"Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hears Jule's views of me as a beau! They're hot enough to fry meat! Moreover, Jule tells all Sni-a-bar an' I'm at once a scoff an' jeer from the Kaw to the Gasconade. Jule's old pap washes out his rifle an' signs a pledge to plug me if ever ag'in I puts my hand on his front gate. As I su'gests, it rooins my ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... mouth, of yore so musical, grinning ghastly like the fleshless face of fear-painted death! Is that Voltaire? He who, with wit, thought to shear the Son of God of all His beams?—with wit, to loosen the dreadful fastenings of the Cross?—with wit, to scoff at Him who hung thereon, while the blood and water came from the wound in His blessed side?—with wit, to drive away those Shadows of Angels, that were said to have rolled off the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre of the resurrection?—with wit, to deride the ineffable glory of ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... I don't care about any more, but if you will let me talk to you about something— See here, Anna. Yes, I mean Anna. What nonsense for us to attempt to keep up the Miss Moore and Mr. Sanderson business. I used to scoff at love at first sight and say it was all the idle fancy of the poets. Then I met you and remained to pray. You've turned my world topsy-turvy. I can't think without you, and yet it would be folly to tell this to my Governor, and ask his consent to our marriage. He ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... replied the Honorable Margaret promptly. "Saint Ruth's eats 'em alive. I came to scoff and remained to thread needles myself. Phyllis will be minding the babies ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... "git sp'ilt." When he lay down for his afternoon nap and the house was dull and quiet without his waking presence, the ladies would gather in groups outside his door as if in a king's antechamber, waiting for him to awaken, saying to one another ever and again, "Sh, sh!" He professed to scoff at the attentions he received, would grunt and growl "Humbug!" yet nevertheless he thrived in this latter-day sunlight. His old bones took on flesh. His aged kindly face, all seamed with care as it had been, filled ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... unspeakable, treasured for months and often displayed in triumph to penniless companions. Poor indeed are they who have never known the day of small things and the size of a cent. It is said money is only good for what it will buy, and the miser who hoards is the scoff of mankind. I must have been a descendant of Shylock for I loved cents for themselves and the feeling of importance they gave me. I polished them until they shone like gold and the face of the Father of his Country gleamed with irridescent benignity. Some ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... men are described in the Book of Wisdom who say: "Let unrighteousness be our law," 2, 11. Also in Psalms, 12, 4: "Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?" Again in Psalm 73. "They scoff, and in wickedness utter oppression: they speak loftily," etc. Such were the giants who withstood the Holy Spirit to his face, who, through the mouth of Lamech, Noah and the sons of Noah, exhorted, implored, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... 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 could it ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... 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. I cared ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... But in vain they do worship me teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." Oh, but say some, we believe that the commandments are as valid now as they ever were. Why do you then constantly and perseveringly reject, scoff at, and sneeringly deride, and denounce, those that are as honest as you are, while they are endeavoring to keep the fourth commandment just as God had directed them? When you have been so repeatedly shown by their writings, drawn from the clear word that the fourth ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... help it. We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter. Sometimes we get a good man and worth the price, but we are ready to take him anyway, whether he be ripe or rotten, whether he be clean and decent, or merely a ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... The scoff of each unfeeling mind, Thy doom was hard, and keen thy grief; Beneath his throne, peace thou didst find, And blest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that you scoff? Verily, you do an unconsidered deed. When one remembers all the liquids, medicinal, soporific, insipid, poisonous, which flood the throat of humanity, one may deem himself a favorite of Fortune to be placed so high in the catalogue. Though upon his lowliness gleam ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... hath enrolled him with Philip of France,— Baron Hubert,—who challenged De Clifford's lance, And made him the scoff of the burgher swine, When he paid his vows ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... Dich neu bekehren, es gibt ein Gluck;" this is the only thing that is true and eternal. I cannot preach to you, nor explain it to you; but I will pray to God that He may powerfully illumine your heart through His faith and His love. You may scoff at this feeling as bitterly as you like. I cannot fail to see and desire in it the only salvation. Through Christ alone, through resigned suffering in God, salvation and rescue ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... had told him 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 ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... and slaves. And he who boasts of his descent from Amphitryon in the twenty-fifth generation, may, if he pleases, add as many more, and double that again, and our philosopher only laughs at his inability to do a larger sum. Such is the man at whom the vulgar scoff; he seems to them as if he could not mind his feet. 'That is very true, Socrates.' But when he tries to draw the quick-witted lawyer out of his pleas and rejoinders to the contemplation of absolute justice or injustice in their own nature, or from the popular ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... than if he had been only a common man. He drew himself to his height and looked gravely at them and they jovially said: " Hello, Whiskers." American college students are notorious in their country for their inclination to scoff at robed and crowned authority, and, far from being awed by the dignity of the hotel-keeper, they were delighted with it. It was something with which to sport. With immeasurable impudence, they copied his attitude, and, standing before ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... cruelty and baseness, is to render the seat of the federal government the scoff of tyrants and the reproach of freemen FOREVER! On the 9th of January 1829, the House of Representatives passed the following vote. "Resolved, that the committee of the District of Columbia be instructed to inquire into the expediency of providing by law, for ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Florence had never fallen into the hands of her enemies, to be reversed by them in scoff. Of old it had borne a white lily in a red field, but in 1250, when the Ghibellines were expelled, the Guelphs adopted a red lily in a white field, and this became the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... 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, above nose. Came about as incident ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... poets see Dreams of things that are to be. Vengeance is the poet's trade, Come, iambus, to my aid 'Gainst the fools who scoff at me. All the world will laugh with glee When they mark my verses free Grasp thee like a pillory, And thy scorn with scorn repaid, Neobule. E'en in death thou canst not flee From the doom the Fates decree. When my satire's keenest blade Cuts ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... virtuous, be good, be 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 make ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... when it delighted me to flash my 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 ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... physicians scoff at the ancient authorities who dominated medical thinking for so many centuries. The seventeenth-century physician striving to reduce the frightful inroads that disease made into the colony at Jamestown may ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... of knowledge in use: the knowledge of arms, and the knowledge of books. The first is the scoff if the wise, whilst the last ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... suddenly fill her heart, and make her cheek glow. She moved among people with a conscious dignity quite unlike that which had only satisfied her need of distinction. She spoke more softly, exercised more patience, smiled where she had been wont to scoff. Miss Nunn was altogether ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... 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
... having a hard time of it these days. It was worse than misery to stay indoors, and it was utterly out of the question for him to venture out. His leg was healing with disgusting rashness, but his heart was going into an illness that was to scoff at the cures of man. And if his parting with his mother and the rosy-faced young woman savoured of relief, he must he forgiven. A sore breast ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... yer wages; she 's dreadful close," chuckled Captain Pharo, as we tucked the bag of meal away on the carriage floor. "See when ye'll scoff in my sails, and block up the ship's channel ag'in! Now then; touch and go is a good pilot," and we struck off on a divergent road ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... 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 me ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... it all; Norbert may give in, he may marry another woman, and I shall be left alone, with my reputation gone, and the scorn and scoff of all ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... offences 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... praying while the other engaged in active duties. All was done with religious gravity and decorum. If we went out, the make-believe continued even in the street; the two hermits would say the Rosary, using their fingers to count on, so as not to display their devotion before those who might scoff. One day, however, the hermit Therese forgot herself—before eating a cake, given her for lunch, she made a large Sign of the Cross, and some worldly folk did not ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... only with your levity and that eternal worldliness that freezes too fiercely—that absolutely blisters with its frost—like the upper air of the Andes. You speak of Kate only as too readily you speak of all women; the instinct of a natural scepticism being to scoff at all hidden depths of truth. Else you are civil enough to Kate; and your 'homage' (such as it may happen to be) is always at the service of a woman on the shortest notice. But behind you, I see a worse fellow; a gloomy fanatic; a religious sycophant that seeks to propitiate his circle by bitterness ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... turn, at the same time, to one still more advanced,—even so far as to have entered into the conventional valley of dry bones,—one whom the world is preparing, by its daily practical lessons, to enlighten with unbelief. If we see them together, perhaps we shall hear the senior scoff at his younger companion as a poetic dreamer, as a hunter after phantoms that never were, nor could be, in nature: then may follow a homily on the virtues of experience, as the only security against disappointment. But there are some hearts that never suffer the mind to grow ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... scoff. His sardonic smile dwindled into a ludicrously, pathetic look of dismay. He begged the young man to think twice before he did anything "foolish." "In any event," he implored, "let me get you some breakfast, or at least, ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... not answered, carries a significance. A creation of beauty suggests a fulfilment, which is the fulfilment of love. We have heard some poets scoff at it in bitterness and despair; but it is like a sick child beating its own mother—it is a sickness of faith, which hurts truth, but proves it by its very pain and anger. And the faith itself is this, that beauty is the self-offering of the One ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... 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
... have gone abroad that I am in 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 ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... from some other world into a world of men, women, and the children they rear to follow them. She scorned Mabilla for flinching so much, she scorned her for not flinching more. That Mabilla could be desirable to Andrew King made her scoff; that Andrew King should not know her dangerous kept her ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... Kneel all! Caps off! Old "Blue Light's" going to pray. Strangle the fool that dares to scoff! Attention! it's his way! Appealing from his native sod In forma pauperis to God, "Lay bare thine arm! Stretch forth thy rod! ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... exposed to a thousand inconveniences against which there is no guard but that of a clear and unbiased reason, but it renders him also base and abject when under misfortunes, the sport and contempt of that wicked and debauched part of the human species who are apt to scoff at despairing misery, and to add by their insults to the miseries of those who sink under ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... also Mrs. 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 ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... friends, attempt to turn aside this appeal which I now make to you with a laugh or a sneer. This is the Lord's word, and the word of the Lord is not to be put aside with a sneer. Do not scoff at this as a water of salvation. You certainly will not scoff at ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... had been on the point of throwing her pride to the winds and apologizing to Grace, Miriam and Anne for her childish behavior. Then she would scoff at her own weakness and go doggedly on. Her new roommate, Emma Dean, was a cheery sort of girl who lived every day as it came and refused to borrow trouble. She never criticized other girls, nor did she gossip, and she was extremely ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... it is the foundation. And I know what scorn and obloquy and denunciation await that man who stands unawed before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard of individual excellence, perpetuates ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... We are as innocent as children, yet do you think I have a shred of reputation left? Already I am supposed to be your mistress. Everybody knows; nobody cares. There are so many living that way here. If you told them we were innocent they would scoff at us. If you go they will ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... undisturbed. "It's all very well to scoff, but one may get a side-light anywhere. In diplomacy nothing's ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... though it had reached the sticking point only a half hour before, was the result of 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
... of placid demeanour and generous proportions. It had never occurred to me hitherto to associate her with rabies, and I still felt that she herself would scoff at the idea. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... up the people's mockery, for they know that it is based upon a falsehood; but they scoff at His miracles, which they assume to be disproved by His crucifixion. Their venomous gibe is profoundly true, and goes to the very heart of the gospel. Precisely because 'He saved others,' therefore 'Himself ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... scoff at amateur assistance, my boy," said Mr. Snyder in the benevolently paternal manner which had made a score of criminals refuse to believe him a detective until the moment when the handcuffs snapped ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... vain thing to scoff at business and those who do it in the market places, and to shout out the old war cries of our fathers, in the face of a generation which sings the song of capital, or groans in heavy labour beneath the banners of their copyrighted trade marks; and besides, ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... you prefer to take the risks, and remain chief of the guard yourself?" she said with an angry scoff. "Truly there did not seem to be many thrusting forward to strip you of the office. I shall have a fine sorting up of places in payment for this night's work. But for the present, Tarca, do ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... gradually into truer relations with each other and with men. It will not hurt woman to be criticised. She has too long been assured of her angelhood, and denied her womanhood. It will not help her very greatly to be criticised as if she were being tomahawked. If they who come to scoff would but remain to teach! There has been much ungentle judgment of men by women, of women by men. Thoreau said, "Man is continually saying to Woman, 'Why are you not more wise?' Woman is continually saying to Man, 'Why are you not more loving?' Unless ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Other English poems 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 ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... practical importance of the Shantung question in Europe was of much less significance. The eyes of every small nation of Europe were upon Fiume, which was regarded as the touchstone of Allied professions of justice. If the Allied leaders permitted Italy to take Fiume, the small nations would scoff at all further professions of idealism; they would take no further interest either in the Conference or its League. Whereas, on the other hand, the small nationalities of Europe knew and cared little about the justice ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... already are so antiquated that parents reject almost every sentence of it for themselves; true, the man of today understands its language only with difficulty—what of it, the children must gulp down the moldy, musty food. How we would scoff and jeer if a similar report were made about the school system of China! To this Lutheran Catechism, which I would best like to see in state libraries only, are added many antiquated hymns of mystical turgidity, which a simple youth, even with the best will does not know how to use. All outlived! ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Queen, but by some mischance, ship and figurehead never came together, and the old wood-carver left it to his daughter, in lieu of other property. It has not been wholly unproductive, Mrs. Bruce fancies, for the casual passers-by, like those who came to scoff and remained to pray, go into the shop to ask questions about the Sea Queen and buy chops ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Class Leader, I was much in his society, and I can say, as many others have said, that William, since the day of his conversion, was never heard to utter an unkind word about any one, or do anything that could give the enemies of the Lord Jesus an opportunity to scoff at his profession of loving the Lord with all his heart. He was never a very strong man physically while we knew him, and so was unable to go on the long tripping or hunting expeditions with him more vigorous comrades. He suffered much from inward pain, but was ever bright and hopeful. ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... throng! You, who dared in the dark eclipse,— When the pygmy heir of a giant name Dimmed the face of the land with shame,— Speak the truth with indignant lips, Call him little whom men called great, Scoff at him, scorn him, deny him, Point to the blood on his robe of state, Fling back his bribes ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... 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 ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... it pleased the Almighty to permit us to dispose of about eighty Testaments, which were purchased entirely by the very poor people, those in easier circumstances paying no attention to the Word of God, but rather turning it to scoff and ridicule. One circumstance was very gratifying and cheering to me, namely, the ocular proof which I possessed that the books which I disposed of were read, and with attention, by those to whom I disposed of them, and that many others participated in their benefit. In the streets of Aranjuez ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... writer of The present poem—of—I know not what— A tendency to under-rate and scoff At human power and virtue, and all that; And this they say in language rather rough. Good God! I wonder what they would be at! I say no more than hath been said in Dante's Verse, and by ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... 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 ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... and the most costly wines. They purchased the most sumptuous furniture, equipage, and apparel, though with no taste or discernment. Their criminal passions were indulged to a scandalous excess, and their discourse evinced the most disgusting pride, insolence, and ostentation. They affected to scoff at religion and morality, and even to set Heaven ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... strength and power. See, you follow the motion of my hand, as a dog would. See, you kneel before me, and prostrate yourself in the dust at my feet, at my bidding. Lie there, and think well whether you are able to scoff any more. You kneeled to the king of your own will; you kneel to me at mine, and though you had the strength of a hundred men, you must kneel there till I bid ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... religious people than anybody, and though you may belong to any other kind of church, and when you are home you don't care a continental for any religion except your own, or your wife's religion, and you act like an infidel, and scoff at good people, when you get to Rome and see the churches thicker than saloons in Milwaukee, and everybody attending church and looking pious, you catch the fever, and try to forget bad things you have done, and if you get ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... not scoff or smile At meek attire of blue and grey, For the proud wrath that thrills our isle Gives faith and force ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... required. I said I was sure of it, thinking they meant to be good and worshipful. Then they would ask if I was ready to take counsel, and they said, 'Many things are revealed unto us in these last days that the world would scoff at,' but that it had been given to them to know all the mysteries of the Kingdom. Then they said, 'You will see Joseph and he will tell you what you are ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... commissioned with the rest, Heaven blesses, and Fortune aids the struggle: but where you send out a general and an empty decree and hopes from the hustings, nothing that you desire is done; your enemies scoff, and your allies die for fear of such an armament. For it is impossible—ay, impossible, for one man to execute all your wishes: to promise, [Footnote: Chares is particularly alluded to. The "promises of Chares" passed into a proverb.] and assert, and accuse ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... when appearing before his guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Verplanck, it must be confessed that going to and from school Peter was prone to lay down both books and hat, oftentimes in the mud, and square himself pugnaciously if he chanced to meet one of the boys of the "Vly Market," who were wont to scoff and tease the Broadway boys unmercifully; and fierce battles were the frequent outcome of the feeling between the two sections, and in those Peter ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... 