"Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and something seems to say, a fortunate one in store; and, if so——, but I cannot trust myself with such anticipations. I am well aware how little the world sympathises with the man whose fortunes are the sport of his temperament—that April-day frame of mind is ever the jest and scoff of those hardier and sterner natures, who, if never overjoyed by success, are never much depressed by failure. That I have been cast in the former mould, these Confessions have, alas! plainly proved; but that I regret it, I fear also, for my character for sound judgment, I must ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... yours; his cavalry are more skilled. Turn his flank—or, better still, bide here and await his attack, and victory will be to the soldiers of the Cross. Advance and the vision of that knight at whom you scoff will come true, and the cause of Christendom be lost in Syria. I have spoken, and for ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... scoff at chivalrous manners, which are ridiculed in verse, in paintings, and sculptures[372]; or at the elegancies of the bad parson who puts in his bag a comb and "a shewer" (mirror).[373] Other poems are adaptations of the "Roman de Renart."[374] The new spirit has penetrated so well ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... to be looked for, since this was their first real hike. After one experience every fellow might be expected to know better, and scoff at the idea of a true scout going hungry as long as camp stores abounded, and a fire could ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... at the walls; candles on the table. Dinner very good, of course. Menu written in pencil on a porcelain card, with the formula in gilt and a coronet. Indeed, the very cans that came up to my bedroom with hot water were marked with coronet and cipher. I was inclined to scoff at this, at first, as ostentatious; but after all, as the things were to be marked, how ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... Cobbett was accustomed to scoff at the "bubble" of Savings Banks, alleging that it was an insult to people to tell them that they had anything to save. Yet the extent to which savings banks have been used, even by the humblest classes, proves ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... with his sickness, and Cassander, taking upon himself the command, had found a letter of Demades's, formerly written by him to Antigonus in Asia, recommending him to come and possess himself of the empire of Greece and Macedon, now hanging, he said, (a scoff at Antipater,) "by an old and rotten thread." So when Cassander saw him come, he seized him; and first brought out the son and killed him so close before his face, that the blood ran all over his clothes and person, and then, after ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... at last, with strange gentleness, "insult me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn! but come, come. Let us make haste. It is to be to-morrow, I tell you. The gibbet on the Greve, you know it? it stands always ready. It is horrible! to see you ride in that tumbrel! Oh mercy! Until now I have never felt the power of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... result of a lack of sympathy, or else from the nobler error of holding an opinion strongly and earnestly. We must never be betrayed into making the same mistake; we may try to persuade, and it is better done by example than by argument, but we must never allow ourselves to scoff and deride, and still less to abuse and vilify. We must rather do our best to understand the other point of view, and to acquiesce in the possibility of its being held, even if we cannot understand it. We ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... believe in the power of Siva or of his servants.. They call his messengers imposters, and scoff at them when they speak of the events of ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... of the times, that it has been permitted to exist for one day. It appears to me, my Father, that the days of your sway are numbered in Spain; that you will not be permitted much longer to plunder her, to scoff at her, and to scourge her with scorpions, as in bygone periods. See I not the hand on the wall? See I not in yonder letters a 'Mene, mene, Tekel, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... "I will not take thy property from thee, but rather be thy friend, if thou wilt make thyself worthy to be so." Raud exclaimed with all his might against the proposal, saying he would never believe in Christ, and making his scoff of God. Then the king was wroth, and said Raud should die the worst of deaths. And the king ordered him to be bound to a beam of wood, with his face uppermost, and a round pin of wood set between his teeth to force his mouth open. Then the king ordered an adder ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... taste that I cannot get rid of at my pleasure, not a desire that I do not scoff at, not a hope that does not make me smile or laugh. I ask myself why I stir, why I go hither or thither, why I give myself the odious trouble of earning money, since it does not amuse ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... these latter reigns of the Ptolemies, when high feeling was sadly wanting in all classes of society, when literature and art were alike in a very low state, that we may place the rise of caricature in Egypt. We find drawings made on papyrus to scoff at what the nation used to hold sacred. The sculptures on the walls of the temples are copied in little; and cats, dogs, and monkeys are there placed in the attitudes of the gods and kings of old. In one picture ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Yorke in his antagonist's ear with a sinister smile, "rotten manners! for just that, my buck, I'll make you scoff ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... the trembling wretch to raise, And his last faltering accents whispered praise. At church, with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorned the venerable place: Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, And fools who came to scoff remained to pray. The service past, around the pious man, With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; Even children followed with endearing wile, And plucked his gown to share the good man's smile. His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed; Their ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... addresses himself to SPEAKER, edging in a sentence amid comparative pauses in uproar. PRINCE ARTHUR protests he will not yield to force; Liberals opposite, cheered by news from Walsall, following fast on heels of triumph at Halifax, laugh and scoff. Mr. G. safely packed off to bed; the SQUIRE and his brother officers on Front Bench evidently ready to make a night of it. TIM HEALY, radiant with this rare and rosy reflection of the good old times, observes it is "an excellent hour of the evening ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... spoke of her children, in whom her own youth lived again, even attempted to scoff at her a little, declaring that she was fishing for compliments ... but she quite seriously begged him to leave off, and for the first time he realised that for such a sorrow, the despondency of old age, there is no comfort or cure; one has to wait till it passes off of itself. He proposed ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... unpunished you deceive, For other faults why do I loss receive. But did you not so envy[363] Cepheus' daughter, For her ill-beauteous mother judged to slaughter. 'Tis not enough, she shakes your record off, And, unrevenged, mocked gods with me doth scoff. 20 But by my pain to purge her perjuries, Cozened, I am the cozener's sacrifice. God is a name, no substance, feared in vain, And doth the world in fond belief detain. Or if there be a God, he loves fine ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... I know a thing or two," said the Colonel, with a bitter scoff; "and what's this, you old rogue? Why, you've rubbed away a wrinkle since we met. Take off those infernal spectacles, and look me in the face. Ha! I see the devil in your eye. How dare you let it ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tremendously ferocious; and his curses, as they rolled up half smothered from his huge chest, were deeper and more diabolical by far than their own. He even jeered at them; but, however disgusting his frown, there was something truly apalling in the dark gleam of his scoff, which threw them at an immeasurable distance behind him, in the power of displaying on the countenance the worst ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... of loss. For the creator who has lived for many months in daily communion with the living creature of his imagination, cannot, if he work as artists must, but come into a state of great and secret love for his dream-images. The feeling is sacred, indeed; for what dweller in Philistia but would scoff at such a sentimentality as love for work, and unhappiness at its conclusion? Nevertheless it is true that, when the hour of triumph, the finishing of a long, successful creation is accomplished, and eager Philistia waits clamoring to enjoy it, its master knows well that his hour is over: that ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... will patronize no more; But rushes like a tempest out of door. Lost is the patriot, and extinct his name! Out comes the piece, another, and the same; For A, his magic pen evokes an O, And turns the tide of Europe on the foe: He rams his quill with scandal, and with scoff; But 'tis so very foul, it wont go off: Dreadful his thunders, while unprinted, roar; But when once publish'd, they are heard no more. Thus distant bugbears fright, but, nearer draw, The block's a block, and turns to mirth your awe. Can those oblige, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... replied Augustin. It does not deserve to survive. It is not the forsaking of these beliefs and superstitious practices which has brought about the decay of the Empire. If you are asking for the temples of your gods to be opened, it is because they are easy to your passions. At heart, you scoff at them and the Empire; all you want is freedom and impunity for your vices. There we have the real cause of the decadence! Little matter the idle grimaces before altars and statues. Become chaste, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... whose sincerity we recognize and respect, but occasionally I find young men who think it smart to be skeptical; they talk as if it were an evidence of larger intelligence to scoff at creeds and to refuse to connect themselves with churches. They call themselves "Liberal," as if a Christian were narrow minded. Some go so far as to assert that the "advanced thought of the world" has discarded the idea that there is a God. To these young ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... morning of thy death, the seven old men to whom obedience was commanded by the chieftain, curse thee because thou borest away with thee the soul of their hero. In their addresses to the people, with scorn and scoff upon their lips, they sneer and call thee 'WOMAN;' but the people weep, and pray: Lord Christ, Son of the Virgin, give ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of knowledge in use: the knowledge of arms, and the knowledge of books. The first is the scoff if the wise, whilst the ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... considerable deliberation. He had argued with himself and had made up his mind to find out for himself just what these people did. He was finding out, certainly. His motives were good and he had come with no desire to scoff, but, for the life of him, he could not help feeling like a criminal. Incidentally, it provoked him to feel ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... just, for the sake of mankind: but there is no life after this life'? Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous and misshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou done to me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this world, the hopes of another! Is there no other life? Well, then, I want thy gold, that at least I may hasten to ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... dost thou fear? at this My lesson dost thou scoff? Or would'st thou say, light draughts betray The toper falling off? Keen taste, eyes keen—whate'er be seen Of joy in thine, fair child, Love's philtre use, but don't abuse: ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a perito is a perrito (little dog)!" exclaimed Father Damaso, with a scoff. "One would have to be more of a brute than the natives, who erect their own houses, if he did not know how to build four walls and put a covering over them. That's all that ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... ceased to scoff. Money is a great dignifier, and Jim and 'Lias were making money. There had been some sniffs when the latter had hinged the front gate and whitewashed his mother's cabin, but even that had been accepted now as ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... as I trust the stars; Nor cruel loss, nor scoff of pride, Nor beggary, nor dungeon-bars, Can move ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... assembled far from the cities, in a lone place where none came to scoff or criticize. When it was finished, I took my place and sealed the port by which I had entered. The Adventurer spurned the Earth beneath its cradles, and in the middle of the Twenty-second century, as time is computed on Earth, ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... I should deem myself presumptuous, as a young man, in offering advice, were it not addressed to one still younger. Mr. Townsend has the greatest difficulties to encounter; but in conquering them he will find employment; in having conquered them, his reward. I know too well "the scribbler's scoff, the critic's contumely;" and I am afraid time will teach Mr. Townsend to know them better. Those who succeed, and those who do not, must bear this alike, and it is hard to say which have most of it. I trust ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the actors in his "dark speeches," Greene refers to London as Rome and to the Shoreditch Theatre as the "theatre in Rome." In his Penelope's Web he writes: "They which smiled at the theatre in Rome might as soon scoff at the rudeness of the scene as give a plaudite at the perfection of the acting." While it is Burbage's Theatre that is here referred to, it is evident that his quarrel was not now with the actors—whom both he and Nashe praise in their quality—but with the plays, ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... wretched roads with the sub-prefecture, or the chief city of their own province, these towns regard the new civilization as a spectacle to be gazed at; it amazes them, but they never applaud it; and, whether they fear or scoff at it, they continue faithful to the old manners and customs which have come down to them. Whoso would travel as a moral archaeologist, observing men instead of stones, would find images of the time of Louis XV. in ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... before I take up my tale, I want to anticipate the doubting Thomases of psychology, who are prone to scoff, and who would otherwise surely say that the coherence of my dreams is due to overstudy and the subconscious projection of my knowledge of evolution into my dreams. In the first place, I have never been a zealous student. I graduated last of my class. ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... steadfast eye;— The rabble rout forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through all the people crept, And some that came to scoff at him Now turned aside ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... boy," continued the Phoenix, as it settled back comfortably, "I have been thinking. Yesterday you showed an intelligent interest in my problems and asked intelligent questions. You did not scoff, as others might have done. You have very ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... satire on the English Sunday; I could see nothing but antiquated foolishness and modern hypocrisy in this weekly pause from labour and from bustle. Now I prize it as an inestimable boon, and dread every encroachment upon its restful stillness. Scoff as I might at "Sabbatarianism," was I not always glad when Sunday came? The bells of London churches and chapels are not soothing to the ear, but when I remember their sound—even that of the most aggressively pharisaic conventicle, with its one dire clapper—I find it associated ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... full three to one Yon bully but intends To beat our friends?' 'Let's put aside Our costly pride. Our appetite's not gone Because we've learn'd to doff Our caps, where we were used to keep them on.' 'If times get worse, We've money in our purse, And Patriots that know how, let who will scoff, To buy our perils off. Yea, blessed in our midst Art thou who lately didst, So cheap, The old bargain of the Saxon with the Dane.' {35} Thus in his heart the fool now saith; And, lo, our trusted leaders ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... seeing that Fyodor Pavlovitch was by no means touched, but, as usual, was beginning to scoff. At that moment Smerdyakov, who was standing by the door, smiled. Smerdyakov often waited at table towards the end of dinner, and since Ivan's arrival in our town he had done ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... spreading plastic wax where the beasts would walk on it, in pathways or before dens. How they did scoff! The simplest ground squirrel knew too much to venture on my waxen snare; around 'it, or if hemmed in, over it, with a mighty bound they went; but never a ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... Let those scoff who will; but let them know that such a parting is itself a new and wonderful power, a soul-enlarging, purifying, and elevating power, worth the danger, toil, and suffering of the soldier. The sister's tears, the father's words, the mother's ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... submit to the conditions we impose, Madame la Grange, and then show us any manifestations, I will never scoff ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller
... prevalence of sects and schism, but who at the same time, as Milton shrewdly intimates, dreaded more the rending of their pontifical sleeves than the rending of the Church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with the "Defence of Unlicensed Printing" before him? Who scoff at Quakerism over the "Journal" of George Fox? Who shall join with debauched lordlings and fat-witted prelates in ridicule of Anabaptist levellers and dippers, after rising from the perusal of "Pilgrim's Progress?" "There were ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... GORST just now balancing MACARTNEY'S hat by brim on tip of his nose. Looks easy enough when done by an expert; those inclined to scoff at the accomplishment should try it themselves. Opportunity came suddenly, and unexpectedly. No ground for supposing GORST had been practising the trick in the Cloak-room before entering House. No collusion; all fair and above-board—or, rather, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... sacrament. He admitted Satwa, Raja, and Tama,[FN127] but only as properties of matter. He acknowledged gross matter (Sthulasharir), and atomic matter (Shukshma-sharir), but not Linga-sharir, or the archetype of bodies. To doubt all things was the foundation of his theory, and to scoff at all who would not doubt was the corner-stone of his practice. In debate he preferred logical and mathematical grounds, requiring a categorical "because" in answer to his "why?" He was full of morality and natural religion, which some say is no religion at all. He ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... they are sacrilegious, they are excommunicated, who impeach the magic of the past and the poison of tradition. And the thousand million victims themselves scoff at and strike those who rebel, as soon as they are able. All cast stones at them, all, even those who suffer and while they are suffering—even the sacrificed, a little ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... us now hear them, as becomes men with such feelings, express more cheering and bolder hopes rising from a confidence in the supremacy of justice,—hopes which, however the Tyrant from the iron fortresses of his policy may scoff at them and at those who entertained them, will render their memory dear to all good men, when his name will be pronounced with ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... War Miss Betty Pink Was just an ordinary mink; Her skirt was short, her eye was glad, Her hats would almost drive you mad, She was, in fact, to many a boy A source of perturbation; At household duties she would scoff, She lived for tennis, bridge and golf, She motored, hunted, smoked and biked, Did just exactly what she liked, And took a quite delirious joy In ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... Krech simply. "Just the sort of blasted fool I would be in your place, or that nine out of ten men would be. Because the threat is directed at you, you scoff at ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... rather consecrate Anew this worship-sign of ancient date, Than join in scoff by sneering cynic thrown On faith and on religion ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... but the ardour of the European heroes only hurried them to destruction; for a long time they could not gain the territories for which they fought, and, when at last gained, they could not keep them: their expeditions, therefore, have been the scoff of idleness and ignorance, their understanding and their virtue have been equally vilified, their conduct has been ridiculed, and their cause ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... be not afraid;—my father! how shall I meet him? how go back to Lyons? the scoff of the whole city! Cruel, cruel, Claude [in great agitation]. Sir, you ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the violence of the reaction under Mary. Gardiner with characteristic dignity confined himself to simply refuting the charges brought against him and protesting against the injustice of the court. But the coarser, bull-dog nature of Bonner turned to bay. By gestures, by scoff, by plain English speech he declared again and again his sense of the wrong that was being done. A temper naturally fearless was stung to bravado by the sense of oppression. As he entered the hall at Lambeth he passed ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... glad events: The best is Christmas day, But every holiday presents Its special round of play, And looking back on boyhood now And all the charms it knew, One day, above the rest, somehow, Seems brightest in review. That day was finest, I believe; Though many grown-ups scoff, When mother said that we could leave Our ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... you heard the raps yourself, and then you got nearly beside yourself with fright and anger, and said it was the devil. And now for the third time the same sort of thing has happened. What is the good of telling you about it? You'd only scoff and jeer as you did before, although on this occasion it is your own life that has been saved, ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... have much endured; Scoff not at their fond hopes and earnest plans, Though they may seem to thee wild dreams and fancies. Perchance, in the rough school of stern Experience, They've something learned which Theory does not teach; Or if they greatly err, deal gently still, And let their error but the ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Behn in her own Epilogue when she speaks of 'fat Cardinals, Pope Joans, and Fryers'; and Lord Falkland's scoff in his Prologue to Otway's The Soldier's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Father said. And he was so careless a man, was M. Baldwin. And then with tears in his eyes the priest told Brice how, from the olden times when Baldwin, pretending to scoff at the efforts of the missionaries, had yet ever been their ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... bark, and glanced one at another in meaning comment thereon. Never was a leader of men or beasts more cordially hated than Lupus. There was not a dingo who could call his leadership into question; even the young and daring members of the pack who pretended to scoff at the traditional awe in which Tasman was held, admitted the tyrannical mastership of Lupus as something ever-present and unavoidable; but that by no manner of means lessened their cordial hatred of the fierce half-breed, with his ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... suffering his feelings to escape from his controul or management; his word was esteemed in the council as the word of wisdom; his warning of danger was regarded as the cry of the owl. Never did he mock the wretched, or laugh, or scoff at the insane; he was always respectful to the aged; and he daily cried to the Master of Life, from the high grounds, with clay spread thick upon his hair, and at every successful hunt offered, to the same Great Judge and protecting guide of man, the best part of the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... thou, because thou hear'st Men scoff at Heaven and Fate; Because the gods thou fear'st Fail to make blest thy state, Tremblest, and wilt not dare to ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... time, we would by no means scoff at the counsel of our Ahitophels. A glance at the newspapers of last month, and their interminable advertising columns, is quite enough to convince us that the thing may be overdone. True, not one out of five—nay, perhaps, not one out of fifteen—of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... [continuing]. But certain people always grow splenetic— Why, goodness knows—at everything pathetic, And scoff it down. We all know how, of late, An unfledged, upstart undergraduate Presumed, with brazen insolence, to declare That ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... Bernard paying no attention to the expression in Godefroid's eyes, "even I, a child of the eighteenth century, fed on Voltaire, Diderot, Helvetius,—I, a son of the Revolution, who scoff at all that antiquity and the middle-ages tell us of demoniacal possession,—well, monsieur, I affirm that nothing but such possession can explain the condition of my child. As a somnambulist she has never ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... could speak; And yet there must be some mistake. Why, what a jest should I have been, Had now my lady been within! What could I've said? I'm mighty glad She went abroad—she'd thought me mad. The hour of dining now is past: Well then, I'll e'en go home and fast: And, since I 'scaped being made a scoff, I think I'm very fairly off. My lady now returning home, Calls "Cracherode, is the Doctor come?" He had not heard of him—"Pray see, 'Tis now a quarter after three." The captain walks about, and searches ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... tried to tame the ancient families perched aloft like wary ravens on their crag; the said families were always willing to accept invitations to dinners and dances; but as to admitting the strangers to their own houses, they were inexorable. Ready to scoff and disparage, jealous and niggardly, marrying only among themselves, the families formed a serried phalanx to keep out intruders. Of modern luxury they had no notion; and as for sending a boy to Paris, it was sending him, they thought to certain ruin. Such sagacity will give a sufficient ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... thing clattered off, To all the unfeeling mob a scoff, Thought I, "What that dumb creature feels, With half the parish ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... can scoff at them, may scoff at me. Such are we, that the giver of all good Shall, in the heart he purifies, possess The latest love—the earliest—no, not there! I've known the firm and faithful—even from these Life's eddying spring shed the first bloom on earth. I pity ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... quick, and begins to provide and take care for the Childs and Child-bed linnen. Then you need not fear the turning of the tide, or that a mischance will happen; wherewith all people, seeing no other issue, laugh and scoff unmeasurably; and think that the Midwife hath been greased in the fist (as it oftentimes happens) because she should say, that it was a full created child, and no collection of ill humors, or ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... against the gate of Elvira when issuing forth so vaingloriously with his army, which he now saw clearly had foreboded the destruction of that army on which he had so confidently relied. "Henceforth," said he, "let no man have the impiety to scoff at omens." ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... writhing objects in them, Suffering and enduring anguish. They who once on bounty feasted, Now enclosed in pangs of hunger; They who were the poor's oppressors, Now oppressed and trodden under. Now destroyers are destroyed, Scoffers are with scoff betaken, And the lofty are made humble; And he shudders to behold them. Then an awful oath is spoken, Bidding to unbar the passage; And the burdened words are answered With another oath as fearful From the fierce and sullen keeper; ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... almost wrathful. "You scientific people build up whole philosophies on the basis of things you never saw, and you scoff at people who believe in other things that you think they never saw and that don't come under what you label scientific. You talk about paradoxes—why, your scientist, who thinks he is the most skeptical, the most materialistic aggregation of atoms ever gathered ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... congratulate, invite, praise, scoff. Day after day still dipping in my trough, And scribbling pages after ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spring, a man with frozen feet Came to the marble halls of state, And told his mission but to meet The chill of scorn, the scoff of hate. "Is Oregon worth saving?" asked The treaty-makers from the coast; And him the Church with questions tasked, And said, "Why did you leave your post?" Was it for this that he had braved The warring storms of mount and sky? Yes!—yet ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... represented it so perfectly that through all their lives her pupils never dissociated herself from the righteousness which she taught and upheld and practised. And this attitude was wholly good for girls born in a century when it was the fashion to sneer at hero-worship and to scoff at authority when the word obedience in the Marriage Service was accused of redundancy, and the custom of speaking evil of dignities ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... "hold a candle" to the glaring halo about the head of two who could claim personal acquaintance with the great war chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted Tail?—who had actually been to ride and hunt with that then just dawning demigod of American boyhood,—Buffalo Bill? Sneer and scoff and cavil as did their little rivals for a time, calumny was crushed and scoffers blighted that wonderful March morning when, before the whole assembled school, there suddenly appeared that paragon of plainsmen, that idol of all well-bred young Westerners, he whom ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Redan, in silent scoff, Lay, grim and threatening, under; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... the public exists only as a prey to be destroyed, who keep themselves close and mark men's steps that they may lay in wait for them; who forge chains for their country, who distrust and belie the people, who scoff at the complaints of the poor and needy, and who impudently call themselves Ireland. You have made the sick and the lame to go out of their way. You have eaten the good pastures and trodden down the residue with your feet. You care for Ireland, and you mean by Ireland ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... a long coat, another in a short coat or jacket; and in the performance of the public services some standing up at the Creed, the Gloria Patri, and the reading of the Gospel; and others sitting, and perhaps laughing and winking upon their fellow schismatics, in scoff of those who practise the decent order of the Church.' Irreconcilable parties, he adds, and factions will be created. 'I will not hear this formalist, says one; and I will not hear that schismatic (with better reason), says another.... So that I dare avouch, that to bring in ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... You scoff even at your own calamity— And such calamity! how wert thou fallen 20 Son of the Morning! and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... finely shaded mood of the poet. Take the words of a lyric for what they say, and they say nothing most of the time. And that is true of philosophers. You must penetrate the ponderous vocabulary, the professional cant to the insight beneath or you scoff at the mountain ranges of words and phrases. It is this that Bergson means when he tells us that a philosopher's intuition always outlasts his system. Unless you get at that you remain forever foreign ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... things offer cheer: in Ulster there— Fanatic sentiment, you'll say, and scoff it— I see a hundred thousand men who care For something dearer than their stomach's profit; Under the Flag they stand at silent pause, True Democrats that hold by Freedom's charter, Resolved and covenanted for the Cause To ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the policy of the state. The government had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated those obscene ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... at her aunt, whose head was bent over her writing, the smooth bands of her silky, brown hair shining brightly in the lamp-light. No doubt some, perhaps most, grown-ups would scoff at her tale if she told it, Mollie thought. Grown-up people as a rule love best to jog along on well-trodden, safe, commonplace paths, and avoid adventurous by-ways, but Aunt Mary, Mollie felt sure, was an anti-jogger, so to speak, and would always choose adventures if she had ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... high and noble, And the brave heat of a true Florentine. For Spaine Trumpets abroad her Interest In the Kings heart, and with a black cole drawes On every wall your scoff'd at injuries. As one that has the refuse of her sheets, And the sick Autumne of the weakned King, Where she drunke pleasures ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... all about Thorberg, he did not scoff, nor laugh, nor take it seriously either. He just considered it, with one large hand grasping his beard. "Well," he said, "some people have the gift, there's no doubt, and if your Thorberg had it not, all her mummeries would avail her nothing. You set them up for a ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... call the people to repentance, for the day of the Lord was at hand; and this message was as a heavy yoke upon me, so that I wept bitterly at the thought of what I should have to pass through. While I wept, I heard a voice say, "weep not, some will laugh at thee, some will scoff at thee, and the dogs will bark at thee, but while thou doest my will, I will be with thee to the ...
— Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman • Anonymous
... large wagon-wheel hanging in the heavens. It is amusing to learn of the various opinions and superstitions that are held regarding this wagon-wheel world. Some of the Moonites declare that it is a huge lantern, hung solely for their benefit, and scoff at the idea that it might be a world inhabited by civilized beings. More intelligent Moonites venture the theory that human life could exist on the great wagon-wheel, but declare that this is quite ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... at that day, even as before and since, a very intimate relation between good living and good reading. The practical person, the wary pedant, and the supercritical will scoff at this, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... to let the natives lose their respect for your disdain of spooks and superstitions. I never scoff at their fears and beliefs in every sort of imaginable supernatural power, but I like them to think that my religion places me above such terrors. We pray to our Christian God to protect us according to His ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... But I wasn't able to tell you that. You had begun by saying that you believed in palmistry, and then you proceeded to scoff at it. While you scoffed I saw myself as a man with a terribly good reason for NOT scoffing; and in a flash I saw the terribly good reason; I had the whole story—at least I had the broad outlines ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... has been illustrated by this: Suppose some one rushes into an office of philosophical, higher-critical professors, and cries, "Fire!" You would see those hard-boiled skeptics, if they believed the cry, rush unceremoniously and indecorously out of that building with all speed. People may scoff at faith working with lightning speed; but every exhibition of it only ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... Ainsworth elaborately explains, "a mocking by grimaces, mows, a flout, a frump, a gibe, a scoff, a banter;" and Sannio is "a fool in a play." The Italians change the S into Z, for they say Zmyrna and Zambuco, for Smyrna and Sambuco; and thus they turned Sannio into Zanno, and then into Zanni, and we caught the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... begin to get a clearer idea of what this thing called patriotism means? Nay, do not scoff at our Otto; he is only carrying on the old, old game called reaching out after place and power; is doing exactly what you would do yourself, if you had the will to rise to the mountain-tops where live the Bismarcks ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... beauty of Israel for ever is fled, And low lie the noble and strong: Ye daughters of music, encircle the dead And chant the funereal song. Oh, never let Gath know their sorrowful doom, Nor Askelon hear of their fate; Their daughters would scoff while we lay in the tomb, The relics of ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... purified? And if it should be answered, through and under Christianity, the fool in his heart would scoff and say: 'What woman thinks of religion in her youthful courtship?' No; but it is not what she thinks of, but what thinks of her; not what she contemplates in consciousness, but what contemplates her, and reaches her by a necessity of social (? ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... greatly scoff at this prophecy. In his chapter ("Hist. S. L.") upon Buddhism (the "false" religion), the eminent scholar speaks as though he resented such an unprecedented claim. "We are asked to believe"—he writes—"that ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... on many nights thereafter, the poisoned and contorted face and the scrawled "MERCY" on the cabinet lurked troublously in his mind. Nor did Bertram cease to scoff him for his maladroitness until both of them temporarily forgot the strange "Smith" and his advertisement in the entrancement of a chase which led them for a time far back through the centuries to a climax that might well have cost Average Jones ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... needs must come! Even now[115:1] (Black Hell laughs horrible—to hear the scoff!) 160 Thee to defend, meek Galilaean! Thee And thy mild laws of Love unutterable, Mistrust and Enmity have burst the bands Of social peace: and listening Treachery lurks With pious fraud to snare a brother's life; 165 And childless widows o'er the groaning land Wail numberless; and orphans ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... lined here with red brick dwellings and the sunny white bulk of the old Brevoort House. Far off, the sky-scrapers begin to loom, whipping out flags and steam plumes. It is a treeless vista, yet it is hazed with spring! Imagination, you scoff—and dust. Yet you look again, and it is not imagination, and it is not dust. It is the veil of spring, cast with delicate hand over the city. These laughing sight-seers atop the green 'bus now going under the arch feel it, too. These children screaming ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... kneeling multitudes, the wind Shrieks in the solitary aisles. When he Who gives his life to guilt, and laughs at all The laws that God or man has made, and round Hedges his seat with power, and shines in wealth,— Lifts up his atheist front to scoff at Heaven, And celebrates his shame in open day, Thou, in the pride of all his crimes, cutt'st off The horrible example. Touched by thine, The extortioner's hard hand foregoes the gold Wrung from the o'er-worn poor. The perjurer, Whose tongue ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... what is man, That thou art mindful of him? Though in creation's van, Lord, what is man? He wills less than he can, Lets his ideal scoff him! Lord, what is man, That thou art mindful ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... outlaws, then ye proved thieves, And now all carelessly ye scoff at death. Both of your fathers were good, honest men; Your mother lives, their widow, in good fame; But you are scapethrifts, unthrifts, villains, knaves, And as ye lived by shifts, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... you get to know a fellow, know his every mood and whim, You begin to find the texture of the splendid side of him; You begin to understand him, and you cease to scoff and sneer, For with understanding always prejudices disappear. You begin to find his virtues and his faults you cease to tell, For you seldom hate a fellow when you ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... attempts to describe it. Kipling, who saw the structure first from the window of a train nearing Agra, called it "an opal tinted cloud on the horizon"; and after studying the building at close range he wrote, "Let those who scoff at overmuch enthusiasm look at the Taj and thenceforward be dumb; ... each must view it for himself with his own eyes, working out his own interpretation of the sight." Another great English writer has said, "Words are worthless ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... not speak. Once an inward desire to laugh, to scoff, would have driven him to supernatural gravity; now he merely smiled with ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... drank and were merry: but amidst the glee of the cup They felt themselves tangled and caught, as when the net cometh up Before the folk of the firth, and the main sea lieth far off; And the laughter of lips they hearkened, and that hall-abider's scoff, As his face and his mocking eyes anigh to their faces drew, And their godhead was caught in the net, and no shift of creation they knew To escape from their man-like bodies; so great that day was ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... euil desires ||F.i.|| then remedy them. Wha the tyraunte Sathanas reygned in this worlde freely and wythout punishement, then thys prynce onely, dyd sodenlye helpe mankynde redy to perishe: wherfore thei erre shamefully which scoff and bable that CHRIST was one that was sadd and of a malancolye nature, & that he hath prouoked vs vnto an vnpleasaunt kynde of lyfe, for onely he did shewe a kind of liuing most godly and fullest of al true pleasure, ...
— A Very Pleasaunt & Fruitful Diologe Called the Epicure • Desiderius Erasmus
... raised throne of his council chamber. All the Lords of his Council were there and all in black. There was Norfolk with his yellow face who feigned to laugh and scoff, now that he had proved himself no lover of the Queen's. There was Gardiner of Winchester, sitting forward with his cruel and eager eyes upon the table. Next him was the Lord Mayor, Michael Dormer, ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... better than you the things that concern their duty. Even if they should be mistaken in the exercise of their authority, God will reward your obedience. Besides obeying them, you must also help and support your parents if they need your assistance. You must not scoff at or despise them for their want of learning or refinement, because they perhaps have made many sacrifices to give you the advantages of which they in their youth were deprived. Do we not sometimes find persons of pretended culture ignorantly ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... Would Plato scoff at such a formulation of the artist's mission? He would rather condemn it, as fostering illusion and falsehood in men's minds. But we moderns are perhaps more world-weary, less sanguine about ideal truth than the ancients. With one of our war poets, we often plead for "song that turneth toil ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... was a record Christmas for Bostock's. The electric cars were thundering over the frozen streets of all the Five Towns to bring customers to Bostock's. Children dreamt of Bostock's. Fathers went to scoff and remained to pay. Brunt's was not exactly alarmed, for nothing could alarm Brunt's; but there was just a sort of suspicion of something in the air at Brunt's that did not make for odious self-conceit. People seemed to become ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... right, and he did not mean to go into it any more fully. It was the changed attitude of Morehouse that led him on and on. So he told, too, of Dryad Anderson's purchase of the bleak old place on the hill and her reason. But when it came to her wild fury against the paper that had dared to scoff at the boy he paused. For a second he calculated the wisdom of exhibiting the bit of a red bow that had been entrusted him. It, without a doubt, would be the only passport he could hope for to a share of the ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... By so doing, it was equivalent to reducing the former wages of their labour, or of the produce of their land—the effects of which were speedily felt and comprehended by them, although some of the officials, who imposed it, might scoff at the causes they assigned, and reiterate their crude and erroneous notions of political economy, to prove that it could not affect them, but must be paid by the great merchants, or by the consumers of their produce in Europe. They quite forgot that these could be supplied with the same things ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... sermon, strong with the smell of books and of midnight oil; speaking it in pain of utterance, and delighted when the ordeal is over, with a delight most certainly shared by many who neither came to scoff nor remained to pray. Heaven help the man whom fate in the shape of foolish friends, or parents, or mistaken church-officials has sentenced to hard labour in the pulpit; who is condemned to preach without possession of that love of preaching which makes for him in ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... justice, the rank and file and the wooden spoons must needs apply the old ethics, even against the new teachers themselves. Every truth has to fight for recognition, to prove itself not a lie. The brilliant and impatient young men who scoff at conventions because the people who hold them are unreal—not persons, feeling and passing moral truths through their own soul, but parrots—forget that just because the people are unreal, their maxims are real; that they do not represent the people who mouth them, but the great moralists ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... For Mr. Pericles said: "If that they will go 'so,' I will be amused." He presented a top-like triangular appearance for one staggering second. The Tinleys did not go 'so' at all, and consequently they lost the satirical man, and were called 'the ballet-dancers' by Adela which thorny scoff her sisters permitted to pass about for a single day, and no more. The Tinleys were their match at epithets, and any low contention of this kind obscured for them the social summit they hoped to attain; the dream whereof was their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... correspondence with France; that I am a traitor to Holland; that I correspond with the Spanish at Antwerp. In vain have I tried to force an open accusation, in order that I might disperse it. The merchants, and others of my rank, scoff at these rumours, and have in full council denounced their authors as slanderers; but the lower class still hold to their belief. Men scowl as I walk along; the boys shout 'Traitor!' after me; and I have received ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... Forsyths, and had returned from London with them, but I had always kept away from them, as Miss Willoughby's manner and ways grated on me. She seemed utterly devoid of all religion, and was always ready to scoff and jeer at serious subjects. She was a clever woman of the world, and looked upon me as ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... draws the village and rural family to itself, and the contagion of its customs and ideals spreads through the villages and affects the forms of living there. Youths become city dwellers and do not cease to scoff at the village unless later years give them wisdom to appreciate its higher values. The standard of domestic organization is established by the city; that type of living is the ideal toward which nearly all ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... of sitting in the Club to scoff; I'll take a walk. Hang me! Some English "fellah" Has left his rotten gamp, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various |
