjutor, Novice, journey-man, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... yours, dear, utterly; and nothing you give me would have that sense: I know you too well to think it. But in the face of the present fashion (and to flout it), which expects the lover to give in this sort, and the beloved to show herself a dazzling captive, let me cherish my ritual of opposition which would have no meaning if we were in a world of our own, and no ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... Nay, not a bit of it! Like JOAN'S true DARBY I'm "always the same." Parties may flout, but I can't see the wit of it; Surely they ought to be fly to my game. Such "disquisitions" are strangely unfortunate, Pain us extremely, delighting our foes; Worry one too, like a busy, ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... manifestation of that power which ordains life and all its privileges and abolishes all the noisesomeness of death. Alive, he nourishes, comforts, consoles, corrects us. Dead, all that is mortal he transforms into ethereal and vital gases. Obey him, and he blesses; flout him, and you perish. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... fair Melrose aright Go visit it by the pale moonlight, For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild, but to flout, the ruins, Gray." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... that shut me out Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win, We drew a circle that ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... fight, but it was no go; though he was not killed, he had had enough for that evening. Oh, I wish you had seen my customers; those who did not belong to the clan, but who had taken part with them, and helped to jeer and flout me, now came and shook me by the hand, wishing me joy, and saying as, how 'I was a brave fellow, and had served the bully right!' As for the clan, they all said Hunter was bound to do me justice; so they made him pay me what he owed for himself, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... such-like illuminating and uplifting problems, warranted to make any school-child wiser than Solomon. It is a beautiful system; only, God, who is no respecter of systems, every now and then delights to flout it by making him a dunce like Peter Champneys, to be the torment of school-teachers—and the delight of the angels of the ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... knows what dirty clo'es May kiver up a poet; What fires may burn an' flout an' skurn, An' no wan iver ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... kind of authority, but particularly against bishops. He's always got his knife into them, and I dare say he's glad of the chance of flouting them. High Church parsons are, aren't they? I expect if you were a bit higher you'd flout them too. And if you were a bit lower, the C.G.'d take you as a padre. You're just the wrong height, old thing, ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... scorn her and scout her, But true to her colours are WE, The learned may mock her and flout her, But surely we'll rally about her, In the College ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... wish to flout their huge neighbor to the northward, the Hispanic nations at large hastened to acknowledge the independence of the new republic, despite the indignation that prevailed in press and public over what was regarded as an act of despoilment. In view of the resentful attitude ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... of the Musicians were either Black Negroes or Cophtic Christians, and they used me with Decent Civility; nor did the Master of the Musicians—otherwise a most cruel Moor—go out of his way to flout, much less smite me with his Rattan. If he had dared but to lay one Stripe upon me, I would have sprang upon the Wretch and dashed out his Brains with my Cymbals, even if I had been put upon the Pale for ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... performance sufficiently binding, and binding no doubt it was from a moral point of view, so long as there was reasonably good behaviour on either side, or so long as neither Silius nor Marcia's father was prepared wantonly to flout general opinion or to offend a whole connection by simply changing his mind. On the other hand, there was no legal compulsion whatever to carry out the contract. The Roman world knew nothing of actions for breach ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... he make a sound or lift a finger against her life, never more would he contradict her or flout her; never more would he come peeping through that papered panel between his room and hers, never more could hateful and humiliating demands be made upon her as his right; no more strange distresses of the body ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... He took up the argument again, more pugnaciously than ever. It was the strangest attempt ever made to gibe and flout a wandering sheep back into the fold. Robert's resentment was roused at last. The squire's temper seemed to him totally inexplicable, his arguments contradictory, the conversation useless and irritating. He got up to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ignorance until it leads them to place the evening star within the arc of the crescent moon, when they are annoyed to be told that the moon does not grow from this shape to the full orb once a month. But ofttimes, though the artist may not flout the universe, he shows his carelessness of natural fact and needs the snubbing. It is in this range that the little critic walks triumphantly posing as a shrewd and a discerning one. He holds up inconsistencies with his ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... Another devotee was added to those who adored her; but she refused to be spoiled even by Levi's flattery, if such it could be called; for the young skipper was as sincere in his admiration of her as of the yacht he commanded. Bessie did not pout or flout when neither Levi nor her ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... to tremble and the tears to come into his eyes, until he had to lay the book aside. Likewise he was fond of music, and could accompany himself on the piano as he sang the love songs of his friend A— or gipsy songs or themes from operas; but he had no love for serious music, and would frankly flout received opinion by declaring that, whereas Beethoven's sonatas wearied him and sent him to sleep, his ideal of beauty was "Do not wake me, youth" as Semenoff sang it, or "Not one" as the gipsy Taninsha rendered that ditty. His nature was essentially one of those which follow ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... there is a Charm about The quiet State of Golf, tho' fools may flout, That with its magic has unlock'd the Door Of Happiness ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... cried Cleopatra, half rising from her seat and flashing a fierce look on his white face. "By Serapis! so surely as I yet shall sit in the Capitol at Rome, if thou dost thus flout the Lord Antony, I'll have thee scourged to the bones, and the red wine poured upon thy open wounds to heal them! Ah! at length thou drinkest! Why, what is it, good Eudosius? art sick? Surely, then, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... and I felt as two crows might do who have wandered among the peacocks. Yet we bare in mind in whose image we were fashioned, and we carried ourselves, I trust, as independent English burghers. His Grace of Buckingham had his flout at us, and Rochester sneered, and the women simpered; but we stood four square, my friend and I, discussing, as I well remember, the most precious doctrines of election and reprobation, without giving much heed either to those who mocked us, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his reputation had preceded him, and made his task all the easier. Bannuchi and Waziri tribesmen had carried a faithful report of his doings to their more northern compatriots, and the word quickly went round that "Nikalseyn" was a dangerous man to flout. There were some, as it happened, who ventured to cross swords with him, but the result taught them that this stern-faced, black-bearded giant of a sahib was their master every whit as ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... "Not I," said she; "you would be finely put to shame, and so would I be, if you took a goose-girl for your wife! Go and ask one of the great ladies you will see to-night at the King's ball, and do not flout poor Tattercoats." ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... not go!" the Baron exclaimed. "What right have you to the child? None at all! Her Highness wishes to be generous. It pleases you to flout her generosity. Mr. Arnold Greatson, you are a fool! Don't you see that you are a pigmy, who has stolen through the back door into the world where great things are dealt with? You have no place there. You cannot keep the child away from us. You have no influence, no money. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nethermost to Mrs. Croix, the world shall never be the wiser. That I explicitly promise you. I dislike extremely the position in which I put the lady by these words, but you will admit that they mean nothing, that I am but striving to allay your fears—which I know to be genuine. She will probably flout me. I shall probably detest her conversation. But should the contrary happen, should she be what you suspect, and should a part of my nature which has never been completely accommodated, annihilate a resistance ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... here her birth doe disdaine, Her father is ready, with might and with maine, To proove shee is come of noble degree: Therfore never flout att ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... wings could not outstrip fear. The one went under, and the other, flying, turned his breast upward. Not otherwise the wild duck on a sudden dives when the falcon comes close, and he returns up vexed and baffled. Calcabrina, enraged at the flout, kept flying behind him, desirous that the sinner should escape, that he might have a scuffle; and when the barrator had disappeared he turned his talons upon his companion, and grappled with him above the ditch. But the other was indeed a sparrowhawk full grown to gripe him well, and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... Simplicity, for thou showest thy folly. I have a parsonage, but what? of St Nihil; and Nihil is nothing: Then, where is the church, or any bells for to ring? Thou understandest her not: she was set for to flout. I thought, coining in their names, I should go without. 'Tis easy to see that Lucre loves not Love and Conscience; But God, I trust, will one day ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... was better, To send it back, or burn the letter. But guessing that it might import, 355 Though nothing else, at least her sport, She open'd it, and read it out, With many a smile and leering flout: Resolv'd to answer it in kind, And thus perform'd what she ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... be worn on head! * Though a stranger among you fro' home I fled: Make use of wine in my company * And flout at Time who in languish sped. E'en so cloth camphor my hue attest, * O my lords, as I stand in my present stead. So gar me your gladness when dawneth day, * And to highmost seat in your homes be I led: And quaff your ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... brewers of the force of public opinion is a recent affair. In former years they were totally indifferent to it, if indeed they did not openly flout it. Even now their appeal to public sentiment is mainly a special plea for defensive purposes, and has little or no educational value. Brewers have opposed practically every effort to effect a change in excise laws, often without any ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... gives him clue to nothing older: Naked, life receives him—wondering beholder Of the world about him—and ere aught is certain, Time and mystery flout him; and death drops ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... children full of play designs That spring at once from schoolroom's form. Instead of all this angry storm, Another might have thanked you well For saving prey from that grim cell, That hollowed den 'neath journals great, Where editors who poets flout With their demoniac laughter shout. And I have scolded you! What fate For charming dwarfs who never meant To anger Hercules! And I Have frightened you!—My chair I sent Back to the wall, and then let fly A shower of words the envious use— "Get out," I said, with ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... the prisoner, with a scornful burst; "when my heart is full of rage, and bitterness, and despair! Give me time for this repentance which you say is so needful—time to lure back long since banished hope, and peace, and faith! Poh!—you but flout me with words without meaning. I am unfit, you say, for the presence of men, but quite fit for that of God, before whom you are about to arrogantly cast me! Be it so—my deeds are upon my head! It is at least not my fault that I am hurled ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... graves. As it did not appear till 1621, the men of his own time were not able to enjoy the shout of laughter over his discomfiture which would surely have gone up from Paris and Strasburg and Basel and Zurich. Estienne and Gessner would hardly have felt acute sorrow at a flout put upon Julius Caesar Scaliger. Crooked-tempered as he was, Cardan, compared with Scaliger, was as a rose to a thistle, but there were reasons altogether unconnected with the personalities of the disputants ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... triumphs of the Court, Before the honours of the Bench, Wild days there were of toil and sport, Long ere our brows had learned to blench At threatenings of the first grey hair. Ah! cordial comrade, champion stout, The fierce ordeal you had to bear Is ended; fortune's final flout Has fallen, and that gallant breast Is still at last in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... deeply in the eyes, caught him by the ear, and with a twist made him wince, pushed him on the shoulders and made his knees bend. Then he released him with a flout ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... she had no other recourse, and advised her to see her husband. She said that it was hopeless and she expressed a bitter opinion of the law. It seemed harsher than the Church, especially harsh to those who did not flout ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... mille, so the poem ran; And, lip to lip, our hearts began With ne'er a word translate the words complete:— Did Lesbia find them half so sweet? A hundred kisses, said he?—hundreds more, And then confound the telltale score! So may we live and love, till life be out, And let the greybeards wag and flout. Yon failing sun shall rise another morn, And the thin moon round out her horn; But we, when once we lose our waning light,— Ah, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... the Whigs whose name you flout, Slip of the tree you fain would fell; Your colleagues own, I cannot doubt, Your plan, George Russell, likes them well, "What will regain," you heard them cry, "That popular praise we once enjoyed?" And instant was your smart reply, "Free ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... Margret in 'the childher,' or bidding young Jack be on his best behaviour before the Sunday guest. The young folk didn't like the derision in Margret's pale eyes, and kept out of her way as much as possible, since they feared their mother too much to flout her openly, as they were ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... men! In laughter spasms ye reel, or shout applause, Music surceased. Like rocks your fathers sat; In every song they knew some mystery lay, Mystery of man or nature. Greater God Is none than Thor, whom, witless, thus ye flout. That giant knew his greatness, and, at morn, While vexed at failure through the gates he passed, Addressed him reverent: 'Lift thy head, great Thor! Disguised thou cam'st; not less we knew thee well: Brave battle ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... sentiment and sudden changes of emotion, found herself condemned to a dull, level life. Desborough would talk to her about poetry, but their tastes did not agree. He would even tease her with futile metaphysical talk until she scarcely knew whether to laugh or to flout him. ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... not often confidentially consulted the Warden when a cousin had blundered into the hands of the police, embarrassing that flustered official with torrents of half intelligible speech, the purport of which generally was to flout the proceedings with evidence of indubitable alibi? All this he translated to his countrymen as proof of personal influence with court authorities, and, what was more to the point, made them pay ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... friends an abiect, and a subiect of nine dayes' wonder in euery barber's shop, and a mouthfull of pitty (that he had no better fortune) to midwiues and talkatiue gossips; and all the content that this transitory life can giue him seemes but to flout him, in respect the restraint of liberty barres the true vse. To his familiars hee is like a plague, whom they dare scarce come nigh for feare of infection, he is a monument ruined by those which raysed him, he spends the day with a hei mihi! ve miserum! and the ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... thought, every man who chose to go contrary to the will of Tahn-te, found himself well nigh helpless in the Indian land, his infernal gods were so strong that the Castilians were none too eager to flout them, only Yahn Tsyn-deh seeing the crisis of things, crept to ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... table. They swill more than they should and would like to swill more than they do, they spoil the wine with unwelcome and untimely disquisitions, and they cannot carry their liquor. The ordinary people who are present naturally flout them, and are revolted by the ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... recovered from her surprise. Her worst suspicions were confirmed. Her wits were alert, sharpened by the hideous necessity of placating this amazing creature she dared not openly flout. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... achievement, not of the Ministry of Munitions but of the War Office. The Munitions Ministry in due course did splendid work. Chancellor of the Exchequer become lord-paramount of a great spending Department of State, its chief was on velvet. "Copper" turned footpad, he knew the ropes, he could flout the Treasury—and he did. But it is a pity that unwarrantable claims should have been put forward on behalf of the department in not irresponsible quarters at a time when they could not be denied, claims which have tended to bring the department as a ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... would irritably flout the possibility that she could do aught to materially avert disaster she was wont to protest: "You jes' watch me. I'll find out some way. I be ez ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... son, come easily, when he That speaks is wise, and speaks but for the right. Else come they never! Swift are thine, and bright As though with thought, yet have no thought at all Lo this new God, whom thou dost flout withal, I cannot speak the greatness wherewith He In Hellas shall be great! Two spirits there be, Young Prince, that in man's world are first of worth. Demeter one is named; she is the Earth— Call her which name thou will!—who feeds man's frame ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... of which the title is a sufficient clue to its purpose, permits a boy to refuse to go to school, and, as a young man, to flout his father's advice in regard to matrimony, only to bring him to the bottom rung of miserable drudgery and servitude under a scolding wife. Of some interest is the lad's report of a schoolboy's life, voicing, as it possibly ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... come with thy dart! come, death, when I bid thee! Mors, veni: veni, mors! and from this misery rid me; She whom I lov'd—whom I lov'd, even she—my sweet pretty Mary, Doth but flout and mock, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... cloys, Altho' the winds be redolent of praise.) Wakes not in man that stupor of amaze, Bird, beast, and plant, in universal choir, Pay to Almighty in a thousand ways, That sterner reason's votaries would flout, Giving their tardy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... Young sir, caper not too confidently in your coat of many colours! If you flout me once too often I may go after you, as a Mohawk follows a scalp too often flaunted by the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... it would, escape its distinctive name, and, since Greece and Judea, no name has the same worth and honor among men. We Americans may flout England a hundred times. We may oppose her opinions with reason, we may think her views unsound, her policy unwise; but from what country would the most American of Americans prefer to have derived the characteristic impulse of American development ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... ones which you must break. Remember that a new order of things is beginning for you. Hitherto I have praised your frivolity, because it was opportune and in keeping with the rest of your nature. I thought it feminine for you to play with Fortune, to flout caution, to destroy whole masses of your life and environment. Now, however, there is something that you must always bear in mind, and regard above everything else. You must gradually train yourself—in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... battle is won. If he can get the people to despise the priest in any capacity as a social man, a politician, &c., he knows that time rubs out fine-drawn distinctions; they will cease to respect at the altar the man they are accustomed to flout on the street; and if they once come to despise the priest, they will soon despise the sacraments he administers, and challenge the Gospel which he preaches. Let us forestall him, and bind the people to our hearts with hoops of steel. For their sakes more than for ours we cannot make our hold ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... 4. 'Frump,' to mock, flout, scoff. 'You must learn to mock; to frump your own father on occason.' Ironically used ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... room, with face flushed, brow dark and fretted with indignation, lips pouting, breast heaving, and her eyes overflowing with tears, in bounded his sister, Seraphine Duchatel, exclaiming: "And is this the creature that has stood between me and Claude? and brought here, too, to flout me to my face! I'll not endure it;" and she burst into a ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... was remarkable. No animal that man has broken to his use is keener to recognize a master and flout a coward than the horse. No coward has ever been able to do ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... unpartisan, and full of lenient charity; and I suspect that his kindly regard of the world, although returned with kindly liking, cost him something of that respect for sturdiness and force which men feel for writers who flout them as fools in the main. Like Scott, he belonged to the idealists, and not to the realists, whom our generation affects. Both writers stimulate the longing for something better. Their creed was short: "Love God and honor the King." It is a very good one for a literary ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... quoth he, "you do ill to mock me thus! Surely it suffices that you have done me so great wrong already, and that you hold me, your lawful Lord, here a prisoner and in chains! Ye know well, as I cannot doubt, that you are doing an evil and a wicked thing, so I pray you go your way, and cease to flout me." "Good my Lord Argon," said Boga, "be assured we are not mocking you, but are speaking in sober earnest, and we will swear it on our Law." Then all the Barons swore fealty to him as their Lord, and Argon too swore that he would never ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... bold advanc'd his head, And saw the monarch of the flood Lying half smothered in the mud. He calls the croaking race around: "A wooden king!" the banks resound. Fear once remov'd they swim about him, And gibe and jeer and mock and flout him; And messengers to Jove depute, Effectively to grant their suit. A hungry stork he sent them then, Who soon had swallow'd half the fen. Their woes scarce daring to reveal, To Mercury by night they steal, And beg him to entreat of ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... are such funny chaps!"— Take care! We know the dangers of Relapse. Beware! Beware! Flout me not, ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... the Vote— Are things on which the swains all dote. Fearing to flout or slight. She dances, having now her way, No bygone Easter holiday E'er saw so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various
... talking about funerals, saying to each other they would like to go, but how could they? Uncle John saying at last, with more of the growly, coughy way, that no, no, they "couldn't flout him." ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... openly and been repulsed," she replied in a low voice. "But if he could have carried me to some far fortress, how should I flout him there, that is, if I still lived? There, with no price to pay in gold or lands or power, he would have been my master, and I should have been his slave till such time as he wearied of me. That is the fate from which you have saved me, Prince, or rather ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... a hint of veiled insolence in Macoma's manner that at once set his majesty's easily kindled anger aflame; and it was not the first time that the chief of the priests had so offended, though never until now had the man dared to flout the supreme ruler of the Mangeroma nation in public, much less in the presence of all Mangeroma's nobility. The fellow threatened to get out of hand if he were not checked, and the present moment seemed to offer an excellent opportunity not only to check Macoma's ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... officers dispersed. "Now will I confess, Wilder, a secret pleasure in the belief that yonder audacious fool carries the boasted commission of the German who wears the Crown of Britain. Should he prove more than man may dare attempt, I will flout him; though prudence shall check any further attempts; and, should he prove an equal, would it not gladden your eyes to see St. George come ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... In spite of our brood of special magazines for the literati and the advanced, which Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer praises so warmly, we are not so well provided with the distributive machinery for a national culture as to flout a recognized agency with a gesture and a sneer. But the family magazine has undeniably lost its vigorous appeal, and must be reinvigorated. The malady is due to no slackening of literary virility in the country; indeed there has probably not been so much literary energy ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... To brave the rattling, hissing streams of lead, The bursting shrapnel and the million ways That war entices death; when dying, dead And living, mingle in the ghastly glare That taints the beauty of a night once fair, And seems to flout the Majesty divine." F. ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... her teardrops as they fall; I flout my daytime fears; I mumble thanks to God for all These gibes and happy jeers. But, when the warning dawn awakes, Begins my wandering; With stealthy strokes through tangled brakes, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... and ale, and antic ring Well tiptoed to the tabor string, And many a buss below the holly, And flout at sable melancholy— So, with a ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... people's decay and doom hast struck. On this anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, let us remember and vow never to forget that when it becomes general or popular among us, as it has become common, to flout at the Declaration and its principles; whenever the nation commits itself to courses which for the sake of consistency and respectability invite and compel its disparagement; when our politics does not match our poetry and cannot be sung; when Washington ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... for thee the white goat with the twin kids that Mermnon's daughter too, the brown-skinned Erithacis, prays me to give her; and give her them I will, since thou dost flout me. ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... other considerations gave way before it. Her heart thrilled with a sickly sentiment at all times. To her men were the gods of the universe, and, as such, must be propitiated, at least in theory. In practice it might be necessary to flout them, to tease them, even to snub them—on rare occasions. But this would only come after intimacy had been established. After that her attitude would be governed by circumstances, and even then her snubs, her floutings, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... of privacy," said Farrow simply. "Which neither side can afford to flout overtly. Furthermore, since neither side really knew where you were, they've been busily prowling one another's camps and locking up the prowlers from one another's camps, and playing spy and counterspy and counter-counterspy, and generally piling it up ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... who in ancient song Was wont to flout her swain, I prithee be not always coy, But turn your face again. My heart is true, and it will rue, That ever you should doubt me, So sweet, be kind, and change your mind, And ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... strength, and march unto him straight: Let him perceive how ill we brook his treason. And what offence it is to flout his friends. ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... Let him remember, lastly, that this high-born lady to whom he, an unknown and vagrant Gentile, dares to talk as equal to equal, has from childhood been my affianced, who will shortly be my wife, although it may please her to seem to flout me after the fashion of maidens, and that we Abati are jealous of the honour of our women. ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... and association with vivisection led these dignitaries and editors to flout and insult a man whose shoe strings they were not worthy to tie. Time is merciful and their very names ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... knight. Nay, stay not gazing thus: it is Garcia, Whose name hath reach'd thee long ere now, I trow; Whom thou hast met in deadly fight full oft, When France and Spain join'd in the battle field. Beyond the Pyrenean boundary That guards thy land, are forty thousand men: Their unfurl'd pennons flout fair France's sun, And wanton in the breezes of her sky: Impatient halt they there; their foaming steeds, Pawing the huge and rock-built barrier, That bars their further course—they wait for thee: For thee whom France hath injur'd and cast off; For thee, whose blood it pays with shameful chains, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... ruled the bank as well, Made known his disapproval of the maid; And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew They feared her and condemned. But them to flout She gave a dance to viols and to flutes, Brought from Peoria, and many youths, But lately made regenerate through the prayers Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls, Danced merrily, and sought her in the ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... leave) was extempore. He were as good have let me had the best part, for I'll be revenged on him to the uttermost, in this person of Will Summer, which I have put on to play the prologue, and mean not to put it off till the play be done. I'll sit as a chorus, and flout the actors and him at the end of every scene. I know they will not interrupt me, for fear of marring of all; but look to your cues, my masters, for I intend to play the knave in cue, and put you besides all your parts, if you take not the better heed. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Breasted the pulsing air with mocking song. "Alas," she said, "could ye not give one kiss— One tender clasp of hands! And must I miss Your throbbing hearts from my cold, barren breast, Ye soulless ones, that flout ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... with reluctant admiration. The child had all the thoroughbred points of a Ludlow. All the same she should be shown that, even in the twentieth century, young girls could not break away from discipline and flout authority without punishment. The smile became almost gleeful at the thought of the little surprise that ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... that illustrious host of cultured, lofty-souled, just, merciful, and beneficent men, who were thus the saviours, as well as the servants, of society, yet have we seen it possible for an Englishman of to-day to mouth against their memory the ineptitudes of their long-vanquished foes, and to flout the consecrated dead in their graves, as the Boeotian did the living Pericles in the market-place ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... the psalmist saith, And half my course is well-nigh run; I've had my flout at dusty death, I've had my whack of feast and fun. I've mocked at those who prate and preach; I've laughed with any man alive; But now with sobered heart I reach The ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... Tory landlords flout "Fix'd Duty," for 'tis plain, With them the Anti-Corn-Law Bill Must go ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... not only touching what others might do or what might happen to them, but raising also speculation as to what he might do, or what might happen to him at his own hands; for example, how far he would flout authority, defy the usual, and deny the accepted. The love of rebellion, of making foolish the wisdom of the wise, of hampering the orderly and inexorable treatment of people just as, according to the best modern lights, they ought to be treated, this lawless ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... then retired. But such their confidence; their talk so loud And free, I could not help but hear some words That raised suspicion; then I listened close And heard, 'mid gibe and jest, the enterprise That was to flout us; make the Loyalist A cringing slave to sneering rebels; make The British lion gnash his teeth with rage;— The Yankee, hand-on-hip, guffawing loud The while. At once, my British blood was up, Nor had I borne their hated presence ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... o'er the horizon rose the cloud of strife, Two proud, strong nations battling for the prize: Which swarming host should mould a nation's life; Which royal banner flout the western skies. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... garden, he could not help wondering how all this had once appeared so strange and marvelous to him. He now saw nothing but common, earthen flowerpots, quantities of geraniums, myrtles, and the like. Instead of the glittering party-colored birds which used to flout him, there were only a few sparrows fluttering hither and thither, which raised an unpleasant, unintelligible cry at sight of Anselmus. The azure room also had quite a different look; and he could not understand how that glaring ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... recital; but none of us voyagers durst flout it. Did they not show us the identical spot where the idol fell? We descended into the hollow, now verdant. Questionless, Keevi himself would have vouched for the truth of the miracle, had he not been unfortunately dumb. But by far the most cogent, and pointed argument advanced in support ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... thing for a man to assert his own independence, and to show his bride at the outset on whose feet the highest-heeled boots would be, but quite another to flout the customs of the countryside and all ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to teach decency to a barnyard brood! I dusted my fingers free from the soil of him. "I will marry her to you, if only to see her flout you," I promised vengefully. "Now to the canoes, and have your paddles ready." I had no smile for him, though he sought it, as ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... shall he escape me? Shall he mock My queenship? He, an alien, flout my sway? Will no one arm and chase them, or undock The ships? Bring fire; get weapons, quick! Away! Swing out the oars! Ah me! what do I say? Where am I? O, what madness turns my brain? Poor Dido, hath thy folly found its prey? Thy sins, alas! they sting ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... forbid!" ejaculated the old man, raising protesting hands up toward the very distant, quite invisible sky. "How could I, a humble priest of the Lord, range myself with those who would flout and ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... old Gascon suggests that it is the part of wisdom to give your affection to one who is both plain and elderly—one who is not suffering from a surfeit of love, and one whose head has not been turned by flattery. "Young women," says the philosopher, "demand attention as their right and often flout the giver; whereas old ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... man Modest in speech but nowise slack in deed, Actor, his brother of whom last I spake, Who will not let a tongue without an arm Within our gates rave to our overthrow, Nor entrance give the foe, who on his shield To flout us bears the hated effigy. His Sphynx, midst rattling darts, will hardly thank Him that advanced her to our battlements.— Heaven grant that as I say the event ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... good many of them by sight—sullen, quick-eyed folk, who buy their "greeners" at the docks, and work them day and night at any time of pressure; whose workshops are still flaring at two o'clock in the morning, and alive again by the winter dawn; who fight and flout the law by a hundred arts, and yet, brutal and shifty as many of them are, have a curious way of winning the Gentile inspector's sympathy, even while he fines and harasses them, so clearly are they and their "hands" alike the victims of a huge world-struggle ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... early days you scorned them, And with many a flip and flout Said "These battles are the white man's, And the whites will fight them out." Up the hills you fought and faltered, In the vales you strove and bled, While your ears still heard the thunder Of the ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... coming up close to her, said at last: "Girl, for I see ye scorn my courtesies, Take warning: yonder man is surely dead; And I compel all creatures to my will. Not eat nor drink? And wherefore wail for one, Who put your beauty to this flout and scorn By dressing it in rags? Amazed am I, Beholding how ye butt against my wish, That I forbear you thus: cross me no more. At least put off to please me this poor gown, This silken rag, this beggar-woman's weed: I love that beauty should go beautifully: For see ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... of the King... It is the King's authority they flout... They arrogate to themselves the whole sovereignty in Brittany. The King has dissolved them... These insolent nobles defying ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... say to those who misname themselves "evangelical" and flout their new-found liberty: Have you put down the tyranny of the Pope and obtained liberty in Christ through the Anabaptists and other fanatics? Or have you obtained your freedom from us who preach faith in Christ Jesus? If there is any honesty left in them ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... sometime my thoughts and fancy's pleasure, Where I did list, or time served best and leisure; While Daphne did invite me To supper once, and drank to me to spite me. I smiled, but yet did doubt her, And drank where she had drunk before, to flout her; But, O! while I did eye her, Mine eyes drank love, my ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... whom they persuaded to join their enterprise, persisted like themselves in the same obstinate belief of the same 'cunningly devised' frauds; and though they had many accomplices in their singular conspiracy, had the equally singular fortune to free themselves and their coadjutors flout all transient weakness towards their cause and treachery towards one another; and, lastly, that these men, having, amidst all their ignorance, originality enough to invent the most pure and sublime system ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight. For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild but to flout the ruins gray: When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress alternately Seem framed of ebon ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... know you flout this 'gold materialism,' For what you call the 'gold of evening skies:' But let me tell you, boy, for you 'tis well My lands are broad and bankers true, or else Your maiden, she, poor girl, I often think, Would want a crust to eat and shoes to wear." Thus he, in what I call his 'copper-gilt,' For ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... Peyton's consciousness. The space between herself and the girl seemed to vanish, the throng about them to disperse, till they were face to face and alone, enclosed in their mortal enmity. At length the feeling of humiliation and defeat grew unbearable to Mrs. Peyton. The girl seemed to flout her in the insolence of victory, to sit there as the visible symbol of her failure. It was better after all to be at home alone ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... fragrant roses there; I see thy withering head reclined With envy and despair! One common fate we both must prove; You die with envy, I with love.' 30 'Spare your comparisons,' replied An angry rose, who grew beside. 'Of all mankind, you should not flout us; What can a poet do without us! In every love-song roses bloom; We lend you colour and perfume. Does it to Chloe's charms conduce, To found her praise on our abuse? Must we, to flatter her, be made To wither, envy, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... starved, by turns hath fed, Embraced, disgraced, beat back, solicited, Have no fixed heart of law within his breast; Or with some different rhythm doth e'er contest, Nature in the East? Why, 'tis but three weeks fled I saw my Judas needle shake his head And flout the Pole that, East, he lord confessed! God! if this West should own some other Pole, And with his tangled ways perplex my soul Until the maze grow mortal, and I die Where distraught Nature clean hath gone astray, On earth some other wit than Time's ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Tennyson.' In course of time Byron was forgotten, or only remembered with disdain; and when Thackeray, the representative Briton, the artist Philistine, the foe of all that is excessive or abnormal or rebellious, took it upon himself to flout the author of Don Juan openly and to lift up his heavy hand against the fops and fanatics who had affected the master's humours, he did so amid general applause. Meanwhile, however, the genius and the personality ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... his birth and history claims some sympathy. Sometimes when I listen to him speak, hear the almost piquant sadness of his words, watch the spirit of isolation which, by design or otherwise, shows in him, for the moment I am conscious of a pity or an interest which I flout in wiser hours. This is his art, the potent danger ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... tendency to go their own way, and their politicians were loath to be kept in Russian leading-strings. Their last act, in 1885, had been to annex the Turkish province of Eastern Roumelia without asking the consent of the Tsar. At the moment they could safely flout the Sultan of Turkey, their nominal suzerain; but diplomatists doubted whether they could, with equal safety, ignore the Treaty of Berlin and the wishes of their Russian protector. The path was full of pitfalls. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... mistress. Ye are no servant. Your speech betrays you. 'Tis not till the ape hath mounted the tree that she, shows her tail so plain. Nay, there sits the servant; God help him! And while so it is, fear not thou his kin will ever be so poor in spirit as come where the likes of you can flout their dole." And casting one look of mute reproach at her cousin for being so little of a man as to sit passive and silent all this time, she turned and went haughtily out; nor would she shed a single tear till she got home and thought of it. And now here were ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... upon Goodrich my place as chairman of the national committee and went abroad with my daughters. We stayed there until Scarborough was inaugurated. He had got his nomination from a convention of men who hated and feared him, but who dared not flout the people and fling away victory; he had got his election because the defections from our ranks in the doubtful states far outbalanced Goodrich's extensive purchases there with the huge campaign-fund of the interests. The wheel-horse, Partizanship, ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... her head. "Memphis is the lure of all Egypt, and he who hath been transplanted to her would flout the favor of the gods, did he make homesick moan for ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... then, is what he meant—that insolent one! 'After the fiesta will I send the answer'—so he told that simpering maid who took my letter and the rose. And the answer, then, is my rose and my letter returned, and no word else. Madre de Dios! That he should flout me thus! Now will I tell Jose to kill him—and kill him quickly. For that blue-eyed gringo I hate!" Then she flung herself ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... home we fed, Like witless fools, with fostering bread, Have impiously come to this— They've stolen the Acropolis, With bolts and bars our orders flout And shut us out. ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes |
