"Sardonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 him ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... though he's only sixteen—clean-limbed and perfect—but for one thing"—He stopped. He met her quick look of interrogation, however, with a lowering silence that, nevertheless, changed again as he surveyed her erect figure by the faint light of the window with a sardonic smile. "He favors you, I think, and in all but one ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... mocked him with a sardonic laugh, and sought to tighten upon his shoulders its bony grasp; but Kirkwood resolutely shrugged it off and went in search of man's most faithful dumb friend, to wit, his pipe; the which, when found and ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... a man of the world. His wife was a woman of great nobility of character and also of considerable mental power. She combined the qualities of a self- sacrificing and devoted mother with a certain ironic, or even sardonic, touch. She was a daughter of Mr. Tattersall, the owner of Tattersall's sale-rooms, and at her father's house she had become acquainted in the latter part of the 'fifties and the early 'sixties with all the great sporting characters of that epoch. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Yetta's rich fellow. Wait until she gets through with him—poor devil." These broken phrases made him shiver, especially as Yetta's expression, at first enigmatic, was now openly sardonic. What did she mean? Was she only tormenting him? Was this to be his test, his trial? His head was almost splitting, for the heat was great and the air bad. Again ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... 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 ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... go. It seemed in keeping with the destiny of the man. And it completed the sardonic picture. It was all fated, as the Gaelic people say.... I saw no ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... figure by his side. The stranger was tall and thin, and attired in a dusky cloak which only partially concealed a flame-coloured jerkin. A cock's feather peaked up in his cap; his eyes were piercingly brilliant; his nose was aquiline; the expression of his features sinister and sardonic. Had Otto been more observant, or less preoccupied, he might have noticed that the stranger's left shoe was of a peculiar form, and that he limped some little with ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... on which he stood—and then those faces. The priests, still crouched in corners, rolling on the ground, their white lips muttering who knows what; the sacristan in a swoon, Hague Simon hugging a coffin in a niche, as a drowning man hugs a plank, and, standing in the midst of them, calm, sardonic and watchful, a drawn rapier in his hand, his ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the universe" is reported to have been a favorite utterance of our New England transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller; and when some one repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment is said to have been: "Gad! she'd better!" At bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? Shall ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... 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 monotony, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... of Briony Lodge was open, and an elderly woman stood upon the steps. She watched us with a sardonic eye as ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... in his eye. Moore looked as if he should have liked to fool him to the top of his bent. What would a certain young kinswoman of his have said could she have seen her dear, good, great Robert—her Coriolanus—just now? Would she have acknowledged in that mischievous, sardonic visage the same face to which she had looked up with such love, which had bent over her with such gentleness last night? Was that the man who had spent so quiet an evening with his sister and his cousin—so suave to one, so tender to the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... sardonic frankness). No, truly; for the truest politics show the most feigning; and Tories are given to politics; and what they swear, in politics, may be said, as Tories, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... were to do so, Crackenfudge," replied the baronet, with a grim, sardonic smile, or rather a sneer, "I assure you, that such a measure would become a very general and heavy impost upon the country. But goodby, now; I shall remember your wishes as touching the magistracy. You shall have J. P. after your name, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... glanced behind at the only other passenger, a man of consular mould, and then looked at Stover in sardonic amusement. ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... the elder D'Avenant's Oxford hostelry. The report ran that "he was exceedingly respected" in the house, and was freely admitted to the inn-keeper's domestic circle. The inn-keeper's wife was credited with a mercurial disposition which contrasted strangely with her husband's sardonic temperament; it was often said in Oxford that Shakespeare not merely found his chief attraction at the Crown Inn in the wife's witty conversation, but formed a closer intimacy with her than moralists would ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... to see the Phoenician bending over them with a sardonic smile, and behind him the tall form of Issachar, who stood regarding them, his arms folded on ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... there appeared to be a secret enjoyment of one another's infirmities, wherefore it was hard to tell, unless that each individual might fancy himself to possess an advantage over his fellow, which he mistook for a positive strength; and so there was sometimes a sardonic smile, when, on rising from his seat, the rheumatism was a little evident in an old fellow's joints; or when the palsy shook another's fingers so that he could barely fill his pipe; or when a cough, the gathered spasmodic trouble of thirty years, fairly convulsed ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with a sardonic smile, but when his wife, after waiting for her to be quite gone, came out to ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... then he tried to throw me down and fall upon me. But we had twisted and my back was to the cliff. The rocks were shoving at us, insistently pushing with almost a living movement. Polter staggered with me. His grip on my throat tightened, shutting off my breath. My senses whirled. His grim sardonic face over me was blurred to my sight. I tore futilely at my throat to break his choking grip. All the world was a roaring chaos to my fading senses. Then in the blur I saw horror sweep his expression. His fingers involuntarily ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... his relations disclaim—this I know from my aunt Mrs. Smollett, who was the wife of his nephew, and resided with him at Bath." But one thing we do know, and in these same letters, if confirmation had been needed, we observe the statement repeated, namely, that Smollett was very peevish. A sardonic, satirical, and indeed decidedly gloomy mood or temper had become so habitual in him as to transform the man. Originally gay and debonnair, his native character had been so overlaid that when he first returned to Scotland in 1755 his own mother could not ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... either fire, passion, or tenderness; but never wanted propriety, dignity, and a certain stately grace. Sir Pertinax McSycophant and Iago were the best things I ever saw him act, probably because the sardonic element in both of them gave partial ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... college tutors has not greatly altered in two hundred years. I have known one or two capable of the sardonic touch in those concluding words. But conceive its effect upon the squire's lady and daughters! No: you need not trouble to do so, for the squire describes it: "When the tutor was gone out of the room, I asked how they liked the person and his ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and fresh it was at our suburban station, when the train, speeding away with a sardonic yell over the misery of the passengers yet standing up in it, left us to walk across the quiet fields and pleasant lanes to Benicia Street, through groups of little idyllic Irish boys playing base-ball, with milch-goats here and there ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... there dwelt a very seraph. Then, again, he is so sly, and still so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness, towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter, sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,—that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... black book and made a dot in the lower left-hand corner of a certain square opposite the name of Burton. "Perhaps," he added, "you had better go over it again," and smiled the same smile, which would have been sardonic but for the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... 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
... Virtue menaced with outrage by the approach of flaunting Vice. The reprobate appears in the doorway, graced beyond his alleged merits by the morning sunlight. He is certainly the best looking member of the family; but his expression is reckless and sardonic, his manner defiant and satirical, his dress picturesquely careless. Only his forehead and mouth betray an extraordinary steadfastness, and his eyes are the eyes ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... had the satisfaction of restoring her in a few minutes to her friends, who did all they could, by crowding round her with ill-timed condolements, to prevent her recovery. By this time the rest of the ladies took warning from these little misadventures to retire. Caustic, in his sardonic way, would insist upon it, that they retired to avoid that exposure of defects in beauty, which the first ray of morning produces. I took my conge among the rest, and found the hubbub which attended my entrance, increased to a tenfold degree ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Maxwell looked up and saw her standing on the river-bank above him. She did not stay to parley, but with lifted skirt hurried up the steep meadow, through the sun-flecked shadows of the elm-trees, towards the path. When she was half-way up a harsh, sardonic laugh sounded behind her, and instinctively she looked back. Maxwell ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... conditions in Ireland, it must, say Sinn Feiners, find out the cause. So they have pondered on this question: What is the cause of the unemployment in Ireland today? The answer to that question was the one point that the sharp-mustached, sardonic little Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Fein, wanted the American delegates from the Philadelphia Race Convention to carry back ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... afraid of him the farmer was, even in his helpless condition. But he could not flatter himself that he had inspired any terror in Luke Robbins. Against his will he was compelled to pay tribute to the resolute courage of the Quaker detective. As he met the gaze of the farmer he smiled to himself sardonic ally. ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... at the table round, and piped the only lines ever written by Mrs. Lora Rewbush which Penrod Schofield could have pronounced without loathing. Georgie Bassett, a really angelic boy, had been selected for the role of Mordred. His perfect conduct had earned for him the sardonic sobriquet, "The Little Gentleman," among his boy acquaintances. (Naturally he had no friends.) Hence the other boys supposed that he had been selected for the wicked Mordred as a reward of virtue. He ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... for his prey, with a dark sardonic smile on his ill-favoured countenance, and return to Marguerite, who is waiting in the granary for her lover, confident that "all is well," and having no thoughts but pleasant ones concerning the coming ...
— Legend of Moulin Huet • Lizzie A. Freeth
... What awful conceptions were formed in my fevered brain! What leering, sardonic faces pictured themselves against the black wall; what demon voices spoke and laughed in the void above! At times I stood in a cave thronged with jeering devils, some with the savage countenance of the heathen, some yet more satanic; yet ever in the midst of their maddest orgies, the cruel mockery ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... and of my flight from Henrietta, not forgetting the generosity of the cashier in the dairy lunch-room. She listened in silence, and when I had finished I thought I saw the repression of a smile, which may or may not have been of the sardonic order. Then she motioned me to follow her through the long, gloomy hall to the rear of the house, where, turning an angle, we came to a staircase down which a flood of sunlight streamed from the big ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... tales and a retailer of humorous anecdotes, must not be taken as an isolated and transient transformation, but as foreshadowing a general conversion of writers and publicists hitherto associated with utterances of a mordant, bitter, sardonic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... Commentaries. It appeared in James the Second's reign, and is the work of Sir Paul Rycaut, Knight. It was printed at London in 1688, in folio, with considerable pretension in its outward dress, well garnished with wood-cuts, and a frontispiece displaying the gaunt and rather sardonic features, not of the author, but his translator. The version keeps pace with the march of the original, corresponding precisely in books and chapters, and seldom, though sometimes, using the freedom, so common in these ancient versions, of abridgment and omission. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the editor. "Don't be too diffuse, but see that you miss nothing. What is that paper in front of you?" He took the paper from Desmond O'Connor's hands and held it at arm's length, while a sardonic smile ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... their eyes met hers as if with an unfaltering love and comprehension. And on the dressing-table was a photograph of Gregory; the new thing in her life; the thing that menaced the old. She went and took it up, and Gregory's face, too, was suddenly strange to her; cold, hard, sardonic. She wondered, gazing at it, that she had never seen before how cold and hard it was. Quickly undressing she lay down and closed her eyes. A succession of images passed with processional steadiness before her mind; the carriage in the Forest of Fontainebleau ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Nam; "all is prepared for them also": and as he spoke a sardonic smile flickered on his withered countenance that made Leonard feel very uncomfortable. What was prepared, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... bark of laughter colored only by the most sardonic humor. "Clever enough. He merely leaves it to us to select our own ghost and then repeat the performance in the next proper setting. I wonder how many rocks shaped like that one there are in these mountains? And how long will a rock ape continue to ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... still 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 he reseated himself and set about the writing of two ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... and opened up the cellars by destroying 150 square feet of ground-floor: ten people were in the cellars, and none was hurt. Uninjured signs of cafes and shops, such as "The Good Hope," "The Success of the Day," meet your gaze with sardonic calm. ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... mingled much that was dull and tiresome; and it was in a special degree irritating to me that, as often as I turned the conversation upon music, and particularly upon singing, he was sure to interrupt me, with that sardonic smile upon his face and those repulsive singing tones of his, by some remark of a quite opposite tendency, very often of a commonplace character. From the great distress which at such times Antonia's glances betrayed, I perceived that he only did ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... giggled confusedly, and looked for assistance to a sardonic Boer whom she was going to marry, who shook his head sadly, indicating thereby that these were mysteries into which it was not well to pry. Thrown on her own resources, she plunged into the recesses of an intricate calculation, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... all that was pedantic in Oxford, and to nominate in Freeman's room the writer that Freeman had spent the best years of his life in "belabouring." Some critics attributed the selection to Lord Salisbury's sardonic humour, or pronounced that, as Lamb said of Coleridge's metaphysics, "it was only his fun." Some stigmatised it as a party job. Gladstone's nominee Freeman, had been a Home Ruler, Froude was a Unionist; what could be clearer than the motive? But both nominations could be defended on their own ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... a suspicion of something sardonic in the tone of acquiescence; but there was no other intimation of his feeling. I began to think that as I was in the presence of a strong man, I should show something of my own strength. My friends, and sometimes my opponents, say that I am a strong man. In my ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... 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 reflection, thought that the necessary ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... they called the Tavern Knight laughed an evil laugh—such a laugh as might fall from the lips of Satan in a sardonic moment. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... halting lamely along, thou noticest next Bishop Talleyrand-Perigord, his Reverence of Autun. A sardonic grimness lies in that irreverent Reverence of Autun. He will do and suffer strange things; and will become surely one of the strangest things ever seen, or like to be seen. A man living in falsehood, and on falsehood; yet not what you can call a false man: there is the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... suitable thing you could do," he answered composedly. All the softened feeling of a few moments ago had vanished: he seemed to have relapsed into his usual sardonic humour, putting a barrier between himself and her that set ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... ill-flavored shed their sweets around, And bitterest roots invade the ungenial ground, Whose gems are crystals from the Epsom mine, Whose vineyards flow with antimonial wine, Whose gates admit no mirthful feature in, Save one gaunt mocker, the Sardonic grin, Whose pangs are real, not the woes of rhyme That blue-eyed misses warble out of time;— Truant, not recreant to thy sacred claim, Older by reckoning, but in heart the same, Freed for a moment from the chains of toil, I tread once more thy consecrated soil; Here at thy feet my old ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... page of a girl's existence, and written there the fatal finis? If she died, could he escape the moral responsibility of having been her murderer? Amid the ebb and flow of conflicting emotions, one grim fact stared at him with sardonic significance. If he had ruined her life, retribution promptly exacted a costly forfeit; and his happiness was destined to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... blinking the matter; the fact was obvious; the girl was hopelessly and utterly compromised; and he, aided certainly by untoward circumstances—for the sardonic interference of which, in such circumstances, a man of sense usually allows—he had done it. They had had their "holiday," without taking thought for the morrow, in the way approved by boys and dogs and creatures without experience. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... 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 ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... man gave a low, mirthless laugh. The picture of the girl he disliked so intensely, writhing in the great hands of the brute opposite him, appealed to the elder's sardonic humor. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... a bit more, and not a bit less sardonic—it was this imperturbability which made him so resistless to most people—than he was prior to the banishment of The Sidney Duck, the Sheriff of Manzaneta County waited patiently until the returning puppets of his will had had time to compose themselves. ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... have all ridden as 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, when he hears a slight boast from one of his late unfortunate ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... MARTELLUS [with a short sardonic cachinnation] Ha! My beard was three and a half feet long when I was born; and a flash of lightning burnt it off and killed the ancient who was delivering me. Without a hair on my chin I became the greatest ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... roll of fame), you see him perched on mantel, bracket, ecritoire, and bookcase: in short, their effigies are as common as the plaster figures of Shakspeare and Milton are in England. How far the rising generation of France may profit by their household memorials—or the sardonic and satanic smile of their great poet—we will not pretend to determine; neither do we invite any comparison; although Voltaire, with all his trickseyings and panting after fame, never inculcated so sublime a lesson ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... sardonic laugh). "So long silent!" I like that. Sorry to disappoint you, my dear Mamma, but that phonograph, as a domestic stimulant, was played out long ago—it has played me out often enough! Perhaps you don't know it, but really VIOLA has rather overdone it. Whenever ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... hovels. We got out of the gharry and clambered into dwellings airy like packing crates, or descended into places sinister like cellars. We got in, we drove on, we got out again for the sole purpose, as it seemed, of looking behind a heap of rubble. The sun declined; my companion was curt and sardonic in his answers, but it appears we were just missing Johnson all along. At last our conveyance stopped once more with a jerk, and the driver jumping down opened ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... another sardonic chuckle, "I rather think you'll earn all you get. Of course fifteen hundred dollars a year isn't a large salary, it isn't a sea captain's wage and share—not such a captain as you've been, Kendrick. But, as I see it, you can't go to sea for a year or two at ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the incident, which, since she came of a sporting family, seemed to her slightly ridiculous. Sure enough the little man came pounding behind with his breeches dusty; looked thoroughly annoyed; and was being helped to mount by a policeman when Julia Eliot, with a sardonic smile, turned towards the Marble Arch on her errand of mercy. It was only to visit a sick old lady who had known her mother and perhaps the Duke of Wellington; for Julia shared the love of her sex for the distressed; liked to visit ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... in taking on another man, it strikes me. But that's not my business. You say you found out?" She shows her admirably preserved teeth in a little grin of sardonic contempt—"nearly a year after your marriage. Don't tell me your husband let you go on burning joss-sticks to Beau's angelic memory when he might have made you spit on it by ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... era that had nothing to do with me, for its affairs were not mine, I was inside a submarine, during the War, talking to her commander. He was unravelling for me the shining complexity of his "box of tricks," as he called his ship. He was sardonic (there was no doubt he was master of the brute he so lightly villified), and he was blithe, and he illustrated his scientific monologue with stories of his own experiences in the Heligoland Bight. These, to me, were like the bedevilments of those dreams from which we ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... that would have been sardonic, were it not for a few lines around the corners of his eyes which belied any sinister suspicion, spread grimly across the big man's face as he stood looking down on Harry King in the dusk of the unlighted shed. The younger man rose quickly from ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... always challenging, yet always repulsing. Guarding their secrets well. Their rock walls and mighty precipices frowning displeasure at the presumptuous meddling of the intruder, and their valleys gaping in sardonic grins at the puny attempts to wrest their secret from them. Always, the mountains mock, even as they stimulate to greater effort with their wonderful air, and soothe bitter disappointment with the soft caress of twilight's after-glow. I love it—and yet, how I hate it all! I can't hold ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... the letters with nervous haste into the box. Then she looked up at him appealingly. In the brightness of the starry night she saw that his face had a sardonic, meditative smile. The middle part of the lower lip was pushed out, while the corners were pulled down—an expression of scornful disgust. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... How would Sir Knight set to work to slay or expel the obnoxious dragon? Harrington felt mildly curious despite his sardonic emotions, and while he took mental note of what was taking place around him he contrived to keep an eye on his censors. He had observed that the young man's face while she talked to him had worn ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... a few gleams of humor among these grim recounts. It was always tinged with the sardonic. Pitard, moralist and pedant, staying at the Bearnais court, fell into a dispute with a ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... of Mr. Arthur Wenlock, whose "As Down of Thistle" showed considerable promise, though perhaps his subtle vein of sardonic philosophy escaped due recognition. As its name denotes, the interest in the new novel is largely military; in every line the soldier, with his nice sense of honour, his virility, and his direct methods, stands revealed. "The Countermine" is certainly a most thrilling tale, and should raise ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... previously missed their mark—albeit now that the proa was near, it was strange that they could not pick off the pirate leader, who, as the proa sheered up alongside the Silver Queen, looked up at us astern and grinned a horrible sardonic grin, drawing the while his solitary left hand across his bare tawny throat with a ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... news philosophically enough, with some rather sardonic remark about my patient and me being well qualified to keep each other company. But to my mother it was a flash of joy, followed by a thunderclap of consternation. I had only three under-shirts, the best of my ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... can stay.... Summum jus, summa injuria—to drive an abstract right to excess is to commit injustice.... Extreme anarchy and extreme despotism lead to one another. Pride comes before a fall. Too much wit outwits itself. Joy brings tears, melancholy a sardonic smile.'[5] To which one well might add that most human institutions, by the purely technical and professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by becoming obstacles to the very purposes which their ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... of the kind that refuses to envisage the future at all. It has not said: "We shall be beaten." But it has groaned and looked gloomy, and asked mute questions with its eyes. It has resented confident faith and demanded with sardonic superiority the reasons ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... carried this Gallic vein to an extreme in shameless imitations of The School for Women and The Misanthrope (The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer); delightful Congreve, a far more amusing companion—witty, spiritual, sardonic, writing excellently, knowing how to create a type and charming his contemporaries whilst not failing to write for posterity in his Old Bachelor, Love for Love, and ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... black eyes, long black hair, brushed behind the ears, and thin, sallow cheeks, were not agreeable; but they made up a striking physiognomy. The black eyes glittered with a sullen fire; the thin lips were wreathed with a sardonic smile; and I was informed that the youth lived the life of a solitaire, voluntarily absenting himself from society, to give his days and nights to ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... an antipathy for 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 ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... mental as well as physical anguish, and laughter denoted a mixed pleasurable feeling either in mind or body. There is a remarkable instance of this transference from the senses to the emotional feelings in the case of what is called sardonic laughter, in which a similar contortion of countenance to that caused by the pungency of a Sardinian herb is considered to denote a certain moral acerbity. Here there is an analogy established between the senses and emotions in their outward manifestation, just as there is in language in the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Massachusetts' answer would have been 'Yes.' I believe I said that. The men of Illinois believe I did not say it. The men of Illinois believe that when I sat down after making the few remarks I did, that I had a sardonic smile on my lips and they say that I have insulted them to the heart and I say to them: 'If there is anything that I can say, anything that I can do, as soldier to soldier to remove from your mind, or from the minds of any man who may have been in this theater, any belief that there was any ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... glorifying of goodness, than is the work of recent Positivist emulators of the achievements of George Eliot. Some romances of this school are vivid and highly finished pictures of human misery, unredeemed by hope, and hardly brightened by occasional gleams of humour, of the sardonic sort which may stir a mirthless smile, but never a laugh. Herein they are far inferior to their model, whose melancholy philosophy is half hidden from her readers by the delightful freshness and truth of her "Dutch painter's" portraying of every-day humanity, by her delicately ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... declamatory inscription on the tomb, but nothing warned him of her presence. He remained indifferent, looking curiously at the adjoining graves, filled with a monstrous desire to laugh, seeing in death only his sardonic ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... satirist at all is to necessitate his own definition of satire, "smilingly to tell the truth." At least in his riper work, there is no trace of bitterness. He laughs with some purpose and to some purpose, but his laughter is not sardonic. Sane judgment and generous experience tell him that the foibles of mankind are his own as well as theirs, and are not to be changed by so slight a means as a railing tongue. He reflects that what in himself has produced no very disastrous ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... sardonic disposition of Mr. Greville to stare around him at the whole company in curious silence, she felt a defiance against his aristocracy beat in every pulse; for, however grandly he might look back to the long ancestry of the Brookes and the Grevilles, she had a glowing ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... by nature, and already mottled with grey. The man's face expressed rather knavery than vice, and a disposition to sharpness, cunning, and roguery, more than the traces of stormy and indulged passions. His sharp quick black eyes, acute features, ready sardonic smile, promptitude and effrontery, gave him altogether what is called among the vulgar a knowing look, which generally implies a tendency to knavery. At a fair or market, you could not for a moment have doubted that he ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... more, hearing the shout of demoniacal laughter which arose from some of the fighting men, noting a ferociously sardonic grin upon not a few faces, Laurence felt his former misgivings all return. Accustomed as he was to perilous situations, to horrifying sights, the strain upon his nerves was becoming painfully intense. Fortunate, indeed, for him that those nerves were now hardened to the cold ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... dislike Burns. Some aver that he did not have a gun in his hand that day, and that he was wounded by accident, happening to get between the two lines. Others admit the fact of his carrying a gun into the fight, but tell you, with a sardonic smile, that his "motives were questionable." Some, who are eager enough to make money on his picture, sold against his will, and without profit to him, will tell you in confidence, after you have purchased it, that "Burns ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... saw on the dark sardonic face, as the red gleams lighted it, made her start convulsively, as if she would go to him; then controlling herself, she stood silent. He had not seen the movement,—or, if he saw, did not heed it. He did not care to tame her now. The firelight ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... spirits, infinite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge." He quietly took his seat for Middlesex in 1782, and eight years afterwards the resolutions against him were erased from the Journals of the House. He died in 1797, at his house in Grosvenor Square. Wilkes' sallow face, sardonic squint, and projecting jaw, are familiar to us from Hogarth's terrible caricature. He generally wore the dress of a colonel of the militia—scarlet and buff, with a cocked hat and rosette, bag wig, and military boots, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... a sardonic look, there was a savage edge to his tongue, yet his face was flushed with devouring emotion and he was quivering with hope. That which he called love was flooding the field of his feelings, and the mad thing—the toxic impulse which is deep in the brain ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... eagerness, sardonic delight, sinister anticipation thrilling from him—and my same glance showed Marakinoff, crouched, biting his finger-nails, glaring at the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... 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 ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... belonged to the fierce class of anti-slavery men who were inspired by humane sympathy with the slave and righteous abhorrence of slavery, but also by hatred of the slaveholder. What he himself seemed to enjoy most in his talk was his sardonic humor, which he made play upon men and things like lurid freaks of lightning. He shot out such sallies with a fearfully serious mien, or at least he accompanied them with a grim smile which was not at all like Abraham Lincoln's hearty laugh at his ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... "nothing could be further from my thoughts than to insult you, or to treat you in any way with disrespect. And I will not acknowledge that anything you can say can convey an insult to myself." Lira smiled in a sardonic fashion. "But," added Nino, "if it would give you any pleasure to fight, and if you have weapons, I shall be happy to oblige you. It is a quiet spot, as you say, and it shall never be said that an Italian artist refused to fight a ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... 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
... the "Northern hireling," she had been met with official brusqueness, contemptuous silence, or aggrieved indignation,—but nothing so exasperating as this. She even fancied that this elegant but sardonic-looking soldier was mocking her. She bit her red lip, but, with a scornful gesture ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... not the 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 hypocrites all, and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... unscrupulous as they were, while, at the same time, he was rather better versed in legal tricks and stratagems, so that he could give them apt counsel in any emergency. A countenance more replete with cunning and knavery than that of Lupo Vulp, it would be difficult to discover. A sardonic smile hovered perpetually about his mouth, which was garnished with ranges of the keenest and whitest teeth. His features were sharp; his eyes small, set wide apart, of a light gray colour, and with all the slyness of a ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... from his throne, a magnificent, but a sardonic figure for all that. As he rose, soft, weird music came from an angle where a screen of palm-ferns was placed. Though mechanical, the music was of ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... in a panic, trying to make her mouth form words. She saw her sister's sardonic expression and Mrs. Ahearn's face turning a vivid red. Ahearn was looking down ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... had not that effect on the Court. The ladies-in-waiting resented the prospect of having to acknowledge a new Royalty the greater part of whose existence had been spent under water. The Courtiers shrugged their shoulders with sardonic resignation. In vain the Crown Prince attempted to carry off his secret uneasiness by clapping them on the back and saying, "You haven't seen Princess Forelle yet, you know, dear boy. When you do, you'll agree that she's a regular little ripper—what?" They made it ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... "I—I drank myself to sleep last night, Miss Bell. When the candle flickered out I thought that it was all over—curious sensation. This morning," he added, looking through his half-closed eyelashes with sardonic stage effect, ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... There was the fetid powder of stramonium, that grips the lungs like an asthma; and quinia, that shakes its victims like the cold hand of the miasma of the Pontine marshes. The essence of poppies, ten times sublimated, a few grains of which bring on the stupor of apoplexy; and the sardonic plant, that kills its victim with the frightful laughter of madness ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... laughed, a bitter, sardonic laugh which he had acquired of late years. "Oh, well, she will get used to it," he replied. "Don't you worry, Maria. She will get used to it. The smell of the poor is the smell of the world. Heaven itself must ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... perfectly well that it was almost impossible to operate on those low wave-lengths with the apparatus in existence at that time—hence his sardonic proposal. The amateurs, however, refused to "die out." Faced with the inexorable regulation, they set to work to devise apparatus which would operate successfully. Among them was E. H. Armstrong, a youth who at ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... seem to start out of 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. Give him four legs and a wide plain, and he needed ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... our dear heroes! My poor, brave man! A cup of tea, my dear," turning to William's thunderstruck mother. "And he may sit down, may he not?" She kept her face well turned towards the sardonic-looking Mr. Lewes. He must not miss a word or gesture. "How proud we are to do anything for our dear heroes! Wounded, perhaps? Ah, poor man!" She floated across to him with a cup of tea and plied him with bread and butter and cake. William sat down meekly on a chair, looking rather ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... 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. ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... peppery little pen we wield! What could that have been out of the sardonic Dean? what other child of that age would have used "beloved" as she does? This power of affection, this faculty of beloving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She periled her all upon it, and it may have ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... face-wrinkling which was meant to be a sardonic smile turned itself into a painful grin. "Shot to death by a dog! Blenkinsop or some of the others ought to have run that for a head-line." Then, with a twist of the hot eyeballs: "This isn't my room. Where ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... taller than himself. He could only stare at her in helpless awe, the more so as he had recognized her at once. Leadership might be extinct, but Mrs. Oglethorpe was still a power in New York Society, with her terrible outspokenness, her uncompromising standards, her sardonic humor, her great wealth, and her eagle eye for subterfuge. How could a mere servant hope to oppose that formidable will when his betters trembled ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... at him with a sardonic smile. "I forgot to mention: the doors will be locked and barred, and of course there's no such ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... was twisted into a sardonic grin. "Guess I could explain that, all right—but I says nothing beyond Lahoma's word. I banks on document'ry proofs, and otherwise stands technical ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... 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 ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... instantly. "I hope Miss Bellingham is not ill," I said with a sudden anxiety that elicited a sardonic smile from ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... finding some way to make a bit of money. He told me with grim humour of the time he had spent acting as guide to Cockneys who wanted to see the night side of life in Paris; it was an occupation that appealed to his sardonic temper and somehow or other he had acquired a wide acquaintance with the more disreputable quarters of the city. He told me of the long hours he spent walking about the Boulevard de la Madeleine on the look-out for Englishmen, preferably the worse for liquor, ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... value as though it were of no worth—is it not the Great Lesson?" He said it with such an air of sincerity, with such dissimulation, that, for the moment, David was deceived. There was, however, on the face of the listening Kaid a curious, cynical smile. He had heard all, and he knew the sardonic meaning ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you have no idea where it came from?" said Mr. Perkins, with his frightful, sardonic grin. "Well, perhaps Cecily can tell us. You may take your seat, Emmeline, and you will remain at the foot of your spelling class for a week as punishment for passing the ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... answer; he turned to his angel guide, and found himself alone on the tower. He ran to the top of the ladder and looked down. At the bottom stood Tinker regarding him with an excellent sardonic smile: "Ha! ha!" he cried in a gruff, triumphant voice, "Trapped—trapped!" And he turned on ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... Like most geniuses, he had his weaknesses and his failings; like many, if not most, geniuses, he was ill. He died of tuberculosis, tragically young. But what a comrade he must have been, with his extraordinary vision, his keen, sardonic comment, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Copenny burst into sudden sardonic laughter, with wondrous little mirth in the tones, and the other miscreants were obviously disconcerted and disconsolate, while the small schemer, whose craft had failed midway, looked affrighted and marvelling from one to another, at a loss to ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... ask myself impatiently: "When is this salt going to begin to suffer?" That is my attitude towards the class. I frequent it but little. Nevertheless I know it intimately, nearly all the intimacy being on my side. For I have watched it during long, agreeable, sardonic months and years in foreign hotels. In foreign hotels you get the essence of it, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... 