"Mockery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Thorpe had never been remarkable for any specially liberal opinions, but he was a man of enlightened mind, and actuated by an honest desire to do his duty. He was not long in perceiving that the administration of justice in this Province was little better than a hollow mockery. He resolved to do what one man could to restore public confidence in the judicial bench, and his court erelong became a popular forum for honest litigants, for it was evident to all that he held the scales of justice with an even hand, and was not to ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... more odious and oppressive than that which has the mockery of the form of free government without its powers or attributes. An individual despot may be reached, terrified, or persuaded, but a despotic oligarchy has no restraint of individual responsibility, and is as intangible in its individuality as it is grasping and heartless in its acts and policy. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... in as with the fear she should be overtaken or invaded, and during a sleepless feverish memorable night she took counsel of her uncompromising spirit. She saw things as they were, in all the indignity of life. The levity, the mockery, the infidelity, the ugliness, lay as plain as a map before her; it was a world of gross practical jokes, a world pour rire; but she cried about it all the same. The morning dawned early, or rather it seemed to her ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... proof to be found of the so-called moral order in the universe, and they unhesitatingly declare that existence is an evil. They would have us therefore exchange our hopes for insight, and warn us that even this is very circumscribed at best. For not only is happiness a mockery, but knowledge is a will-o'-the-wisp. Mankind resembles the bricklayer and the hodman who help to raise an imposing edifice without any knowledge of the general plan. And yet the structure is the outcome of their labour. In like manner this mysterious world is the work of man—the mirror of his ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the other with a delicate smile of mockery parting his thin lips. For upon the Prince's forehead the perspiration stood out like beads, and he shrank away from Mr. Sabin as from some unholy thing. Lady Carey had fallen back across her chair. Her hand was still pressed ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Constant study made his imagination very vivid, and the devil seemed to be constantly before him. He had long conversations with Satan in person, as he believed, and decided that the best way to get rid of him was by gibes and mockery. One night his bed shook with the violent agitation caused by the rattling of some hazel nuts against each other after they had felt the inspiration of the Evil One! On another occasion a diabolical moth buzzed round him, ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... Protestant Germany, and in mockery of the fundamental laws of the empire, which, as his election, he had sworn to maintain, Ferdinand at Ratisbon solemnly invested the Duke of Bavaria with the Palatinate, without prejudice, as the form ran, to the rights which the relations or descendants of Frederick might afterwards establish. ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... of a scented woman reading his letter haunted him, and at moments Ingram was added to the picture, and he saw them uniting in mockery of him—prosaic, prosperous author, and strange, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... far as earthly success went. He had breasted the tide and risen above the billows. He was wealthy, and he was celebrated. No mortal power rose up in his path to baulk him of his desire. Only desire itself had failed him, and ambition had become mockery. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... stupidities of his fellows, to say nothing of his own. And humour with him assumed various shades; now it would flash in an epigram, or smile indulgently at a passing human weakness; now and then it would break out into genial mockery; occasionally it would manifest itself as sheer horse-play; and less frequently it would become sardonic or even savage. It was in this latter spirit that he once described a trio of Washington statesmen, whose influence he abhorred as, "three minds that occupy a single vacuum." ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... kings of Europe, instead of taking a salutary lesson from the tomb of the monarchy, to see its skeleton exhumed, and placed, robed and crowned, upon the throne, with the nation forced to offer homage, at once in mockery and terror, to the grinning emblem; in which, with all your philtres, you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of society depend on the confidence which men repose in one another's veracity.* But for this, history would be worth no more than fiction, and its lessons would be unheeded. But for this, judicial proceedings would be a senseless mockery of justice, and the administration of law and equity, the merest haphazard. But for this, the common intercourse of life would be invaded by incessant doubt and suspicion, and its daily transactions, aimless and ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... and less excusable than, these soldiers who watched all day by the Cross, seeing nothing, and tramped back at night to their barrack utterly ignorant of what they had been doing. But their work was not quite done. There was still a piece of grim mockery to be performed, which they would much enjoy. The 'cause,' as Matthew calls it, had to be nailed to the upper part of the cross. It was tri-lingual, as John tells us,—in Hebrew, the language of revelation; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... is a mockery. I am what one man's perfidy has made; I may yet learn to be worthy of another man's devotion. What ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... mockery, Calcabrina Flying behind him followed close, desirous The other should escape, ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... a man?" queried Wilbur, and smiled, but so furtively that even the sharp eye of Red Pierre did not perceive the mockery. He went on: "But the dance, what of that? It's a masquerade. There'd be no fear of ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... mockery of the last taunt was too much for the fiery young prince of Kingsland. With the yell of an enraged tiger he sprung upon Mr. Parmalee, hurled him to the ground in a twinkling, and twisted his left hand into Mr. Parmalee's blue cotton neckerchief, showering blows ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... thought that all that was fair and free in life, all that struggled, all that planned and made, all pride and beauty and honour, all fine and enjoyable things, were irrevocably damned to everlasting torments. They were the self-appointed confidants of God's mockery of his own creation. So at any rate they stick in my mind. Vaguer, and yet hardly less agreeable than this cosmic jest, this coming "Yah, clever!" and general serving out and "showing up" of the lucky, the bold, and the cheerful, was their ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the organization of a systematic reign of terror, consisting of bitter satires, such as Schiller and Goethe (after the model of Pope) founded in the Xenien, and the Romanticists established in many different forms—satires much more personal and much better aimed than was the general sort of mockery which the Romance or Romanized imitators of Horace flung at Bavius and Maevius. In saying all this, however, we have at the same time made it clear that the power and influence of the individual of genius receives much more positive expression in German literature than in those which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... "It would be a mockery; there would be no excuse for its existence," cried Selma impetuously. "I am an idealist, Mr. Lyons," she said clasping her hands. "I believe devotedly in the mission and power of love. But I believe that our conception of love changes as we grow. I welcomed love formerly as an intoxicating, delirious ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... more deeply interested British subjects than any other. Sir, on the unspeakably important subjects of religion and education our constitutional right of legislation has, by the arbitrary exercise and influence of Executive power, been made a mockery, and our constitutional liberties a deception; and it is to the influence over the public mind of the high religious feelings and principles of those classes of the population who have been so shamefully calumniated ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... commits suicide and the other is hanged. Mr. STEVENSON, one can only suppose, speaks of life as he finds it. There are really two stories, that of Beatrice Barrington, the faithless wife of Sir Philip, and the dreary mockery of life up at The Court, with its hatreds and subterfuges, its crippled master, frightened children and spying servants. This is the county as the author sees it. Linked with this is the life of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... I have suffered through thy cruelty! These curses will not be allowed to fall unaccomplished to the ground. A mighty oath hast thou transgressed, ruthless one; but not long shalt thou and thy comrades sit at ease casting eyes of mockery upon ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... less depressed by reflection upon the poet's lonely life. Arnold strikes the note again and again, most poignantly in The Buried Life, of the poet's sensitive apprehension that all human intercourse is mockery, and that the gifted soul really dwells in isolation. Sordello is a monumental record of a genius without friends. Francis Thompson, with surface lightness, tells us, in A Renegade Poet ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... looks, the unrelaxed grin of the grim dead, made yet more hideous by the mockery of the diadem and the royal robe, froze back to ice the passion and sorrow at his heart. He shuddered, and rose with a deep sigh; when, as his eyes mechanically followed the lifted arm of the skeleton, he beheld, with mingled delight and awe, the hitherto motionless finger ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book III. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... nations saw and understood was that the autocratic governments of Germany and Austria-Hungary had plunged the world into a war of incalculable magnitude, almost without warning and with comparatively trivial pretexts. There had been only a brief mockery of diplomatic interchanges, for the most part by ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... mockery, the conventional absurdities, and the affectations which so readily lend themselves to caricature in the name of mourning, no condemnation can be too strong. There is a ghoul-like ghastliness in talking ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... circumstance is beneficent design, that disease is really health in a mask and sin a joke, a misnomer, that crime is really a trump card up Deity's sleeve to play down some wonderful trick of good; but—was it the Indian strain in her blood back many generations? She could not mouthe the hollow mockery of such sophistries in the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... in a voice which contained just as much sadness as mockery, with a quiet, a slightly sad, a slightly mocking voice: "Soon, Govinda, your friend will leave the path of the Samanas, he has walked along your side for so long. I'm suffering of thirst, oh Govinda, and on this long path of a Samana, my thirst has remained as strong ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... conglomerate mass of gaudy trappings: the men, the women, the horses, the dye-scented paraphernalia of the ring. The very spangles on the costumes of these one-time friends seemed to twinkle with merriment at the sight of him; the tarletan skirts appeared to flaunt scorn in his face. There was mockery in everything. His humiliation was complete when this motley array of people disdained to greet him with the eager concern that heretofore had marked their demeanor. No one appeared to notice him, further than to offer a curt nod or to exchange ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... again the doctor caught the words, "Jesus, tender—." It had been the doctor's child prayer, too. But for years no prayer had passed his lips. He could not bring himself to do it. It would be sheer mockery. But the eyes were fixed upon his face beseeching, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... well-meaning mockery of our efforts, a route 'over the top' is tried. Soon we are outside Battalion Headquarters of the Berks. Whilst we are there, German gas shelling starts—a few rounds of phosgene—and helmets require to be adjusted. It is not everybody's helmet that fits, this being the first real occasion ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... for stripping Mankind of what themselves own is of excellent use in all great Societies, without once offering to establish any thing in the Room of it; I think the best way of dealing with them, is to retort their own Weapons upon them, which are those of Scorn and Mockery. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... and heartache" of it all, and then saying, gleefully, "at all events Chancery will work none of its bad influence on us"? "None of its bad influence on us!" poor lad, whose life is wasted and character impaired in following the mirage of the suit, and who is killed by the mockery of its end. Thus do the two intertwined stories run; but apart from these, though all in place and keeping, and helping on the general development, there is a whole profusion of noticeable characters. In enumerating them, however baldly, one scarcely ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... knew only too well, and ready to believe that uniform and dirk would make a man of him at once, with all his terrors left behind. Perhaps the chief drawback was that the ladies WOULD say, 'What a darling!' affording Griff endless opportunities for the good-humoured mockery by which he concealed his own secret regrets. Did not even Selina Clarkson, whose red cheeks, dark blue eyes, and jetty profusion of shining curls, were our notion of perfect beauty, select the little naval cadet for her partner ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it was only a mockery of that heaven upon earth! It had been the scene of his tribulation—that which riveted the bonds upon his limbs. But it was home so far as it was the abiding place of his friends,—not those who scourged him, whose caprices had ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... chaos, Not yet resolved to separate elements— 'Tis warring still! And can the sun so rise, So bright, so rolling back the clouds into 10 Vapours more lovely than the unclouded sky, With golden pinnacles, and snowy mountains, And billows purpler than the Ocean's, making In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth, So like we almost deem it permanent; So fleeting, we can scarcely call it aught Beyond a vision, 'tis so transiently Scattered along the eternal vault: and yet It dwells upon the soul, and soothes the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... did not deceive me! If he is not here; if he told me the truth!" His countenance had been so open, so calm, so smiling when he said to her that he had a rendezvous with some friends at the Catholic priest's; and in a graceful, roguish mockery, asked her if she was jealous of that meeting. No, no! this time he was true. He could not have played the hypocrite with such smiling composure. Scarcely knowing what she did, Marietta entered the house, and asked if Camilla was at home—then ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... one blow. Slowly a red flush widened upon the dark olive face of the girl. Was it the signal of shame of the true sportsman who has brought down ignoble quarry? Her eyes grew softer, and the lowered lids drove away all their bright mockery. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... face beamed down on him, wreathed in smiles that seemed to include mockery as well as triumph. Looking up at him at an angle that made his neck ache and dazzled his eyes, King could not be sure, but it seemed to him that the smile said, "Here you are, my man, and aren't you in for it?" He more than half suspected ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... annoyance. The night being windy it suggested itself to him that it might be the sashes rattling, but all in vain; the raps continued and were evidently answering the noise occasioned by the father shaking the windows, as if in mockery. ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... milky pearls from India, was thin and haggard. Her skin, fair and beautiful on that day when she sat so proudly by her husband and daughter in the Circus, watching the gladiatorial contest, was yellow and drawn. The jewels were a mockery in ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... rate, it happened, that, with the coming of the autumn months, Reuben, still floating drearily on a sea of religious speculation, and veering more and more into open mockery of the beliefs of all about him, grew weary of his affectations with respect to Adele. He fretted under the kindly manner with which she met his august civilities. They did not wound her sensibilities, as he hoped they might have done. Either this disappointment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... a silken cord being made fast to the wrist of the patient is passed through a hole in the wainscot into another apartment where the doctor, applying his hand to the cord, after a due observance of solemn mockery, decides upon the case and prescribes accordingly. About court, however, a particular class of eunuchs only are entrusted with feeling the pulse ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... things with destroying hand; and if he seem now and then to bestow the bloom of youth, the sap of spring, it is but a brief mockery, to be surely and swiftly followed by the wrinkles of old age, the dry leaves and bare branches of winter. And yet there are places where Time seems to linger lovingly long after youth has departed, and to which he seems loath to bring the evil day. Who has not known some even-tempered ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... was frustrate from my birth, A mockery, a delusion; and my breath Of noble human life upon this earth So racks me that I ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... more frequent robberies. The character of the higher and more educated classes who reside in the towns, partakes, but perhaps in a lesser degree, of the good parts of the Gaucho, but is, I fear, stained by many vices of which he is free. Sensuality, mockery of all religion, and the grossest corruption, are far from uncommon. Nearly every public officer can be bribed. The head man in the post-office sold forged government franks. The governor and prime minister openly ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... his companion rather stupidly, for a moment, for his mind had suddenly become intent upon the complications of the day, and he had forgotten for the time being, where he was, and with whom he was talking. But Beatrice's smile and the mockery in her eyes brought him back to ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... after?" demanded Gypsy Nan, with sudden mockery. "De gun? Well, take it!" She let go her hold of the weapon. "But don't kid yerself dat youse're kiddin' me into givin' it to youse because youse have got a pretty smile an' a sweet voice! Savvy? I"—she choked suddenly, and caught ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... G'ome!" and then darted to the flagstaff and began to haul the colours down a few feet, and just as his young officer was about to stop him, seized the second line and jigged them up again in a sort of dance that was intended in mockery of the captain and crew of ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... was swift and severe, and the observer could not but wonder what was their conception of a democracy as they walked about the streets of the city or gave attention to their bruised faces. Their dreams of freedom and equal rights must have seemed a mockery. They must have felt that they had been lured into a trap by some agency of cruelty and injustice. After such an experience they must have been unspeakably homesick for their ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... a colleague of Mr. Foyle's?" she went on, and though her voice was soft there was a trace of mockery in it. "He is charmingly considerate to send you to look after me. I was desolated to think that I should have to take such ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... consideration for a tenant is treated with mockery I give you written notice to leave. A 'For Sale' board will be placed in your garden. A clause in the lease authorises me to do that. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... it was a serious problem to decide whether the lightness of the sculptor's tone were mockery or good fellowship. Kenkenes noted her silence ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... quiet. Helena was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar, enigmatic look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. He was quite intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there aloof. He was tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was evident to her through his strangeness. In her heart ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... of such attempts, I was nicknamed the Poet, but mockery did not cure me. I was always rhyming, in spite of good advice from Monsieur Mareschal, the headmaster, who tried to cure me of an unfortunately inveterate passion by telling me the fable of a linnet that fell out of the nest because it tried to fly before its wings ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... mockery of piling stone on stone To those who won our liberty, the heroes dead and gone, While we look coldly on and see law-shielded ruffians slay The men who fain would win their ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the taile of a mule thorow the streits, the hangman convoying them, then they sett them in the most publick part of the toune bound be a stake, wt their hands behind their backs, to be a obiect of mockery ther to ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... things. Use and wont, respectable hearsay, respectable formula: all these are good, or are not good. There is something behind and beyond all these, which all these must correspond with, be the image of, or they are—Idolatries; "bits of black wood pretending to be God"; to the earnest soul a mockery and abomination. Idolatries never so gilded waited on by heads of the Koreish, will do nothing for this man. Though all men walk by them, what good is it? The great Reality stands glaring there upon him. He there has to answer it, or perish miserably. Now, even now, or else through all Eternity ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... the colonel refused the last candidate for nuptial honors, he should die. But as Ramabai lifted the veil of this last woman the colonel nodded sharply; and Kathlyn, for a brief space, gazed into her father's eyes. The same thought occurred to both; what a horrible mockery it all was, and where would ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... stern, fierce, sententious Helena, is Datchery's habit of "chaffing." He fools the ass of a Mayor, Sapsea, by most exaggerated diference: his tone is always that of indolent mockery, which one doubts whether the "intense" and concentrated Helena could assume. He takes rooms in the same house as Jasper, to whom, as to Durdles and Deputy, he introduces himself on the night of his arrival at Cloisterham. He afterwards addresses Deputy, ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... niece Margarita—what to do, I ask you, of this young person? She is Cuban, she is fanatic, she is impossible. I apply myself to instruct her as her station and fortune demand, as befits a Spanish lady of rank; she insubordinates me, she makes mockery of my position as head of her house. She teach her parrot to cry "Viva Cuba Libre!" She play at open windows her guitar, songs of Cuban rebels, forbidden by the authorities. I exert my power, I exhort, I command,—she laughs me at the nose, and sings more loud. I attend that in few days we are ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... the picture, and I would gladly leave their defense to the Representatives of classes who have by hundreds darkened these galleries with their sable countenances, waiting for days to hear the decisive vote which announces that their freedom is not a mockery. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... half closed on the bright day—oh, what a mockery is there in the smile of the happy sun when it shines on the wretched! Mrs. Morton sat, or rather crouched, in a distant corner; her streaming eyes fixed on vacancy; listless, drooping; a very image of desolate woe; and Sidney was ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... standing before the singers of "complaintes," (songs of woe) with their backs turned towards them. And directly Gaud was struck with one of them, tall as a giant, with huge shoulders almost too broad; but she had simply said, perhaps with a touch of mockery: "There is one who is tall, to say the least!" And the sentence implied beneath this was: "What an incumbrance he'll be to the woman he marries, a husband ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... smiled at seeing her thus suspended, and, asking her in mockery, "Are you a good leaper?" he let go the branch with perfidious glee, and saw Bradamante precipitated to the bottom of the cave. "I wish your whole race were there with you," he muttered, "that you ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... amid all that fashionable throng in whom ideals of purity and true womanhood lived—some who cared enough for the sacredness of real love to cry upon this hollow mockery that was being used to ensnare the simple, honest soldier? There was only one, and she was at that moment entering the drawing room for the purpose of being presented to the general. Need ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... protection granted to the Buddhist religion, while flocks of missionaries are sent out to convert the heathen. We even stretch the point so far as to place a British sentinel on guard at the Buddhist temple in Kandy, as though in mockery of our Protestant church a ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Church-yard are covered with snow, and there are great icicles in the Church-yard. The wind now carries a swathe of snow along the tops of the graves as though the "sheeted dead" were at some melancholy play; and hark! the icicles fall with a crash and jingle, like a solemn mockery of the echo of the unseemly mirth of one who is now coming to ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... is with you; if, indeed, it was not one Syrian soul that dwelt among alien men, Germans and Romans, in the bodily tabernacles of Heine and of Lucian. But he was fallen on evil times and evil tongues; while Lucian, as witty as he, as bitter in mockery, as happily dowered with the magic of words, lived long and happily and honoured, imprisoned in no "mattress-grave." Without Rabelais, without Voltaire, without Heine, you would find, methinks, even the joys of your Happy Islands lacking in zest; and, unless Plato came ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... Godwine. It was easy to dwell on later events, on the driving of so many Normans out of England, with Archbishop Robert at their head. Nay, not only had the lawful primate been driven out, but an usurper had been set in his place, and this usurping archbishop had been made to bestow a mockery of consecration on the usurping king. The proposed aggression on England was even represented as a missionary work, undertaken for the good of the souls of the benighted islanders. For, though the English were undoubtedly devout after ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... 'I mean, a great deal too much.' The tone so recalled Norman's dejected hopelessness, that she could not help tenderly laying her cold hands on the hot brow, and saying, 'Yes, I know how little one can do as a sister—and the mockery it is to think that one place can ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... regarding this young woman instantly dissipated by those final words of mischievous mockery. She had been playing with him as unconcernedly as if he were a mere toy sent for her amusement, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... and will remain a class apart from the rest of the nation so long as you are compelled to serve under a barbarous military code called 'military law.' The system of trial by court-martial is a mere farce and a mockery. We of the Social-Democratic Federation intend to do our utmost to abolish it root and branch. Give us your support. Remember that the late War Minister, Mr. St. John Brodrick, compared the soldier to the Chinese coolie in South Africa. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... on his master's farm and on the neighboring ones, attempt to drag him back into his old ways, chiefly with ridicule and mockery. At times his resolution fails him, but he masters himself again. Then a bad-hearted neighbor, who hates Uli's master, tries to lure him away from his new faith. He praises Uli to the skies, tells him he is not properly appreciated, and poisons his mind against his master. Uli grows more ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Her voice held the plangent sweetness of her instrument, with additional overtones of mockery. "There must be some kind of invisible dome around him, holding in ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... only the shadows of our past selves that love. You and I are strangers to each other. To continue this sweet pretence of love is a mockery of the Holiest. God bless ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... most of all, the utter neglect of Helen Minorkey hurt him sorely. Except that she had sent, through Isabel Marlay, that little smuggled message that she was sorry for him—like one who makes a great ado about sending you something which turns out to be nothing—except this mockery of pity, he had no word or sign from Helen. His mind dwelt on her as he remembered her in the moments when she had been carried out of herself by the contagion of his own enthusiasm, when she had seemed to love him devotedly. Especially did he think of her as she sat in quiet and ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... they part, and yet how stay together?" Horace, with man's barbarian directness, would have liked to bear her home to safety and his mother; but the shadow of usage and her mother stood between, for in spite of the hollow mockery of it all, Sylvia was still ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... old man," said he to the miller; "pates are the thing now." Then, to Monsieur De la Riviere: "There's nothing like hot pennies and wine to make the world love you. But it's too late, too late for my young Seigneur!" he added in mockery, and again he began to hum in a sort ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pause which succeeded to this fearful tempest of feeling. In that hour of grief, renewed in all its former violence, he forgot country, friends and all on earth. The recollection of his fame was mockery to him; for where was she to whom the sound of his praises would ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... roughing in of a head, but it presented the dumb waiting, the longing, and, above all, the hopeless enslavement of the man, in a spirit of bitter mockery. ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... excited by the potations in which they had freely indulged during the mockery of a trial in the saloon, and their differences of opinion on some points were so strong that at one moment the proceedings seemed more than likely to be diversified by a pitched battle. Rogers, however, whose head seemed capable of resisting the effects ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... smaller units, until the tortured countryside that so recently had felt the impact of nuclear war once again knew the tread of bands of armed marauders. The tiny savage groups, stranded in alien lands, far from the homes and families that they knew to be destroyed, carried on a mockery of war, lived off the land, fought their own countrymen if the occasion suited, and revived the ancient terror of hand-wielded, personal, ...
— The Next Logical Step • Benjamin William Bova
... sonnet that follows, he accuses her of preventing pity of him in others, by such "killing mockery" as makes him wish for death ("la pieta, che 'l vostro ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... deliberation, and would not hesitate to make friends with the devil himself. After looking very attentively at the proprietor of the menagerie getting out of his box, my companion pursed up his lips with an air of mockery and contempt, with that peculiar and expressive twist which superior people assume to show they are not taken in. Then, when I was expatiating on the courage of M. Martin, he smiled, shook his head ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... at the white patient face and was silent. What would be the use of senseless contradiction. The woman knew. It would only seem an added stab of mockery. She knelt beside the bed, and took ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... a friend, entreat you, my dear sir, at no time to forget that you are a Christian and a Protestant gentleman. Be sober and rational, and, if there be any truth in religion at all, do not make a mockery of it, by converting the Lord's day into a monstrous Saturnalia. Here ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... him amidst them, and made him the subject of their derision and mockery, during a whole day's entertainment, trying to exhaust his patience, but in vain, for he bore the whole with true christian fortitude. They spit in his face, pulled his nose, and pinched him in most parts of his body. He was hunted ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... and soporific passages, circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon so often intervene.... A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its key-note and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... mighty, untamed scenes that met his eye on every hand. Nor did anyone see him, for at every sound of approaching horse or vehicle he went aside from the highway to hide in the bushes or behind convenient rocks. And always when he came from his hiding place to resume his journey that odd smile of self-mockery was ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... I ought to say something, but it matters very little, for anything I can say must sound like an insult or a mockery. But if I ask you simply to believe that I share your deep sorrow as much as anybody standing closer to you, then you must not turn away from me. You mustn't, for I deserve your pity if not your forbearance. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... the conclusion whilst aboard the galley of Spain, as we have seen, that Christianity as practised in his day was a grim mockery of which the world were better rid. It is not to be supposed that his convictions that Christianity was at fault went the length of making him suppose that Islam was right, or that his conversion to the Faith of Mahomet was anything more than superficial. But forced as he was to choose ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the city!" murmured Abner, overcome by the artificiality of urban society and the mockery in ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... infernal in earnest. Their fears were excited, a general panic ensued, and the whole group fled different ways; some to their dressing-rooms, and others, through the streets, to their own homes, in order to avoid the destruction which they believed to be coming upon them, for the profane mockery they had been guilty of. The odd devil was non inventus. He took himself invisibly away, through fears of another kind. He was, however, seen by many, in imagination, to fly through the roof of the house, and ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... cause was the determination of Marie Antoinette not to submit to the new Constitution. At first she wished that France should be intimidated by a congress of the united Powers. She warned her friends abroad not to be taken in by the mockery of her understanding with the Feuillant statesmen; and when Leopold treated the accepted Constitution seriously, as a release from his engagements, she accused him of betraying her. On September 8, just before accepting, Lewis, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... upon the Skull and Spectacles it attracted me at once. Its situation, in the middle of that wilderness of mouldering wharves, decaying gardens, and tumble-down cottages, was in itself an invitation to the eye. Then the devilish mockery of its sign was an allurement. It looked like some fantastical tavern in a dream, and not a thing of ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Bianca; while a smile, half of mockery and half of pleasure, writhed her lips into changing outlines, each more bewitchingly pretty than the other, and her eyes were turned away from Quinto to a contemplation of the slender dainty foot peeping out from beneath her dress, as she lay on ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... mockery of the fisherman's tone, the bolder flattery of his eyes, I felt the same quick flash of resentment that his words had occasioned when he walked with me up the lane. I turned my head away with the noble resolve to ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Old Queen of the waters! May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst blood and flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than one nation to participate in thy downfall! Of all fates, may it please the Lord to preserve thee from a disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming, ere extinct, a scorn and a mockery for those selfsame foes who now, though they envy and abhor thee, still fear thee, nay, even against their will, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... not only striking but apt, from some points of view, to move something of laughter as well as tears. The strangest thing is that, if some demon of mischief tempts us, a hurly-burly begins again of laughter and mockery among that ancient brotherhood of hills, like Handel's chorus in 'l'Allegro' of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... to inquire deeply into the nature and effects of a constitution which can hardly be regarded but as a farce and a mockery. If, however, it could be supposed that its provisions were to have any effect, it seems equally adapted to two purposes; that of giving to its founder for a time an absolute and uncontrolled authority, and that of laying the certain foundation of ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... present Finally it was resolved for some reason—either because old Falieri felt in what an uncomfortable position he would appear in the eyes of the people as the betrothed of a maiden of nineteen, or because it occurred to him as a sort of presentiment that the Venetians, who were so prone to mockery, ought not to be so directly challenged to indulge in it, or because he deemed it better to say nothing at all about the critical period of betrothal—at any rate, it was resolved, with Bodoeri's consent, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... enough or passion enough to brave the mockery; this was Bastiano, the most formidable diver of that coast. He also sang, but with a deep and hollow voice; his chant was mournful and his melodies full of sadness. He never accompanied himself upon ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Magnus paled. Harran shut his teeth with an oath. Their exaltation of the previous moment collapsed like a pyramid of cards. The vision of the new movement of the wheat, the conquest of the East, the invasion of the Orient, seemed only the flimsiest mockery. With a brusque wrench, they were snatched back to reality. Between them and the vision, between the fecund San Joaquin, reeking with fruitfulness, and the millions of Asia crowding toward the verge ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... put forward as if in mockery of all honours, he addressed the authors of his elevation with servile flattery, promising them vast riches and high rank as the first-fruits of his promotion; and then he advanced into the streets, escorted by a multitude of armed men; and with raised standards he prepared to ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... their agony." Opposite to this horrible place was a large cellar, where I could see men twisted, as tow is twisted, or hemp is spun. "Pray," said I "who are these?" "Panegyrists," said he, "and out of sheer mockery to them, the devils are trying whether it is possible to twist them as flexibly as they twisted their own discourse." A little way below that cell, I could but just descry a sort of prison-pool, very dark, and in it things ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... know it. Hear him lilt! See him tilt! Then suddenly he stops, Peers about, flirts, hops, As if looking where he might gather up The wasted ecstasy just spilt From the quivering cup Of his bliss overrun. Then, as in mockery of all The tuneful spells that e'er did fall From vocal pipe, or evermore shall rise, He snarls, and mews, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... ill tidings indeed!" he cried. "What does the Fat Flatterer at Castle Thrieve? If he comes to pay homage, it will be but a mockery. Neither he nor Angus had ever any good-will to my father, and ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... to him, in love with his old tender mockery of her, to sing "Libra Ogostine" for ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... power to help the Lord's creatures, down trodden of devils, well-to-do people, and their own miserable weaknesses and vices. Even remaining constant to duty, she must, in continuous disappointment and the mockery of a false unity, have lost the health, and worse, the spirits necessary to wholesome contact and such work as she was fain to do. In constant opposition to her husband, spending the best part of her strength in resistance ere it could reach the place where it ought to be applied entire, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... these men were mobbed, hissed at and hooted; sometimes they had to flee so as not to be the targets for the missiles of the mob. And the treatment of these men, who represented at least 90,000 Dutch colonists, at the hands of their fellow-British subjects, was that not an insult—a mockery of liberty ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... Athenians how precarious is ever the military eminence of small states. But the treaty with Sparta, if disadvantageous, was not dishonourable. It was founded upon one broad principle, without which, indeed, all peace would have been a mockery—viz., that the Athenians should not interfere with the affairs of the Peloponnesus. This principle acknowledged, the surrender of advantages or conquests that were incompatible with it was but a necessary detail. As Pericles was ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the signal of his death, laughed till his wisdom-teeth showed; whereupon Hisham's wrath redoubled and he said to him, "O boy, meseems thou art mad; seest thou not that thou art about to depart the world? Why then dost thou laugh in mockery of thyself?" He replied, "O Commander of the Faithful, if a larger life-term befell me, none can hurt me, great or small; but I have bethought me of some couplets, which do thou hear, for my death cannot ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... reason. If indeed it had turned out so, I should now be perhaps a sad woman; but not a tempest-tossed one . . . The possibility of his claiming me after all is what lies at the root of my agitation. Everything hangs by a thread. Suppose I tell her the marriage was a mockery; suppose she is indignant with me and with him for the deception—and then? Otherwise, suppose she is not indignant but forgives all; he is bound to marry her; and honour constrains me to urge him ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy |