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 ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... then smiling, And always, whatever its mood is, beguiling. Look, now you can see it, bright beautiful blue, And far in the distance there loom into view The banks of Long Island, full thirty miles off; A sign of wet weather to-morrow. Don't scoff! We people who chum with the waves and the wind Know more than all ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... might want. Not, O Aurelian, till this accursed race is exterminated, will the heavens smile as formerly upon our country. Why are the altars thus forsaken? Why are the temples no longer thronged as once? Why do the great, and the rich, and the learned, silently withhold their aid, or openly scoff and jeer? Why are our sanctuaries crowded only by the scum and refuse of ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... presidency of the Executive Council, which was offered him, unless joined to the office of prime minister, was of no real importance. Some party friends throughout the country {40} would misunderstand, and more would scoff. He had parted company with his loyal personal friends Dorion and Holton. If, as Disraeli said, England does not love coalitions, neither does Canada. For the time being, and, as events proved, for a considerable time, the Liberal party would be divided ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... "You scoff at Mr. King's portrait of me because he has not painted me as I am! What would you have said if he had painted me as I am? What would you say if Conrad Lagrange should write the truth about us and ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... for a single action of damages. In like manner—if we leave out of view some wholly harmless jests—we meet hardly any trace of invectives levelled at communities (invectives which, owing to the lively municipal spirit of the Italians, would have been specially dangerous), except the significant scoff at the unfortunate Capuans and Atellans (18) and, what is remarkable, various sarcasms on the arrogance and the bad Latin of the Praenestines.(19) In general no references to the events or circumstances of the present occur in the pieces of Plautus. The only exceptions are, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... you, with eyes full of scorn, Threadbare is my coat, and my hosen are torn: Scoff on, my rich Owen, for faint is thy glee When the maid of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and the soul stood terrified before the judgement seat. God, who had long been merciful, would then be just. He had long been patient, pleading with the sinful soul, giving it time to repent, sparing it yet awhile. But that time had gone. Time was to sin and to enjoy, time was to scoff at God and at the warnings of His holy church, time was to defy His majesty, to disobey His commands, to hoodwink one's fellow men, to commit sin after sin and to hide one's corruption from the sight of men. But that time was over. Now it was God's turn: ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... had the leg been one of those That danced for bread in flesh-color'd hose, With Rosina's pastora bevy, The jeers it had met,—the shouts! the scoff! The cutting advice to "take itself off" For sounding ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... of foes, until a couple of well-aimed shots, one with a rock as big as a cricket ball, and one with a tomahawk, laid them out, and they became the prize of the successful marksmen. The nigger "boy" has to be paid one pound a week and his "scoff," and, taking him all in all, in spite of his faults, which are many, I verily ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... "Practically that. Don't scoff—please. You see, there's a big future in this business. My father growled at first, but he's come clean around. The land was mine, and we are using it this way. The American public are going in for this thing. ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... that gold and better to care for his life. Yes, Padre, there is something that impels them, and that something is the government itself. It is you yourselves who pitilessly ridicule the uncultured Indian and deny him his rights, on the ground that he is ignorant. You strip him and then scoff at his nakedness." ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... played, cries of "hog" or "wobbler" arise, remember that you are engaged in a sport and not in politics and that there is nothing really offensive in the terms. Finally, never scoff at the language used, and above all remember that what is one man's game ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... in the world which fell to his lot to do. The narrowness and bigotry of his class and church and time were his, but probity of character, ready good will, and a fervent religious nature were his also. His heart was much softer than his creed. He might scoff at his neighbour's religion or politics, but he was ever ready ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... been the case with Mrs Winterfield. No woman ever lived, perhaps, with more conscientious ideas of her duty as a woman than Mrs Winterfield of Prospect Place, Perivale. And this, as I say it, is intended to convey no scoff against that excellent lady. She was an excellent lady unselfish, given to self-restraint, generous, pious, looking to find in her religion a safe path through life a path as safe as the facts of Adam's fall would allow her feet to find. She was a woman ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... glacier, which stood out sheer and steep before me, I felt so depressed, and my nerves were so overwrought, that I said I wished to turn back. I was thereupon met by the coarse sarcasm of my guide, who seemed to scoff at my weakness. My consequent anger braced up my nerves, and I prepared myself at once to climb the steep walls of ice as quickly as possible, so that this time it was he who found difficulty in keeping up with me. We accomplished the walk over the back of the glacier, which ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... no mask, Mr Slick," he said, "I use no disguises, and it does not become a professing man like you to jeer and scoff because I reprove the man ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... be excellent in its way, but he sings its praises till we turn against it as we used to do in the Fourth Reader Class, when we all with one accord turned against "Teacher's Pet." Teacher's Pet might be dowered with all the virtues, but we of the commonality would have none of them. We chose to scoff at an excellence ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... with Spain in 1898, however, was fought for an idea, and, despite the imperialistic impulse that followed it, marks a transition, an advance, in international ethics. Imperialistic cynics were not lacking to scoff at our protestation that we were fighting Spain in order to liberate Cuba; and yet this, for the American people at large, was undoubtedly the inspiration of the war. We kept our promise, we did not annex Cuba, we introduced into international affairs what is known as the Big Brother ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... forms of fiction all through the nineteenth century, because it supplies a human and natural craving for excitement. It may not be the dominant type, but it will always exist, and will produce its thrill by ever-varying devices. Those who scoff may be taken unawares, like the company in Nightmare Abbey. The conversation turned on the subject of ghosts, and Mr. Larynx related ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... month ago, I was speaking to him of having found some Bacon in Montaigne: and R. G. told me that you had observed the same, and were indeed collecting some instances; I think, quotations from Seneca, so employed as to prove that Bacon had them from the Frenchman. It has been the fashion of late to scoff at Seneca; whom such men as Bacon and Montaigne quoted: perhaps not Seneca's own, but cribbed from some Greek which would have been admired by those who scoff at ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... the Temple of Nemesis has been opened again," answered Socrates. "Aristophanes has never been ingenuous hitherto; now he is so with a vengeance. Very well, Aristophanes, I sympathise with you that you can no more scoff at me. I pardon you, but I cannot help you to stage your comedies. That is asking too much. Now I ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... Wearied with its efforts to find footing on shifting clouds, the human mind comes back to the positive by a violent reaction. Here is the secret of that haughty and derisive materialism of certain modern Germans, who jeer and scoff at the lofty pretensions of philosophy. So it was that Hegel brought upon the scene Doctor Buechner and ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... which seemed at first not only ungrammatical but irrational, becomes perfectly clear and intelligible, and it proves better than anything else that the true monotheism could not have risen except on the ruins of a polytheistic faith. It is easy to scoff at the gods of the heathen, but a cold-hearted philosophical negation of the gods of the ancient world is more likely to lead to Deism or Atheism than to a belief in the One living God, the Father of all mankind, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... 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 ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... of Jean Bart had stirred up a number of enemies, for, when a man is successful in life, are there not always a hundred unsuccessful fellows who stand about and scoff? ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... the head, not of the heart. If a telegram was sent to them that you were down with smallpox, they would take the first train to come to you. They would willingly take the disease into their own bodies and die for you. If you scoff and sneer at your father and mother you will have a hard harvest; you will reap in agony. It is only a question of time. There is ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... seemed at that moment to stand as a symbol of the life of the Mother Country, a life fenced in by convention, by forms and ceremonies sanctified to every Englishman by centuries of association; forms at which he may at times smile or scoff, but which he would no sooner demolish than he would tear away the clustering ivy which clothes his walls. Before him lay the broad river, its mouth widening to the sea: to that free, untrammelled waste of waters, which were a fit symbol of that land of the West, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... last the elemental principles of morals and religion were boldly denied, and the people came to "believe a lie." He will, not unnaturally, indulge in a little sarcasm, when he comes to consider the occupation of Southern professors of ethics, compelled by their position to scoff at the "rights" of man, and Southern professors of theology, compelled by their position to teach that Christ came into the world, not so much to save sinners, as to enslave negroes. He will be forced to class these among ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... secret as yet,"—with a faint wan smile. "Let me keep it a little longer. Not even Mrs. Massereene knows of it. Indeed, it is too soon to proclaim my design. People might scoff it; though for all that I shall work it out. And something tells me I ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... of Our Magazine was ready on New Year's Day, and we read it that evening in the kitchen. All our staff had worked nobly and we were enormously proud of the result, although Dan still continued to scoff at a paper that wasn't printed. The Story Girl and I read it turnabout while the others, except Felix, ate apples. It opened ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... reprobate here feels a desire to scoff, he's only to step outside for a few minutes and see who can get the drop ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... for a better life—here and now. And so he traveled, preaching three or four times a day, and riding from twenty to fifty miles. At London he preached on the "heaths," and thousands upon thousands who never entered a church heard him. That phrase, "They came to scoff and remained ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and a secret conspiracy ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... not approach the Sacrament, he dared not pray, and sometimes he felt wild impulses to tread down in riotous despair every fragment of a religious belief which seemed to live in his heart only to torture him. He had heard priests scoff over the wafer they consecrated,—he had known them to mingle poison for rivals in the sacramental wine,—and yet God had kept silence and not struck them dead; and like the Psalmist of old he said, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... again: we shall see their differing conduct presently. When the three came back, like furious creatures, flushed with the rage which the work they had been about put them into, they came up to the Spaniards, and told them what they had done, by way of scoff and bravado; and one of them stepping up to one of the Spaniards, as if they had been a couple of boys at play, takes hold of his hat, as it was upon his head, and giving it a twirl about, jeering in ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... the vision sees more than you or I; He who lives the golden dream lives fourfold thereby; Time may scoff and worlds may laugh, hosts assail his thought, But the visionary came ere the builders wrought; Ere the tower bestrode the dome, ere the dome the arch, He, the dreamer of the dream, saw the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... wolves: and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as an eagle that hasteth to eat; they shall come all for violence; their faces shall nip as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand. And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them; they shall deride every stronghold; they shall heap dust and take it." The Chaldaeans, recent occupants of Lower Mesopotamia, and there only a dominant race, like the Normans in England ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... vast news, which, as no paper comes out on Sundays, we shall not learn here; and would you be such a goose as to creep through Brentford and Hammersmith and Kensington, where the bells may be drinking some general's health, and will scoff you for asking whose? Indeed you Shall not stir before to-morrow. Lysons is returned from Gloucestershire, and is to dine here to-day; and he will at least bring us a brick, like Harlequin, as a pattern of any town that we may have taken. Moreover, no Post sets out from London ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... "I deserve the scoff," said he: "Those were days of sin. I deserve every humiliation that can be put upon me. But I have since found the grace of God. I found it at three o'clock in the afternoon on the eighth ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... insults, and her more degrading gold. The 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 these obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... in that habit which he wears, His image to the world appears. His mind no art can well express, That by his writings you may guess. It was not pride, nor yet vainglory, (Though others do it commonly) Made him do this: if you must know, The Printer would needs have it so. Then do not frown or scoff at it, Deride not, or detract a whit. For surely as thou dost by him, He will do the same again. Then look upon't, behold and see, As thou lik'st it, so it likes thee. And I for it will stand in view, Thine to command, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 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 trust ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... and nervous temperament, and this fact perhaps may account for the anomaly of a mountain-boy who was a poor shot. Andy was the scoff ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... their caricatures. Firstly, the caricatures are not true, for the crime in Ireland is not greater than that in England; secondly, they exasperate the people on both sides of the Channel, and they do no good. It is ill to laugh and scoff at a question which ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... me that they'll insult Pasha—scoff at him. 'Ah, you peasant!' they'll say. 'You son of a peasant! What's this mess you've cooked up?' And Pasha, proud as he is, he'll answer them so——! Or Andrey will laugh at them—and all the comrades there are hot-headed and honest. So I can't help thinking that something will suddenly ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... an age of incredulity, but Salemina, Francesca, and I have not come to Ireland to scoff, and whatever we do we shall not go to the length of doubting the fairies; for, as Barney O'Mara says, 'they stand ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Being swoln with their own greatness, I have pricked The bladder of their pride, and made them die As water-bubbles (without memory): Whilst the true-spirited soldier stands by Bareheaded, and all bare, whilst at his scars They scoff, that ne'er durst view the face of wars. I set an idiot's cap on virtue's head, Turn learning out of doors, clothe wit in rags, And paint ten thousand images of loam In gaudy silken colors: on the backs Of mules and asses I make asses ride. Only for sport ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... terribly exploited. When they are all so busy doing work which they think will bring them into the public view, this becomes of no particular use to any of them, and the only people who benefit, and at the same time scoff, are the members of the general public, who become so used to getting the doctor to work for nothing or next to nothing, that it comes as a shock when they have to pay. It is a healthy sign that the long-suffering doctor is at last beginning to show symptoms of fight, ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... 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 ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter |