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 set himself vigorously to some columns of arithmetical calculations on the margin; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... return to witness the effects my posthumous opinions of them are likely to produce in their minds. What good fun this would be! . . . You don't seem to value this as you ought," said Byron with one of his sardonic smiles, seeing I looked, as I really felt, surprised at his avowed insincerity. "I feel the same pleasure in anticipating the rage and mortification of my soi-disant friends at the discovery of my real sentiments of them, that a miser ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a convulsive movement crossed the brow of the Constable, and Guarine, when he beheld a sardonic smile begin to curl Vidal's lip, could keep silence no longer. "Vidal," ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Dr. Veiga with strange sardonic indifference. "If you will sacrifice yourself to your friends you must take the consequences like a man. I will talk to you some other time, when I've got nothing better to do. I am very busy, telling people what they ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Fortunately for us, the owner of the house we had formerly occupied was still absent, and the theft committed by the pirates was not discovered. Soon after we arrived Captain Roderick made his appearance, a sardonic ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... sense of the word? As to the bull-dog, I say little. He at least is a good water-dog, and, when he is taught, he will retrieve birds through the heaviest sea as long as his master cares to shoot. But his appearance is sardonic, to say the least of it; he puts me in mind of a prize-fighter coming up for the tenth round when he has got matters all his own way. Happily he is not often kept as a pet; he is usually taken out by fast young men in riverside places, for his company is believed to give an air of dash and ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... exclaimed, with a most sardonic grin. "Your obedient humble servant, gentlemen. I told you we should meet again, and we have met. What do you expect after all the tricks you ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... called this book "What is Wrong," and it would have satisfied your sardonic temper to note the number of social misunderstandings that arose from the use of the title. Many a mild lady visitor opened her eyes when I remarked casually, "I have been doing 'What is Wrong' all this morning." And ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... of the officers, they were covered with dust, their language grew stronger and stronger, and at last, feeling themselves entirely nonplussed, one of them, looking up at their chief as he sat on his camel with a sardonic smile on his face, observed deprecatingly, "I'm afraid we really can't manage ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... board the little craft watching the shipwrights at work on her deck. From the way they went about their business those men must have been perfectly sane; and I felt greatly refreshed by my company during the day. Dominic, too, devoted himself to his business, but his taciturnity was sardonic. Then I dropped in at the cafe and Madame Leonore's loud "Eh, Signorino, here you are at last!" pleased me by its resonant friendliness. But I found the sparkle of her black eyes as she sat down for a moment opposite me while I was having my drink ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... wealth and happiness! It was like the adulterous woman who, on eloping with her paramour, wrote to her husband enjoining him to be virtuous if he would be happy. The incongruity struck the prisoner so forcibly that for a moment he was on the verge of another explosion of sardonic laughter. Before leaving the dock he made one last attempt to draw attention to the treatment he had sustained while in prison. By way of heightening the effect of his narration, he informed the Court that his letters had ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the porch, and he looked at me suspiciously. No doubt he perceived something very sardonic in ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... the sardonic face of Prince. "What did you ever see me do to give you the notion that ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... thinking of the "Humph!" of Jennie Woodruff—thinking with hot waves and cold waves running over his body, and swellings in his throat. Such thoughts centered upon his club foot made Lord Byron a great sardonic poet. That club foot set him apart from the world of boys and tortured him into a fury which lasted until he had lashed society with the ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... Carlyle's performance—his ardent sympathy, nay his acquiescence with, and adherence to the Puritans, to that point that he adopts their convictions, their feelings, and even some of their most grotesque reasonings. Their violence and ferocity, we were prepared to see Mr Carlyle, in his own sardonic fashion, abet and encourage; his sympathy is always with the party who strikes; but that he should identify himself with their mumming thoughts, their "plentiful reasons," their gloomiest superstitions, was what no one could have anticipated. On this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... have said all that he intended, Prescott turned to go, but he added a word of thanks to Mr. Sefton, whose voice he wished to hear. Mr. Sefton merely nodded, and the young Captain, as he went out, hesitated on the doorstep as if he expected to hear sardonic laughter ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... sardonic cachinnation). Ha! You expected something better than that. Well, you're right. Her face does ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 flat, where Lawrence ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... influence of the blessed words except one. General Melac was neither awed nor touched; his pale eye was as cold, his sardonic mouth as cruel ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... presses on my mind, That death should on me helpless play A satire of the bitter kind. For much I fear that o'er my corpse The scalding tears of friends shall flow, And that, too late, they should with zeal Fresh flowers upon my body throw. That fate sardonic should recall The ones I loved to my cold side, And make me lying in the ground, The object of love once denied. That all my aching heart's desires, So vainly sought for from my birth, Should crowd unbidden, smiling kind Above my body's ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... 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
... An instant Steele's eyes rested on the speaker. "No doubt you are right." A sardonic flash seemed to play on the nobleman. "At all events you ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham |
