"Sardonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he took the one offered, fumbling painfully with thick fingers, blushing to the roots of his hair. Then he looked with his warm blue eyes at the almost sardonic, lidded eyes of the foreigner. The latter sat down beside him, and they began ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... very naughty and make a confession? The thing that a fortnight ago (before I got it) I thought so much of, I give you my word I do not care a pin for. I am sick of it and ashamed of having thought so much of it, and the congratulations I get give me a sort of internal sardonic grin. I think this has come about partly because I did not get the official confirmation of what I had heard for some days, and with my habit of facing the ill side of things I came to the conclusion that Weld had made a mistake, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... reserved a conclusion to which I had been approaching all through the tale. I wished to submit it to the tests of coffee and music, to become more familiar with it before I exposed it to Bill's shrewd scrutiny and Mac's sardonic judgment. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... Havana cigar smote his nostrils like the odor of battle. He was in great boots stained with the red shale, for the roads outside Banbridge were heavy from a recent rain. He was collarless, his greasy coat hung loosely over his dingy flannel shirt. He was unshaven, and his face was at once grim and sardonic, bitter and raging. It was the face of an impotent revolutionist, who cursed his impotence, his lack of weapons, his wrong environments for his fierce spirit. He belonged in a country at war. He had the misfortune to be in a country at ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sardonic inner voice with which there is no arguing, tells me that I am a hypocrite; that an interest in Carlotta's spiritual development is a nice, comforting, high-sounding phrase which has deluded philosophic guardians of female youth ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... trying to discover whether or not the line of the creek was defended, and if Willet and his men remained well hidden it would take a long time for them to ascertain the fact. He enjoyed their perplexity, finding in the situation a certain sardonic humor. ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious-hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present: a certain sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough; and a stouter heart than he himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many things which do not vitally concern him—"They? what are they?" But the thing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... mettle for that!"—and Lysia smiled darkly, while the great eye on her breast flashed forth a sardonic lustre— "Strong as ye all are, and young, ye lack the bravery of the weak old man who, mad as he may be, has at least the courage of his opinions! Who is there here that believes in the Sun as a god, or in Nagaya as a mediator? Not one, . . but ye are cultured ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the sinners. The day's work done, the Chesterton manuscripts delivered, the proofs read, the bargains driven, the giant figure returned to the tunnel, and once again was back in Adelphi, the Shaw he was when he left it—back to the Jaegers, the beard, the Socialism, the statistics, and the sardonic letters to the Times.* ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... with care—after this attack is conquered,' replied the doctor; and the old man answered with a grim, sardonic smile. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... brows were drawn down in thought and his thin lips compressed. I knew not what wild beast we were about to hunt down in the dark jungle of criminal London, but I was well assured, from the bearing of this master huntsman, that the adventure was a most grave one—while the sardonic smile which occasionally broke through his ascetic gloom boded little good for the object of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and beauty, and it is told with an easy confidence. As for Blood himself, he is a superman, compounded of sardonic humor, cold nerves, and hot temper. Both the story and the man are masterpieces. A great figure, a great ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... from him, and Larry was a dead shot. But this time he made a scandalous miss, for the shot knocked a little white dust from the stone wall a full yard at one side; and the fellow never shifted his negligent posture or qualified his sardonic ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Jimmie Dale steadily, unswervingly; in the Wolf's face was malicious and sardonic mockery—but the Wolf's eyes were no longer on Jimmie Dale's face, they seemed curiously intent upon the floor at Jimmie Dale's feet. Mechanically Jimmie Dale followed their direction—and his eyes, too, held on the floor. For a moment neither spoke. The game was up! His boot top was soaked ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... shadows diapered the snow; the air was strangely mild; The valley's girth was dumb with mirth, the laughter of the wild; The still, sardonic laughter of an ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... the sardonic Quick, after taking note of these demonstrations, "Heavens! what a hero I feel myself to be. And to think that when I got back from the war with them Boers, after being left for dead on Spion Kop with a bullet through my lung and mentioned ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... bottles; but these traces of his passage had made no mark on the featureless dulness of the room, its look of being the makeshift setting of innumerable transient collocations. There was something sardonic, almost sinister, in its appearance of having deliberately "made up" for its anonymous part, all in noncommittal drabs and browns, with a carpet and paper that nobody would remember, and chairs and tables as impersonal ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... smiled with sardonic amusement. He was in his late forties, running a bit to blubber, but still looked strong and capable. He waited until Tod Denver ran down, ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... of the age," he told himself, with sardonic twisting of his lips. "When Opportunity knocks, knock Opportunity down. Embrace Opportunity, but be sure it's with the strangle hold. The directors of a robbed railroad make a more dignified getaway than that porcine pedestrian is ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... method of showing that he was fully cognisant of the event was highly characteristic. The next morning when Bert, with swollen forehead, and Rod, with blackened eyes, came before him in the same class, he said, with one of his sardonic smiles: ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... sardonic, triumphant—rang through the carriage. Her arms were caught and held as in ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... mine," silenced all disposition to inquiries. We now descended into the lower vestibule, and hallooed more than once for Dougal, to which summons no answer was returned; when Campbell observed, with a sardonic smile, "That if Dougal was the lad he kent him, he would scarce wait to get thanks for his ain share of the night's wark, but was in all probability on the full trot to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... yeretofore,' says Doc Peets, when he considers the case, 'this Silver Phil is a degen'rate. He's like a anamile. He don't entertain no reg'lar scheme to work free when he waxes sardonic with the marshal; that's only a bluff. Later, when them gyards takes to maltreatin' him an' battin' him about, it wakes up the venom in him, an' his cunnin' gets aroused along ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... tall, lean youth, sunburned and tough, with a face that looked sardonic. Ramona recognized him now as her father's new foreman, the man she had been introduced to a few days before. Hard on that memory came another. It was this same Jack Roberts who had taken her brother by surprise and beaten him so ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... crested by a huge wart with a small grove of black hairs; but the mouth made ample amends, being altogether indescribable, for it was so variable in its expression, that I could not tell whether it had most of the sardonic, the benevolent, or the sanguinary, appearing to exhibit them all in succession with equal vividness. My attention, however, was mainly fixed by the sanguinary; it came across me like an east wind, and I felt a cold sweat damping my linen; and when this ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... my lord," replied Faringhea, with his sardonic coolness; "he who looks for one woman, will rarely succeed in this country; he who seeks women, is only at a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... to laugh that soundless laugh of his, but I felt too much touched by the feeling in Ernest's little face to join in the miser's sardonic amusement. When Ernest saw that we moved towards the door, he planted himself in front of it, crying out, 'Mamma, here are some gentlemen in black who ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... Bob, with a something sardonic in his little laugh, "but I thought I might as well. It's the long way, six miles on ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... could any self-respecting woman like such a man? His every glance is an insult. With his polished manners and sardonic smile he reminds one ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... this pass unchallenged, submitting with a good grace to his host's low whistle of amusement, and the sardonic enquiry: "Ever do anything with the foils? D'Armillac is what they call over here ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... sardonic gleam in his eye. "Mr. Chairman, I move that Colonel Peavy and Amos Ridings escort the ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... do with myself in that Babylon, where everyone was gay while I was so wretched? How could I stand the sardonic laughter and gaiety around me when my heart was aching bitterly? As soon as my poor mother was buried I was only too anxious to get from that city of luxury, where the artificial lights only blinded and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... themselves surrounded by a ring of tomahawks and drawn bows. Their weapons were snatched away from them, and on the instant they found themselves beyond all possibility of that resistance whose giving over they now bitterly repented. Teganisoris regarded them with a sardonic smile. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... his son's return, in the old character of the "bad shilling"; and closed again without uttering a word. There was a portentous composure in Frank's manner which showed that he had other news to communicate than the news of his dismissal. He answered his father's sardonic look of inquiry by at once explaining that a very important proposal for his future benefit had been made to him, that morning, at the office. His first idea had been to communicate the details in writing; but the partners had, on ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the preacher sharp, who's goin' in the stage, to get tucked in among the ladies, a hollow-chested, chalk-cheeked, sardonic-lookin', cynical-seemin' bandit, drivin' a lean-laigged hoss to one of them spid'ry things they calls a quill-wheel, comes pirootin' along over to one side of the fooneral cortege at a walk. He's p'intin' in from over Red ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... sardonic; then he grew melancholy and haggard. There was something very strange in the fact that a person unattainted of crime, and not morally disabled in any known way, could not take his money and buy such a horse ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... eyes were bloodshot, and fixed, from beneath their wrinkled brows, on the table, as if their everlasting weal or woe depended there upon the turning of the dice; while others—the finished blacklegs—assumed an indifferent and careless look, though a kind of sardonic smile playing round their lips, but too plainly revealed a sort of habitual desperation. Three of the players looked the very counterparts of each other, not only in face, but expression; both the physical and moral ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... where shouting merchants wrestled for porters, and donkeys brayed them down, the narrowed eyes of Olimpia, the sardonic grin of the gaunt Mosca, brought our lovers back into the real world. They faced their foes together with insensible meeting and holding of young hands. Angioletto did his best not to feel a detected schoolboy, and did succeed in meeting the Captain's terrific looks. Bellaroba ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... said the coast guardsman, with a superior and sardonic smile. "Well, in my 'umble opinion, drowning's too good ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a glimpse of Mr. Livingston's countenance; a more sardonic smile I have never seen—a smile which said as plainly as words, "You are lying." He spoke with ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... when Voltaire said, 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin,' he was quoting, with sardonic irony, Saint Teresa! You cannot be pleased at Mrs. Parflete's decision. The theatre in England is a sport—not an art. In France it is an art, but," he added drily, "it ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... attempt to elaborate the conversation or to introduce any new theme. The scene which had promised to be so dramatic was actually dragging with uncomfortable silences. She waited long enough for him to speak, but when he remained silent—it was a sardonic silence to her—she rose from the chair with the manner of one who has determined to bring an interview to ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... darkly over the valley of death, and the muttering thunder that ever and anon reverberates faintly in the distance seems the sardonic chuckle of the demon of destruction as he pursues his way to other lands ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... him, the sardonic moon he had thought of as a friend. Her silver rim glimmered behind the Downs and was gone. He missed her. Cold she was, still she had been company. He thought she might have stayed—just this one night! He felt aggrieved, and very much alone. And those stars ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... and "the fathers of the inquisition might have reveled over the first twenty-five pages of this Protestant book, that actually blaze with the eloquent savagery and rapture of religious intolerance." He laughed in the midst of this declamation, but it was rather a sardonic laugh, and soon checked by fresh consideration of ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Samuel Butler; the chief interest of Butler, he further states, was in theology. Now I am a college professor without antipathy to Samuel Butler, with, on the contrary, the warmest admiration for his sardonic genius. And furthermore Butler's antipathy for college professors, which is supposed to have drawn their fire in return, is based upon a ruling passion far deeper than his accidental interest in theology, a passion that gives the tone and also the key to the best of his writings and which ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... bounded over the paving-stones and stopped at my hotel. The driver lifted his hat obsequiously. I, with sardonic smile, entered the hotel, where I was not unknown. No doubt was made as to the ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... so loud, Ahlmann," replied Von Barwig with a sardonic smile. "You laid too many cornerstones; your charities are too well known. You should have kept them a secret and not blazoned your generosity to the whole world. When you fed an orphan or a widow you shouldn't have ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... eyes, bright and piercing, contrasted strangely with the deadly pallor of his cheeks. A straggling grey moustache and beard partly concealed his mouth, which was set in a smile half mirthful and half sardonic. I put him down as the cure of a neighbouring hamlet, as he gave us the benediction, and invited us to join him, ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... develop into pessimism. And when prosiness curdles into pessimism the case of the patient is very grave. I heard a young fellow in his teens telling a much older man of his implicit faith in the providence of God. 'Yes,' said the senior, with a sardonic smile, 'I used to talk like that when I was your age!' I heard a young girl telling a woman old enough to be her mother of the rapture of her soul's experience. 'Ah!' replied the elder lady, 'You won't talk like that when you have seen as much of the world as I have!' Here, then, ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... Another silence. Presently he points with an expression meant to be sardonic at a distant farmhouse with ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... these things he walked out through one of the tall French windows and came towards her, followed by his dark, saturnine friend. They approached like men sure of a welcome, Sarle smiling in his disarmingly boyish fashion, the other man smiling too: but with a difference. There was some quality of sardonic amusement and curiosity in his glance that arrested April's ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... contempt at the passionate rhapsody. He knew a thing or two, he allowed, about these wonderful Roses of Sharon and this Song of Songs. Lies, all lies, every word of it! Yet, in spite of himself, from time to time, he liked to reread it. He fancied this was because of the sardonic pleasure its superlative phrases gave him, but the truth was it held him. He despised sentiment, tenderness, and, by the strangeness of the human mind, he went, by way of paradox, to the tenderest, most sublime spot in a book ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... miserble cuss of a husband. Iago cums in & his wife commences rakin him down also, when he stabs her. Otheller jaws him a spell & then cuts a small hole in his stummick with his sword. Iago pints to Desdemony's deth bed & goes orf with a sardonic smile onto his countenance. Otheller tells the peeple that he has dun the state some service & they know it; axes them to do as fair a thing as they can for him under the circumstances, & kills hisself with a fish-knife, which is the most sensible thing he can do. This is a breef skedule ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... promenade passed by her like marionettes, and she like another marionette responded, but there was no feeling in it at all. She might equally well have seen the whole lot of them, herself included, jerked by wires from a sardonic heaven that had no purpose, no plan—only such figures of thought were not within her scope; still the feeling was there, ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... plaster of one of the most sardonic of Notre Dame's gargoyles seemed to preside over everything—a terrible figure in such ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... and sending mirrors so that his own image might be available to all of the public and Earth officials who cared to look upon it. Within the circle of mirrors he stood drawn to his full height; his eyes flashing, heavy brows lowered, and a sardonic smile—almost a leer—pulling at his thin lips. The embodiment of defiance. Yet to those who knew him well—as I was beginning to know him—there was in his eyes a gleam of irony, as though even in this situation ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... This sardonic truth was brought home to him in a discussion with these young St. Justs. They pointed out his mistakes, impertinently enough, by comparing him to the "Astrologer who fell into ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... by Herresford!" cried Swinton, hotly. "This is some sardonic jest, in keeping with his donation of a thousand dollars to the Mission Hall, given with one hand and taken away with the other. It nearly landed me ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... long in the Russian service, with the approval of Napoleon), but Talleyrand was overwhelmed. He received the same office at Court which he had held under Napoleon, Grand Chamberlain, and afterwards remained a sardonic spectator of events, a not unimposing figure attending at the Court ceremonials and at the heavy dinners of the King, and probably lending a helping hand in 1830 to oust Charles X. from the throne. The Monarchy of July sent ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of warmth as negroes speak of ice," retorted the Count, with a sardonic smile. "Consider that the humblest daisy has more charms than the proudest and most gorgeous of the red hawthorns that attract us in spring by their strong scent and brilliant color.—At the same time," he went on, "I will do you justice. You have kept so precisely in the straight path ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... and shattering and ruining, when I heard Miellyn scream a warning and turned to see Evarin standing in the doorway. His green cat-eyes blazed with rage. Then he raised both hands in a sudden, sardonic gesture, and with a loping, inhuman glide, raced for ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... come away, while you receive Lou's cheery "See you again," and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems, somehow, to miss you and go fluttering like a white moth up over ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... with a carriage of the head which, for superciliousness, I never have seen equaled in man, woman, or beast. His war-cry was a tinny bleat: the cry of a soul bursting with sardonic merriment. It was like the Falstaffian laughter of the duck, without its ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... flew past, turned assiduously by Agnes, who took a sardonic delight in these performances, and every countenance in the room seemed to take a look of sharpened anxiety as to how the duet was to end, and who was ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sardonic side, and who was the first to catch sight of them when they reached the church, Mr. Knight tripping ahead, and Sir John hot with the exercise in the close, moist air, lumbering after him with his mouth open, compared them ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... of civilised men grown savage. He dealt with a life which we in a venerable and historic society may find it somewhat difficult to realise. It was the life of an entirely new people, a people who, having no certain past, could have no certain future. The strangest of all the sardonic jests that history has ever played may be found in this fact: that there is a city which is of all cities the most typical of innovation and dissipation, and a certain almost splendid vulgarity, and that this city bears the name in a quaint ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... walked up and down the room perturbed, he sometimes wiped tears from his eyes, and then set his teeth and compressed his lips. At last his face grew calm and settled in its expression, his mouth wore a sardonic smile; he came and took the letter, and, folding it leisurely, laid it on the table, and put a heavy paperweight over it, as if to hold it down and bury it. Then drawing to himself some maps of new territories, he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... minor character and with the violation of all poetic justice? From beginning to end it is the story of disillusion, for it sorts all humanity into two great classes, fools who are cheated and knaves who cheat. Some people think that Shakespeare wrote it in a gloomy, pessimistic mood, with the sardonic laughter of a disappointed, world-wearied man. Others, on rather doubtful grounds, believe it a covert satire on some of ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... A fierce sardonic laugh burst from the lips of the warrior, but this was so mingled with rage as to give an almost ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... wounding epithet and absurd detail repeated and emphasised; he had his own vanity and Huish's upon the grill, and roasted them; and as he spoke, he inflicted and endured agonies of humiliation. It was a plain man's masterpiece of the sardonic. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... have believed that any girl who had any of my blood in her veins could be guilty of such black treachery as to break faith with her betrothed husband, and wish to marry another, just for the snobbish ambition to be a duchess and be called 'her grace'!" said the Iron King, with all the sardonic scorn and hatred of any form of falsehood that was the one redeeming trait in ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... enjoy the sardonic metaphysics of the case with Putney. He said gravely that he had been talking of the matter with Dr. Morrell, and he had no doubt that there was a taint of insanity in every wrong-doer; some day he believed the law would ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... content as I broke the seal of the packet and brought out the enclosure. Somewhere in the garden a little sardonic laugh was clipt to silence. It came from groom or maid, no doubt; yet it thrilled me with an odd feeling of uncanniness, and I ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... an' we've both lost our property, to say nothin' of our prospects, mate," he said with a sardonic sneer, "but one comfort's left us, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... the flood and directing it to his will. Would his mastery be proven in this other and more personal affair? He set his teeth and redoubled his efforts, intent on proving his own power to himself. Even as Napoleon believed in his star, Gard trusted in his luck, and it was with a smothered laugh of sardonic satisfaction that news of the first move in his campaign came over ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... good-sized drawing-room to the modest mansion I had before visited. Whatever accession of comfort the house received within from this addition to its size, its beauty, externally, was not improved by it, and Mr. Rogers stood before the offending edifice, surveying it with a sardonic sneer that I should think even brick and mortar must have found it hard to bear. He had hardly uttered his three first disparaging bitter sentences, of utter scorn and abhorrence of the architectural abortion, which, indeed it was, when Mrs. Grote herself made her appearance in her usual ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... as his eyebrows went up and the corners of his mouth came down, with the faintest breath of a sardonic smile, while he lit a fresh ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... for he recognized the tone of sardonic scepticism, but he was horribly afraid of Hallam, and could not afford ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... awful scourge, especially if she be political. No male can equal her in refined aggressive cunning. She can circulate a filthy libel by writing a virtuous letter, and never a flaw will appear to trip her into responsibility for it. And her sardonic smile is an inarticulate revelation of all she wishes to convey. It is more than a mere oration. It emits the impression ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, "you've had three years at these things,—you must be pretty strong in 'em. Hadn't you better take up some line where ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... The individual may get justice. I hope he does. But mercy is kept for special occasions—few and far between. One must take things on the large scale. Then you find they dovetail very neatly," Knott continued, with a somewhat sardonic mirthfulness. The simplicity and perplexity of this handsome, kindly gentleman, amused him hugely. "But to return to Lord Denier—let alone my skill, that of the whole medical faculty put together couldn't have ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... studying with strained acuteness the big lymphatic mask of the Director, with sundry sharp glances aside at the Chairman. The nervous changes on his alert, meagre old face showed how intently he followed every phase of their talk. A certain sardonic perception of evil in the air curled on his lip when he saw the Marquis accede with a bow and wave of the hand to Thorpe's proposition. Then he made his bow in turn, and put the best ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... baffled and disappointed as Berrington was, all these feelings gave way to amazement as he looked around the room. Every sign of a body had disappeared, the room was empty save for Sartoris, who sat smoking a cigarette, with a sardonic smile on his face. All the others had gone, and the body was gone from the table; on the latter was a dark crimson cloth surmounted by a mass of flowers arranged tastefully around an electric stand. Sartoris laughed in an ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... With a sardonic smile Henry turned on his heel and pursued his way along the Quai towards that immense hotel where the League Secretariat lived and moved and had its being. He would interview some one there and try to secure a good place in the press gallery. The Secretariat officials were kind to journalists, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... determination to "be good for him," and a fear that he had "spent too much money on her to-night," and a plan to reason with him about whisky and extravagance. A sudden hatred of the office to which she would have to return in the morning, and a stronger, more sardonic hatred of hearing Mr. S. Herbert Ross pluck out his vest-pocket harp and hymn his own praise in a one-man choir, cherubic, but slightly fat. A descent from high gardens of moonlight to the reality of ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... expect him to rise into lofty enthusiasm or pure views of conduct. His poems are a most valuable adjunct to those of Juvenal; for perhaps, if we did not possess Martial, we might fancy that the former's sardonic bitterness had over-coloured his picture. As it is, these two friends illustrate and confirm each ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... fourth horseman, sharp as spurs, were pricking the ribs of the pale horse. His parchment-like skin betrayed the lines and hollows of his skeleton. The front of his skull-like face was twisted with the sardonic laugh of destruction. His cane-like arms were whirling aloft a gigantic sickle. From his angular shoulders was hanging a ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... face and then as suddenly faded out of it, leaving her very pale. She stood gazing at him, and the fingers of one hand quivered on the tray, which he still held. He was, as it happened, the first to recover himself, and there was a little sardonic gleam in his eyes as he lifted down one ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... ourselves—to be endued, for the time, with new energies. Our thoughts take wings rapid as our steed. We feel as if his fleetness and boundless impulses were for the moment our own. We laugh; we exult; we shout for very joy. We cry out with Mephistopheles, but in anything but a sardonic mood, "What I enjoy with spirit, is it the less my own on that account? If I can pay for six horses, are not their powers mine! I drive along, and am a proper man, as if I had four-and-twenty legs!" These were Turpin's sentiments precisely. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... alone with the young bandit who had before guarded me: he had the same gloomy air and haggard eye, with now and then a bitter sardonic smile. I was determined to probe this ulcerated heart, and reminded him of a kind of promise he had given me to tell me the cause of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... answer. But somebody led Coburn into an office where this carrier's skipper was at his desk. He looked at Coburn with a sardonic, ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... walked the way he proposed. Every time he would be near the garden, he would cough in such a noisy and sardonic way that the Heir, who was sitting with Derevenko on the bench would turn his long, pensive face, and his old sailor guardian would look with hatred ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... general laugh at this, and with that laugh Peter knew that all hope of more fighting was gone. He bade them a sardonic good-night, hooked his arm through the orator's (who actually showed signs of an intention to resume his speech), and bore ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... told, with his back to his hearers,— Keeping his hand on the wheel and his eye on the globe of the jack-staff, Holding the boat to the shore and out of the sweep of the current, Lightly turning aside for the heavy logs of the drift-wood, Widely shunning the snags that made us sardonic obeisance. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... of the eyes gleamed as they moved like the enamel eyes of certain antique bronze heads. His moustache, which was harsh and black and cut evenly like the bristles of a brush, shadowed a coarse and sardonic mouth. He appeared to be about forty, or rather more. In his whole appearance there was something disagreeably hybrid and morose, that indefinable air of viciousness which belongs to the later generations of bastard races brought up in the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... well as he knows it. But now, among the crowd, when men are turning their horses' heads to the wind, and loud questions are being asked, and false answers are being given, and the ambitious men are congratulating themselves on their deeds, he sits by listening in sardonic silence. "Twelve miles of ground !" he says to himself, repeating the words of some valiant youngster; "if it's eight, I'll eat it." And then when he hears, for he is all ear as well as all eye, ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... investigating the less admirable traits of human beings amused her. She was infinitely amused by her nephew and her niece, but often spiteful to them, merely because they were young. To sum up, she was a cynic, a rake, an excellent literary critic, a sardonic and brilliant novelist, and she had a passionate, adoring and protecting affection for Neville, who was the only person who had always been told what she called the darker secrets ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... sped up to them. Sitting in it was a fat man of middle age, with pendulous jowls and a totally bald head. His expression was a sardonic scowl. ...
— Double Take • Richard Wilson
... colonel, eyeing him with a certain sardonic approval, "I should suggest that henceforward we wear green coats, instead of black. One never knows what mistakes may arise when one looks so ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... that he had sent Larry crashing to the floor. I heard his sardonic laugh as he hurled a metal stool at Tina, who was trying to throw something at him. Then, turning, he sprang through the open ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... so sure," replied Brett, with a flash of sardonic humour, the significance of which ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... mention how the idea had been brought to him, so that his friends not unnaturally counted it as another of Harry's many happy, but usually impracticable, thoughts. But in this instance Mayhew made his personality felt, for the character of the paper, instead of partaking of that acidulated, sardonic satire which was distinctive of Philipon's journal, on which it was to have been modelled, took its tone from Mayhew's genial temperament, and from the first became, or aimed at becoming, a budget of wit, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... their poetry. "The Funeral of John Bixby," by Stephen Vincent Benet, and "The Duke's Opera," by "Jacques Belden" (the first an allegorical fantasy and the second a poetic-romance) are at the head of this division. With these should be included Don Marquis's "Death and Old Man Murtrie," for its sardonic allegory, and "The Designs of Miramon," by James Branch Cabell, for its social satire. Individual members of the Committee would have liked to include these—different members preferring different ones of the four—but ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... very good friends. With Dr. Monygham, the medical pastor, who had accepted the charge from Mrs. Gould, and lived in the hospital building, they were on not so intimate terms. But no one could be on intimate terms with El Senor Doctor, who, with his twisted shoulders, drooping head, sardonic mouth, and side-long bitter glance, was mysterious and uncanny. The other two authorities worked in harmony. Father Roman, dried-up, small, alert, wrinkled, with big round eyes, a sharp chin, and a great snuff-taker, was an old campaigner, too; he had ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... place of the Revolving Beryl, there was no one there—and a feeling of dread, all encompassing, held them thralled for the space of several heart-beats. Dalis, they knew, was thousands of miles away, upon the Moon; yet here in the place of the Master Beryl they all three had just heard his sardonic laughter! ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... up again, and his face was sardonic, for the moment almost grim. "Yes, quite sure of that, my dear. Moreover,—it will amuse me to meet the virtuous Jake on his own ground for once. A new sensation, Nonette! Will you help me to face him? Or do you prefer the more early-Victorian role of the lady who retires till the combat ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... the conversation could not proceed on the strenuous level on which it had been during the walk into Tercanbury, and they fell upon a gay discussion of their common acquaintance. Alec was a man of strong passions, hating fools fiercely, and he had a sardonic manner of gibing at persons he despised, which caused ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... his goddess of poesy fickle after the advent of the pitifully belated fortune. Mr. Stedman spoke a far truer word on this subject. "Poets," he said, "in spite of the proverb, sing best when fed by wage or inheritance." "'Tis the convinced belief of mankind," wrote Francis Thompson with a sardonic smile, "that to make a poet sing you must pinch his belly, as if the Almighty had constructed him like certain rudimentarily vocal dolls." "No artist," declares Arnold Bennett, "was ever assisted in his career by the yoke, by servitude, by enforced ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... the salad. That picture, rising before my eyes, didn't give me much confidence in the unfortunate goof's ability to woo and win, I must say. Especially if the girl he had earmarked was one of these tough modern thugs, all lipstick and cool, hard, sardonic ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... there was nothing Dog-like about Beppo. He laughed high-keyed, sardonic laughter; he scolded, he quavered, he pleaded, he was finally choked with sobs; while as for his wife, she, poor little wisplike body, early succumbed to whatever is ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... time through the day he regarded that poster with a sardonic eye. He had pitilessly resolved not to repeat the folly of the previous month. To say that this moral victory cost him nothing would be to deprive it of merit. It cost him many internal struggles. It ...
— Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... it to thee," said the latter, with the cold, sardonic expression peculiar to him, "that Richard would burst through the flimsy wiles you spread for him, as would a lion through a spider's web. Thou seest he has but to speak, and his breath agitates these fickle fools as easily as the whirlwind catcheth scattered ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... never have been anywhere but in the clouds. I explained that when the weather is foggy I walk in clouds, and that when the cloud is condensed it rains. At all such reasoning, being above his comprehension, he only laughed with a sardonic smile. Still less was he satisfied with my explanation how watery bubbles may be lifted into the air. He insisted that the clouds were solid bodies, reinforced his assertion with a text of Scripture, silenced me by authority, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... Mavick ball had a peculiar interest for at least two people in New York. Murad Ault read them with a sardonic smile and an enjoyment that would not have been called altruistic. Philip searched them with the feverish eagerness of a maiden who scans the report of a battle in which her lover ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to look at the world as through a glass. Yet not altogether darkly be it said. That is, I trust I am no cynic like that fellow Diogenes who set the fashion centuries ago of turning up the nose at everything. I have a natural sunniness of disposition which would, I believe, be proof against the sardonic fumes of contemplation even though I ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... drowsily through the second, and from the shades of dreamland in the third. Between the acts he lounged in the lobbies and heard the critics speak with sneering derision of the complimentary notices of the American Nightingale which they were about to write, while they expressed, with sardonic smiles, a longing for the day when they would be "allowed"—such was their singular expression—to "speak the truth about Miss KELLOGG as a prima donna." And while he sat with closed eyes during the third act, wondering whether he should believe the critics in the flesh, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... on her way home, cutting black and sinister into the wake of the moon under a sable wing, while to them our sail must have been a vision of white and dazzling radiance. Without altering the course a hair's breadth we slipped by each other within an oar's length. A drawling, sardonic hail came out of her. Instantly, as if by magic, our dozing pilots got on their feet in a body. An incredible babel of bantering shouts burst out, a jocular, passionate, voluble chatter, which lasted till the boats were stern to stern, theirs all bright now, and, with a shining ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... preoccupied, crossed the room to his cipher map, and ran his finger down a certain line of hieroglyphics till he found what he sought, and paused to read one passage carefully, twice. Then, when his face had straightened till his lips actually stretched themselves into the semblance of a sardonic smile, he dropped the subject of his thoughts, returned to the table, and made himself some tea. Glass after glass of this he drank, steaming hot. But no solid food passed his lips; and in twenty minutes ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... was Estelle the dancer, with whom Emile allowed her a slight acquaintance. He neither approved of women in general nor of their friendships. Estelle was the bonne amie of the sardonic Manager, who occasionally beat her, after which ceremony it was her custom to drink absinthe. Sometimes, for this reason, she was unable to appear on the stage. She would come into Arithelli's dressing room and weep, and smoke innumerable ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... before rejoining them. It was then that the unfortunate incident occurred. There was no love lost between Lowes-Parlby and Mr. Sandeman. It is difficult to ascribe the real reason of their mutual animosity, but on the several occasions when they had met there had invariably passed a certain sardonic by-play. They were both clever, both comparatively young, each a little suspect and jealous of the other; moreover, it was said in some quarters that Mr. Sandeman had had intentions himself with regard to Lord Vermeer's daughter, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... Austro-Hungarian Government—playing the role of the wicked partner of the combination—"in full appreciation of our mediatory activity," (so says the German "White Paper" with sardonic humor,) replied to this proposition that, coming as it did after the opening of hostilities, "it ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... and Judy if I'm near it," said Telford. "I enjoy the sardonic humor with which Punch hustles off his victims. His light-heartedness when doing bloody deeds is ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... slightly sardonic grin on his face the Senior Surgeon resumed his pacing. Up and down,—round and ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott |
