"Smirk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... look is still there. The same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian peasants; and those of us left will see it some day on Gabriel's face when he comes to blow us up. It is a look that should wither and abash man; but he has been known to smirk at it and offer flowers—with a ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... martialist!—and yet A God-intoxicated man. 'Tis not A hypocrite, too haggard is his face, Too deep and harsh his voice. His features wear No soft, diluted, and conventional smile Of smirk content; befitting lords, and dukes, Not men of nature's honoured stamp and wear— How fervently he spake Of Milton. Strange, what feeling is abroad! There is an earnest spirit in these times, That makes men weep—dull, heavy men, else ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... a human smile distorted the wrinkled face of AEsop and made it appear more than usually repulsive. "You mean me," he said, and the smirk deepened, only to dissipate quickly as ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was to fall aff the flower-pot; but syne I came to, and says I, wi' a polite smirk, 'I'm thinking your leddyship,' says I, 'as ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... working world, With posture and hint and smirk, These sons of the devil are standing by While Man ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... he had done him as he looked at his deserted home. The door opened and a figure appeared. It was Mr. Wurley's agent, the lawyer who had been employed by Farmer Tester in his contest with Harry and his mates about the pound. The man of law saluted him with a smirk of scarcely concealed triumph, and then turned into the house again and shut the door, as if he did not consider further communication necessary or safe. Tom turned with a muttered imprecation on him and his master, and hurried ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... wanting, he flattered himself he was a fellow of unusual quickness and penetration. They knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in those days, but there was a good deal said of Talleyrand. And if you could have caught Frank off his guard, he would have confessed with a smirk that, if he resembled any one, it was the Marquis de Talleyrand-Perigord. It was on the occasion of Archie's first absence that this interest took root. It was vastly deepened when Kirstie resented his curiosity at breakfast, and that same afternoon there ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... secured the services of a female from a neighboring village. Miss Trumbull is forty-odd and unmarried. She has a large bony face, the nondescript colouring of the average American, and a colossal vanity. We amuse ourselves watching her smirk as she passes a looking-glass. But she is an excellent housekeeper, and her vanity would be of no consequence if she would keep her place. The day we arrived she hinted broadly that she wanted to sit at table with us, and one night when John was ill and she had to help wait, she ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... dandies, dressed smartly in the French fashion, with strong Jewish physiognomies. There was one, a solemn lean fellow in black, with his collars extremely turned over, and holding before him a long ivory-tipped ebony cane, who tripped along the little place with a solemn smirk, which gave one an indescribable feeling of the truth of "Gil Blas," and of those delightful bachelors and licentiates who have appeared to ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his neck round to see the bow hangin' down his back, "Our old forefathers went through worse trials than this when they eat their cartridge boxes and friz themselves at Valley Forge," and he fingered some of them bows and ornaments on his breast agin with a vain, conceited smirk of satisfaction. I wuz at my wits' end; I glanced at the door; there wuz no lock on it; what should I do? Religion and common sense wouldn't move him, and as for my sharpest weepon—good vittles—here I wuz hampered, I couldn't cook 'em for him, ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... relief, Brimbecomb drew a long breath. She had not recognized him! The dim light of the candle showed him that the same dazed expression still remained in her faded eyes. The smirk on her face, the crouch of her emaciated figure, about which the rags swirled in the wind, the dismal hut, and the loneliness of her surroundings, made such a picture of woe that Everett shuddered and hastened to get the ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... and asked in one breath who had left it. When the clamor slackened, she replied, "Why, young Cuffy from the baker's, and all he said was, 'David Dubbs,—to be sent—card inside,' and then kissing his hand, and crying 'Love to her,' meaning I don't know who," with a smirk at Polly, "he jumped aboard his wagon and flew ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... and Tuci," said the Frau Kupferkram one morning, with a duck and a smirk, "do us the honour of supping with us this evening? There will be a few friends, for this is the 'nahmenstag' of our dear Gottlob, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... of enjoyed my little part, which consists in hurryin' out to the gate with my right forefinger up and a confidential smirk wreathin' my more or ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... ball and rout, And smirk with high-born dames who doubt: Thy flames are quenched, thy fires are ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... think I apprehend the mood: There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk, The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth, The titter stifled in the hollow palm Which rubbed the eye-brow and caressed the nose, When I first told my tale; they meant, you know— 'The sly one, all ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... the corners of her mouth in an affected smirk, he quickly shifted his glance, with a horrible suspicion that she was crossing her eyes. As she had pronounced the word perfect "parfect," he presumed that she was making herself look, for the remainder, like Antonia. It was her latest vaudeville ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... baby in his father's arms; what is more, Gavinia was looking on smiling and saying, "You bonny litlin, you're windy to have him dandling you; and no wonder, for he's a father to be proud o'." Corp was accepting it all with a complacent smirk. Oh, agreeable change since last we were in this house! oh, happy picture of domestic bliss! oh—but no, these are not the words; what we meant to say was, "Gavinia, you limmer, so you have got the better of that man of yours ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... wench Toad used to smirk and stare about the room; and whenever they didn't laugh or jest enough with her, she would plant herself right in the middle of the floor, and turn herself about in all her finery to attract ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... perceived two life-size portraits on panels built into the masonry. As all visitors to the mansion are aware, these paintings represent women of middle age, of a date some two hundred years ago, whose lineaments once seen can never be forgotten. The long pointed features, narrow eye, and smirk of the one, so suggestive of merciless treachery; the bill-hook nose, large teeth, and bold eye of the other suggesting arrogance to the point of ferocity, haunt the beholder ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Then, catching the trace of a smirk in Hank's eyes, the rascal shook his fist at the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... With a smirk of satisfaction, the overseer presented his arm to a pretty young lady, whose dark eyes had somewhat smitten him, and led the way to the further end of the shop, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... very good, I thought. Dress your ladies in cheerful dresses, not quite so vulgar as Chalon's. . . . I heard from my sister that you had finished Wilkinson to the perfect content of all: I had charged her particularly not to allow Mrs. W. to intercede for any smirk ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... winter trousers for the mayor, he spun round and jumped like a peg-top just escaped from the string. Then he raged and swore, said he was being mocked at, dabbed his hat on his head, and made a pretence of gathering up his samples and rushing off. The mayor watched the scene with a quiet smirk on his face: he knew that he would somehow get the trousers. I have no doubt that he did have them, but I walked out instead of waiting to see the end of the battle. When I returned, the haggling was over, the hostess and the pedlar were on the most ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... was, at the time, having his meal with lady Feng, but as soon as he heard that he was wanted, he put by his rice and was just walking off, when lady Feng clutched him and pulled him back. "Wait a while," she observed with a smirk, "and listen to what I've got to tell you! if it's about anything else, I've nothing to do with it; but if it be about the young bonzes and young Taoists, you must, in this particular matter, please comply with this suggestion of mine," ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... and labour, whence our souls are fed With largesse yet of living wine and bread. Come, let us praise him: here is nought to hide. Make bare the poor dead secrets of his heart, Strip the stark-naked soul, that all may peer, Spy, smirk, sniff, snap, snort, snivel, snarl, and sneer: Let none so sad, let none so sacred part Lie still for pity, rest unstirred for shame, But all be scanned of all ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and Stripes, which he would drag down, has made himself so emphatically one of the "capitalists," whom he hates, that he resides on New York's famous "Riverside Drive," and was able to testify with a smirk, "I flatter myself that I am not a failure." (See printed "Testimony" of the trial of the five Assemblymen for ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... look of the stranger, and marvelled. Here was no parrot-like repetition of word she had heard oft repeated by his elders; the boy was talking a native tongue, and speaking of things that were real to him. There was no assumption of godliness nor conceit, no holier-than-thou smirk about the child. It was all sincere, as a boy would promise to speak to his own father about a friend's need. It touched Ruth and tears ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... brightly, even beamingly. In the brief interval which had elapsed since Sam had seen him last, an extraordinary transformation had taken place in this young man. His wan look had disappeared. His eyes were bright. His face wore that beastly self-satisfied smirk which you see in pictures advertising certain makes of fine-mesh underwear. If Eustace Hignett had been a full-page drawing in a magazine with "My dear fellow, I always wear Sigsbee's Super-fine Featherweight!" printed ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... is dead, and e'en that tricksy imp Preposterous Puck hath too much native grit To take the taste of OSRICK turned a wit. Humour baccilophil, microbic merriment, Might suit him better. He will try the experiment. His mirth's a smirk and not a paroxysm; "Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism" Do not disturb the "plie" of his prim lips, Neither do cynic quirks and querulous quips. Mirth would guffaw—when hearts and mouths were bigger, OSRICK would shrink ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... idealless lad, With a strut, and a stare, and a smirk; And I watch, scientific though sad, The Law of ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... the man as it tugs at the woman; the smirk of the well-fitted prince is no different from the smirk of the Sunday-clad peasant; and the veins of the elders tingle with the same thrill that sets their fresh-frocked grandchildren skipping. Never trust people who pretend that they have no joy ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... husband and son were sentenced to six months' imprisonment. A curious old drawing is still extant, representing Mrs. Brownrigge in the condemned cell. She wears a large, broad-brimmed gipsy hat, tied under her chin, and a cape; and her long, hard face wears a horrible smirk of resigned hypocrisy. Canning, in one of his bitter banters on Southey's republican ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Gamp's affecting narrative of the confidential opinions of her sobriety entertained by Mrs. Harris, Mr. Mould, the undertaker, opportunely presented to the audience his well-remembered countenance—"a face in which a queer attempt at melancholy was at odds with a smirk of satisfaction." The impersonation, here, was conveyed in something better than the unsatisfactory hint by which that attempted in regard to Mr. Pecksniff was alone to be expressed. Speaking of Old Chuzzlewit's funeral, as ordered ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... give the doomed a little bite to hold him up," said Duval, with a smirk. "You guard him now while I see what the pantry has to offer. Keep him covered with your gun, for he is desperate and may ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... faded figures in the tapestry had an uncanny look; especially one, a hunter, who might have passed for an assassin, just taking aim at his victim. The smile on his startlingly red lips, in reality only a self-satisfied smirk, was fairly devilish in that light, and his ghastly face horribly life-like. The lamp burned dimly in the damp heavy air, the wind sighed and moaned along the corridors, and strange, frightful sounds came from the deserted chambers close at hand. The storm that had long been ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Larry Larkspur, Wears a cap of purple gay; Trim and handy little dandy, Straight and smirk he ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... jumping over a green fence, its trunk raised high in the air until it almost touched the full, red moon at the top of the poster. The elephant had such a roguish and knowing look in his small eyes and such a smirk on his funny little mouth that Jerry began to smile without being the least bit conscious that ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... entered the ring. One of the army carried a bright green bucket, on which were painted in white letters the words "Cyclone Al. Wolmann." A moment later there was another, though a far lesser, uproar, as Kid Brady, his pleasant face wearing a self-conscious smirk, ducked under the ropes and sat down in the ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... singularly fine & aristocratic disrespect for homely & unpretending English. Every time I use "go back" you get out your polisher & slick it up to "return." "Return" is suited only to the drawing-room—it is ducal, & says itself with a simper & a smirk. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Happuch's work and feel nothing added to her toil," was the sharp response. "Small use are her hands in any kitchen. We had better make up our minds to wed her to a fine gentleman, who wants naught of his wife but to dress up in grand gowns, and smirk and simper over her fan; for no useful work will he get out of her. If rushes are wanted, she had better go ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... some stuff, didn't you?" The man paused for breath, and Connie scrutinized his face, but could not remember to have seen him before. He shifted his glance to the other, who had returned to the edge of the bunk, and was regarding him with a sneering smirk. ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... at a glance from Stoddard he drew back and concealed his smirk. Then for half an hour with his most telling arguments and the hypnotic spell of his eyes Whitney Stoddard outdid himself to win her over while Rimrock sat by and smiled. He had tried that himself in days gone by and he knew Stoddard was wasting his breath. She had made up her ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... at. The pheasant, partridge, gotwit, reeve, ruff, rail, The cock, the curlew, and the quail, These, and thy choicest viands, do extend Their tastes unto the lower end Of thy glad table; not a dish more known To thee, than unto any one: But as thy meat, so thy immortal wine Makes the smirk face of each to shine, And spring fresh rose-buds, while the salt, the wit, Flows from the wine, and graces it; While Reverence, waiting at the bashful board, Honours my lady and my lord. No scurril jest, no ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... had not his mistress's keen intuition of the deportment necessitated by the case, or was incapable of putting the screw upon weak excited nature, for he continued to smirk, and was remarking how glad he was, he was sure, and something he had dared to think and almost to fear, when the old gentleman called to him, as if he were at the other end of the room, 'Will you order Thursday, or not, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Chattesworth,' as the scornful Magnolia called him) drew near, with his benevolent smirk, and his stiff bows, and all his good-natured formalities—for the general had no notion of ignoring his good friend and officer, Major O'Neill, or his sister or niece—and so he made up to Mrs. Macnamara, who arrested a narrative in ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... responding, gradually subsided into a whisper of, "That's Jorrocks! That's Cheatum!" as the belligerent parties took their places by their respective counsel. Silence having been called and procured, Mr. Smirk, a goodish-looking man for a lawyer, having deliberately unfolded his brief, which his clerk had scored plentifully in the margin, to make the attorney believe he had read it very attentively, rose to address the court—a signal for ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... gather the change remaining from seventy dollars greenbacks swapped for six hundred and ninety miles of travel at ten cents a mile. I hastily stepped aside. A subtle fragrance and a rustle warned me that I was obstructing a representative of the fair sex. So did the smirk and smile ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... table bearing a bronze box with a miniature of Beatrice Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for these objects the same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the fittings of the court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from Mrs. Peniston's lips. That lady's dread of a scene gave her an inexorableness which the greatest strength ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... day he entered the laboratory library in fine spirits, "doing" the decayed dandy, with imaginary cane under his arm, struggling to put on a pair of tattered imaginary gloves, with a self-satisfied smirk and leer that would have done credit to a real comedian. This particular bit of acting was heightened by the fact that even in the coldest weather he wears thin summer clothes, generally acid-worn and more or less disreputable. For protection he varies the number of his suits of underclothing, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... clear such gulfs with perfect ease, 'Twas a jump that naught on earth could make Your proper, heavy-built Christian take. No, no,—if a Dance of Sects must be, He would set to the Baptist willingly,[3] At the Independent deign to smirk, And rigadoon with old Mother Kirk; Nay even, for once, if needs must be, He'd take hands round with all the three; But as to a jig with Popery, no,— To the Harlot ne'er would ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... on business lines. It is not the sons of the land who bleed for Britannia's honour; mercenaries from the four corners of the world—including blacks—carry on the war as a trade for England's business world and nobility. England might well smirk as she uttered blessings on the Triple Entente, for has she not borne the brand of perfidy for centuries? Her breast conceals the meanest ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... of about thirty; tall, slender, lithe, swarthy, with thin, expressive lips that were twisted upward at one corner in an insincere smirk. This taller man came close to the wagon and paused in an ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was no match for Kosti. He was a slender, almost wand-slim young man, whose pleased smirk said that he, too, was about to put something over on the notorious Free Traders. Jellico studied him for a couple of long seconds during which the hum of Salariki voices was the threatening buzz of a disturbed wasps' nest. There was no way out of this—to ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... smiling at the idea of all this brandy drunk at the expense of another. He was smiling the contented smirk of an avaricious Norman. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Mr. Crow with a smirk, "I'll report to Jimmy Rabbit. I'll tell him where, when and how you want to race, and there's no doubt that your ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... with open mouth as he saw Duncan behind the counter; and openmouthed he remained while the young man came round and advanced toward him, with a bland smirk accompanied by a professional bow and rubbing ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... Medical Society was as towering as ever, but somehow it was all different. There was a note of unreality nowadays in Mrs. Donnelly's professions of wonder at her bearing up under her multiplied maladies; there was almost a leer of mockery in the sympathetic smirk with which the Misses Mangan listened to her symptoms. Even the doctors, though they kept their faces turned toward her, obviously did not pay much attention; the people in the street seemed no longer to look at her and her equipage at all. Worst of all, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... were quite affecting. Tears gushed into Pendlam's eyes. The deacon turned away with a smirk and an ominous shake of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... absurd woman's statements, thus fairly epitomized, there is not one that is true—not one of which the essential falsity is not evident, obvious, conspicuous to even the most delinquent observation. Yet with the smartness and smirk of a graduating seminary girl refuting Epicurus she marshals them against the awful truth that every year in Europe and the United States alone more than five thousand human beings the of hydrophobia—a fact which her controversial conscience does ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... with a smirk of well-assumed satisfaction—"that, indeed! Well, I think I may say, Daddy, that all's right ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... tinted cheeks, lustrous, curling hair of some repellent composition, eyes with a hard glitter, each lash distinct in blue-black lines, and a small, tip-curled black mustache that lent the whole an offensive smirk. Garbed now in a raincoat, he, too, was posed before the emporium front, labelled "Rainproof or You Get Back Your Money." So frankly evil was his mien that Merton Gill, pausing to regard him, suffered a brief ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... ridiculousness of his character. Marvell had a peculiar knack of calling names,—it consisted in appropriating a ludicrous character in some popular comedy, and dubbing his adversaries with it. In the same spirit he ridiculed Dr. Turner, of Cambridge, a brother-genius to Parker, by nicknaming him "Mr. Smirk, the Divine in Mode," the name of the Chaplain in Etherege's "Man of Mode," and thus, by a stroke of the pen, conveyed an idea of "a neat, starched, formal, and forward divine." This application of a fictitious character to a real one, this christening ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... he growled. "By God, I'll be polite! One may be suffering the tortures of the damned, but one must smirk and ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... replied a brisk young man, with a bright eye, peculiar smirk, spotted neckcloth, and gray gaiters with pearl buttons. "Cars ready for Boston and way stations. All aboard. Now's your time—quick, or you'll lose ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... most extraordinary sight. No English fair in the palmiest days of fairs ever presented such an array of attractions. Behind the temple are archery galleries in numbers, where girls, hardly so modest-looking as usual, smile and smirk, and bring straw-coloured tea in dainty cups, and tasteless sweetmeats on lacquer trays, and smoke their tiny pipes, and offer you bows of slender bamboo strips, two feet long, with rests for the arrows, and tiny cherry-wood arrows, bone-tipped, and feathered red, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... it thrown at his head. However, O'Hagan rose to his feet, made a bow to the company, and made an apology to the drover. He stood there, a blackguard on the face of him, but a gentleman in spite of that undefinable and vaguely repulsive smirk which played about his straight and refined mouth. He slunk away ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... for a time at least, laid down their burdens and found rest and comfort in their Father's house. It did me more good than the preaching of all the bishops in London, or the finest pageant at St. Paul's; and I am truly glad I went, though the saucy conductor did smirk ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... often-repeated encore; but once entered, he would have seen that all faces were at present sober, and most of them serious—it was the regular and respectable thing for those excellent farm-labourers to do, as much as for elegant ladies and gentlemen to smirk and bow over their wine-glasses. Bartle Massey, whose ears were rather sensitive, had gone out to see what sort of evening it was at an early stage in the ceremony, and had not finished his contemplation until a silence of five minutes declared ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... long to find the house where the sick woman was, for as we turned into the strate, a dirty ould hag, smoking a short pipe, came up to us with a smirk on her ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... to Harry Gray's, The ennui of my heart to lighten; His landlady, with, smirk and smile, Said, "he had just run down to Brighton." When home I turned my steps, at last, A tailor—whom to kick were treason— Pressed for his bill;—I hurried past, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the triumphant "Before and After" inscription. All the fitness has gone, all the individuality, all the clever adaptation of indigenous material, all the artistic and human interest; and a self-conscious smirk of superiority radiates over made-by-the-million factory garments instead. Whenever I see such contrasting photographs there comes over me a shamed, perverse recollection of a pair of engravings by Hogarth, usually suppressed, which ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... differences of caste. And there came to him for the first time that hatred of inequalities which, repulsive though it is in theory, is yet the true nerver of the strong right arm of progress. It is as characteristic of the homely, human countenance of Democracy as the supercilious smirk is of the homely, inhuman countenance of caste. Arthur did not want to get up where Ross was seated in such elegant state; he wanted to tear Ross, all the Rosses down. "The damn fool!" he fumed. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... parasols, or little dogs, or little children—it's the same rule in art, only varying the objects—are smirking. In fact,' said Miss La Creevy, sinking her voice to a confidential whisper, 'there are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk; and we always use the serious for professional people (except actors sometimes), and the smirk for private ladies and gentlemen who don't care so much about ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... eyes grew dim with rapture, alarm, and ineffable delight. I was ashamed in presence of the old woman, who began to smirk and wink odiously, and I flew like an arrow to the loneliest nook of the garden. There I threw myself on the grass beneath the hazel-bushes and read the note again, repeating the words by heart, and then re-reading them over and over, while the sunlight danced between the leaves ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... scarcely more polite, either." Brown well paused a minute and added: "Business is entirely satisfactory, sir—entirely so. It is another matter." He hesitated a moment and added, with the ghost of a smirk, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... readily get English coin changed in the town," he observed with a smirk, as in sheer bewilderment I ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... smirk of the lips—seamed for a moment the bronzed, weather-beaten and wrinkled face of the lone horseman. He tightened the reins and his steed made ready ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... unnatural composition, with one or two interesting scenes. The best actor was he who represented the blind man. The chief actress is an overgrown dame, all fat and dimples, who kept up a constant sobbing and heaving of her chest, yet never getting rid of an eternal smirk upon her face. A bolero, danced afterwards by two Spanish damsels in black and silver, was ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... his lugs at this appeal, and, looking as wise as if he had been Solomon's nephew, gave a knowing smirk, and said— ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... down at the corners; deceit had given it a foolish smirk; spite had plowed an ugly frown in her brow; while she had tried so many arts to make her rich brown skin as delicately white as Hilda's, that it was changed to the ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... strictly proper. But his way of talking to women and about them was more odious than the way of a debauchee. He invariably called them "the ladies," or more exactly, "the leedies"; and he hardly ever spoke to a "leedy" without a smirk and some faint attempt at ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... It should not be just an affected smirk, but a smile of genuine friendliness for all the world. Please by wearing inconspicuous clothes that are faultless in taste, fit, and cleanliness; and of a quality suited to your vocation. Show also that you take good care ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... blood in you, you'd be just as thrilled as we are. Just because you've been around and around the world until you got dizzy or something, you needn't stand there with that 'See-the-little-children-play' smirk on your face. You don't really care whether we lose Pirate's ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... should be contrived to make the motion of striking, and brilliantly make it. Thus, as a mechanical toy, was the only way to treat this minute critic, for like the Duke at Ferrara, this Duke (and his mother) did not choose to stoop. He would merely wear his "cursed smirk" as he nodded applause, but he had some trouble in keeping off the "old ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... How well Horace knew all about it! But that hanging up of the gittern—. One would fain have put it off, had falling hairs, and marriage-vows, and obesity have permitted it. Nay, is it not so, old friend of the grizzled beard? Dost thou not envy that smirk young knave with his five lustrums, though it goes hard with him to purchase his kid-gloves? He dines for one-and-twopence at an eating-house; but what cares Maria where he dines? He rambles through the rye with ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... eyeless, hollow, dull, Why your smirk and empty smile As the hours away you wile? Has the earth become such bore That it pleases nevermore? Whence your joy through sun and rain? Is 't because of loss of pain? Have you learned what men learn ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... springs from what Diogenes calls the spooney view of women, and only applicable to the young and handsome,—a very small minority. It is sad to see the graceless, the "gone-off," and the downright elderly smirk complacently at a few phrases which are only aimed at them in derision. The others, too, one would think, ought to care little for adulation that fades away with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... by a toad—a toad-person with a prominent thick watch chain and a loose smirk. She had been bothered by him ever since dinner—dinner at night at the Cactus House, which was inclined to be Eastern and effete in its apings—but his persecutions there had been confined to lurking, contrived meetings, and long ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... factor-lawyer who broke the silence, saying, with his predetermined smirk, that the parchment was ready for my signature. Thinking it well beneath me to measure words with this knavish pettifogger, I looked beyond him and spoke ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Nothing was left of him but Mamma's silence and Dan's, and Nannie's flush as she slunk by and her obscene smirk of satisfaction. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... one of the women. She was dressed as a Spanish dancer and in one hand held a tambourine and castanets. "They fight," she gave a little smirk of vanity, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Reuben and Burke And Nathan and Jotham and Solomon, lurk Around the corner to see him work— Sitting cross-legged, like a Turk, Drawing the waxed end through with a jerk, And boring the holes with a comical quirk Of his wise old head, and a knowing smirk. But vainly they mounted each other's backs, And poked through knot-holes and pried through cracks; With wood from the pile and straw from the stacks He plugged the knot-holes and calked the cracks; And ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... the young lady!—dear me, no!" he said, with a smirk. "Loyalty, you know. What do ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... remarked, with a smirk, while the Inspector stared from one to the other with rounded eyes of wonder, and his jaw dropped from the stark surprise of ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... old-fashioned and inartistic, but never turn one solitary eyelash when Hamlet follows up his death by rushing before the curtain and grinning his thanks. Desdemonas who come forward, after the smothering scene, to receive flowers, and Romeos and Juliets who rise from the tomb that they may bow and smirk before an audience—while we have such as these among us, let us not cast stones at ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... it were living, Should find with delight it could motion to strike him! So found the Duke, and his mother like him: The lady hardly got a rebuff— That had not been contemptuous enough, 205 With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause, And kept off the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... takes your food and growls at you for the favor, a cat that would eat you if he dared, is a pretty revelation. Ca donne furieusement a penser. [Footnote: Ca donne furieusement a penser: "That makes one think very hard."] It gives you a suspicion of just how far the polish we most of us smirk over will go. My cats at San Lorenzo knew some few moments of peace between two and three in the afternoon. That would have been the time to get up a testimonial to the kind soul who fed them. Try them at five and they would ignore you. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... of her distress she put on a complacent smirk, straightened her emaciated form, and sat there, looking like the very ghost of pride, wrapped in an old ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... dutiful struggle to be joyous about it, and succeeded only in producing a feeble smirk. "I'll say one thing—you've got some money represented in that crowd. Those old codgers. I didn't realize it.... ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... the hotel is but a few hours, but eleven domestics range themselves in a row to wait upon our departure and to smirk and extend their palms for tips as we prepare to go. No country under the sun save the Caucasus could thus muster eleven expectant menials on the strength of one meal served and but three hours ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... representative got upon his feet with a truculent air. As he did so, somebody touched him upon the shoulder, and he turned to see his client leaning out of the dock. With an apologetic smirk at his lordship, the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... agreeable person to have around. No matter what happened, he was always cheerful. Nobody ever heard of his losing his temper, though to be sure he was sometimes the means of other peoples losing theirs. But let a body be as angry as he pleased with Mr. Frog, Mr. Frog would continue to smile and smirk. ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... at Heartholm for afternoon tea, began to accustom themselves to finding Mrs. Strang sitting near some flower-bed where John Berber worked, or going with him over his great books of specimens. The smirk the fashionable world reserves for anything not usual in its experience was less marked in this case than it might have been in others. Even those who live in "residential parks" are sometimes forced ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the novice's smirk," she remarked. "A moment ago I heard him tell his neighbour that he preferred not to discuss the war. He probably thinks that there is a spy under ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... best of friends. She was a clever child and fond of her lessons, but she was full of droll fancies. She always insisted on her dolls joining our studies. It used to be a little embarrassing to me at first to see myself surrounded by the vacant waxen faces staring at us, with every variety of smirk and bland fatuous expression: the flaxen heads nid-nodded over open lesson-books, propped up in limp, leathery arms. When Flossy grew impatient for a game of play, he would drag two or three of them down with a vicious snap and a stroke of his feathery paws. Flurry ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... her an explanation. But little of Mrs. Clifford's conversation was addressed to me, though that little was evidently meant to be particularly civil. But, a little before she took her departure, which was soon after dinner, she asked me with some abruptness, though with a considerable smirk of meaning in her face, if I "knew a Mr. Patrick Delaney." I frankly admitted that I had not this pleasure; and with a still more significant smirk, ending in a very affected simper, meant to be very pleasant, she informed me, as she took her leave, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Southwell town Per coach for Mrs. Pigot frank it down, So may'st them prosper in the paths of Sale,[11] And Longman smirk and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... but all the same it's hard on a young thing to have to enjoy herself in a foreign language, and spend the holidays with a maiden lady and a snuffy old Pere, because there wasn't enough money to come home. Yes," concluded Pixie, with a smirk of satisfaction, "I've had my trials, and now I'm to be crossed in love, and have my young lover rent from me. ... You couldn't have the audacity to ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... delicacy, her innocence, her grace, the refined softness of her bearing, the sweet purity of her smile, the high dignity of her thoughts—and then ground my teeth as I placed against them the solitary image my mind consented to limn of him—brawling dandy with fashionable smirk and false blue eyes, flushed with wine, and proud of no better achievement than throwing a smith in a drunken wrestling-bout. It was a sin—a desecration! Where were their eyes, that they did not read this fellow's worthlessness, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... period of its triumphant union with the antique; and Raphael's grand gods and goddesses, his exquisite Eros and radiant Psyche of the Farnesina, are indeed succeeded but too soon by the Olympus of Giulio Romano, an Olympus of harlots and acrobats, who smirk and mouth and wriggle and sprawl ignobly on the walls and ceilings of the dismantled palace which crumbles away among the stunted willows, the stagnant pools, and rank grass of the marshes of Mantua. But this is no more the fault of antiquity ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... womanhood. A little child has been added to the picture—an afterthought, I understand, and scarcely a fortunate one; at least in the manner of its presentment. The figure is cleverly merged in half shadow, but the treatment of the face is brusque, and a most unpleasant smirk distorts the child's mouth. It is the portrait of the mother that carries the picture, and its superiority to many of Miss Beaux's portraits consists in the sympathy with her subject which the painter has ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... of pleasure.] Rejoicing. — N. rejoicing, exultation, triumph, jubilation, heyday, flush, revelling; merrymaking &c. (amusement) 840; jubilee &c. (celebration) 883; paean, Te Deum &c. (thanksgiving) 990[Lat]; congratulation &c. 896. smile, simper, smirk, grin; broad grin, sardonic grin. laughter (amusement) 840. risibility; derision &c. 856. Momus; Democritus the Abderite[obs3]; rollicker[obs3]. V. rejoice, thank one's stars, bless one's stars; congratulate oneself, hug oneself; rub one's hands, clap one's hands; smack ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... well," said Humphreys with his ghastly smirk. "You think that I care too much for appearances. I do. It is a weakness of mine which comes from ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... though they smiled, and smirk'd, and bow'd, None could please her of all the crowd; Lung and Tung she thought too loud; Opulent Tin was much too proud; Lofty Long was quite too tall; Musical Sing sung very small; And, most remarkable freak of all, Of great Hang-Yu ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... noticed it," says the shopman, with a smirk. "You were so taken up with that fine student that . . . it's ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the bell, and Georgina answered it with a smirk on her face. 'Just call Hollands, and come in here with him,' said her ladyship. The butler soon came in; and Jane says, if ever the devil looked through any man's eyes, she believes he did through his, as he glared at her with a look of triumph, his mistress's back being turned ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... the latter, since Zulka's advent, had been a study, though this allusion to him had been received with his accustomed smirk. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... all his mind within, he thought: "Tradition, handed down for hours and hours, Tells that our globe, this quivering crystal world, Is slowly dying. What if, seconds hence, When I am very old, yon shimmering dome Come drawing down and down, till all things end?" Then with a weazen smirk he proudly felt No other mote of God had ever gained Such giant grasp of ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... store and see what you can do to bring her to her senses," the money-lender proposed, with a smirk which twisted his sallow visage into a grimace. "If you can bring her to reason, we'll ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... light hair closely cut, and his face was as smooth as a woman's. His shirt was whiter than any shirt I have ever seen before or since, and it was made of very fine material. He carried an agreeable smirk upon his countenance, and he disinterred, now and then, some very long and extraordinary word from the dictionary, when he was particularly desirous either to make himself understood or conceal his meaning. I had almost omitted to add, that he was a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... into a real woman. But I haven't, and it wouldn't be worth while when there are so many real women, ready made, out where I come from. This girl would be exactly the wife for you, though. Just as she is, she'd help you mince about from parlor to parlor, and smirk and jabber and waste time. She's been educating for the job ever since she was born." He laid his hand in gracious, kindly fashion on his friend's shoulder. "Think it over. And if you want my help it's yours. I can show her what ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... attractive to some minds and realizes beyond rivalry a particular ideal—that of ecclesiastical saintliness and detachment from secular fret and turmoil. It should not be denied that he did not always escape the pitfalls of such a method of treatment, the faces becoming sleek and prim, with a smirk of sexless religiosity which hardly eludes the artificial or even the hypocritical; on other minds, therefore, and these some of the most masculine and resolute, he produces little genuine impression. After allowing for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... was as if a stream of icy-cold water were running down her. But then, when her husband had appeared, had placed himself near the bed in which she lay so feeble, so weak, so at his mercy, and had said with such a satisfied smirk, "Psia krew, we've done that well!" then she could not restrain herself any longer. She had uttered a cry, a feeble, plaintive, yet piercing cry, and had [Pg 26] reared herself up with her last strength, so that the little creature on her breast had begun to whimper ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... niece was shaving the blind man, the razor had to travel over a triumphant smirk which would not explain itself to womankind, Blinder being a man who could bide his time. The time came when the smith looked in to say, "Should I gang yont to Aaron's and see if he'll give me ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... and adjacent rooms all manner of cloaking and shawling was going on, and the Barchester folk were getting themselves gone. Mrs Proudie did her best to smirk at each and every one, as they made their adieux, but she was hardly successful. Her temper had been tried fearfully. By slow degrees, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... intruding, I hope," one plump cowbird remarked with a smirk as he settled himself near the Muley Cow's forelegs, when she ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... not at all impressed by it. She switched her brown skirt with more than her usual air of jaunty alertness around the chairs and tables, looked in the little glass behind the screen at which the pair adjusted their caps and aprons with a smirk of self-satisfaction, and always wore a bunch of Princess violets in the bosom of her dress. Soon, the string of amber beads at her throat was discarded in favour of a gold chain and pearl and turquoise pendant, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... her new dignity of wifehood; but the dignity bore traces of diligent rehearsal, and left singularly little to the imagination. By her side, Scott, looking down upon his fellow townsmen, wore the self-conscious smirk of a sheepish schoolboy; and the best of his fellow townsmen respected him the more on that account. Catia was the more impressive of the two, they told themselves; but there was no especial sense in a pair of young things like these, trying to act as if ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... seemed fantastic, and fantastic indeed was his end. Milburgh, with his perpetual smirk, his little stoop, his broad, fat face and half-bald head; Mrs. Rider, a pale ghost of a woman who flitted in and out of the story, or rather hovered about it, never seeming to intrude, yet never wholly separated from its tragic process; Ling Chu, imperturbable, bringing ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... may not have seen her, ere this," observed Pao-yue with a smirk, "yet when I look at her face, it seems so familiar, and to my mind, it would appear as if we had been old acquaintances; just as if, in fact, we were now ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... physiognomy, features; front, exterior; obverse; facet; effrontery, confidence, assurance, audacity, impudence. Associated Words: facial, domino, complexion, multifaced, rouge, cosmetic, grimace, Janus-faced, lineament, profile, silhouette, maskoid, smirk, physiognomist. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... silver slippers seemed verily to dance of themselves and though they continued to pinch her toes and blister her heels that did not interfere with her enjoyment in the least. Ethel Reese gave her a bad ten minutes by beckoning her mysteriously out of the pavilion and whispering, with a Reese-like smirk, that her dress gaped behind and that there was a stain on the flounce. Rilla rushed miserably to the room in the lighthouse which was fitted up for a temporary ladies' dressing-room, and discovered that the stain was merely a tiny grass smear and that the gap was equally tiny where a hook had ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was an arch smirk on her countenance, and she continued looking at me with so much latent meaning in the expression of her eye, that I was fairly compelled to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC". The original cover featured a picture of Peter Norton with a silly smirk on his face, wearing a pink shirt. Perhaps in recognition of this usage, the current edition has a different picture of Norton wearing a pink shirt. See also ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... head a little on one side and drew in his chin, with Mr. May's smirk exactly, and wagging his tail slightly, he commenced to play the false Kishwegin. He sidled and bridled and ejaculated with raised hands, and in the dumb show the tall Frenchman made such a ludicrous caricature of Mr. Houghton's manager that Madame wept again with laughter, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... in her eyes was sickening. But was Pat nauseated? Not he! The big goon was lapping it up like a famished feline. His simpering smirk stretched from ear to there as he murmured, ...
— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond
... practised eye, they betrayed an inmate who can get through his money, and make very little show for it. The walls were covered with coloured prints of racers and steeple-chases, interspersed with the portraits of opera-dancers, all smirk and caper. Then there was a semi-circular recess covered with red cloth, and fitted up for smoking, as you might perceive by sundry stands full of Turkish pipes in cherry-stick and jessamine, with amber mouthpieces; while a great serpent hookah, from which Frank ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was beside Thurid, and ere the devilish smirk had faded from his handsome face I had caught him full upon the mouth with my clenched fist; and as the good, old American blow landed, the black dator shot back a dozen feet, to crumple in a heap at the foot of Kulan Tith's throne, spitting ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to hear them sing; They thought their music quite the thing. "And now," said they, "we will draw near," For much they wished to see and hear What was this fuss and noise about, So joined the party to find out. The Frogs received them with a smirk, And gave their hands with nervous jerk. Bowing and smiling in return, The Ducks prepared themselves ...
— The Ducks and Frogs, - A Tale of the Bogs. • Fanny Fire-Fly
... and came towards him, and Cleggett saw the man's face for the first time. It was a face that Cleggett never forgot. Cleggett judged the man to be a Frenchman; he was dark and sallow, with nervous, black eyebrows, and a smirk that came and went quickly. But the unforgettable feature was a mole that grew on his upper lip, on the right side, near the base of his flaring nostril. Many moles have hairs in them; Pierre's mole had ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... and was told by a black fellow in the Circle that Mr. Carvel was but just left for Upper Marlboro with a cavalcade of four coaches-and-six and some dozen gentlemen with their servants. I am sure my mistake was pardonable, Mr. Carvel," he concluded with a smirk; "this gentleman was plainly of the first quality, as was he to whom I was directed. And as he was about to leave town for I knew not how long, I hope I was in the right in bidding the black ride after him, for I give you my word the business ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... him first?" the priest suggested with a fat smirk. None guessed better than he how low debauch had brought the ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... untractable thing than he had even suspected it could be. The right side of his face was in a condition of semi-paralysis due to the muscular exactions required; he had a sickening fear that the scowl that marked his brow was destined to form a perpetual alliance with the smirk at the corner of his nose, forever destroying the symmetry of his face. If one who has not the proper facial construction will but attempt the feat of holding a monocle in place for unbroken hours, he ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... boas and all other adornments irrelevant to the structure of the human body; flappers who swung scarlet bows on their plaits and otherwise assailed their Presbyterian environment by glad cries of the appearance; and on all these faces the smirk of superior sagacity that vulgar people give to the untriumphant ideal. "I must work out the ethics of suicide this evening," thought Ellen chokingly, "for if the world's like this it's the wisest thing to do. But not, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... accompanied by his benedict marine. On his arrival, he found that everything appeared to be in great confusion; indeed an event was occurring which had astonished the whole household; the butler made a profound bow to the captain; the footmen forgot their usual smirk when he alighted. Captain Delmar was ushered in solemn silence into the drawing-room, and his aunt, who had notice of his arrival received him with a stiff, prim air of unwonted frigidity, with her arms crossed before her on her ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... against any of the young ladies," said Link Merwell, with a smirk at Laura that made Dave's sister turn away in disdain. "We are only doing it to square accounts with Dave Porter and his cronies. We owe them a good deal,—and this is the ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... that we were talking of the boy, her interest in the conversation vanished, even more quickly than her appetite. She had to go, she said suddenly; she was so sorry, and the discontented curiosity of her look gave place again to the smirk of affected politeness. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... war?"—And, in fact, during my last visit I found that Alexyei Sergyeitch had aged very greatly; even the pupils of his eyes had acquired a milky hue—like that in infants—and on his lips there appeared not the discerning smile of former days, but that strainedly-sweet, unconscious smirk which never leaves the faces of very old people even ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... fell with terrible effect on Felix. For a moment the knife trembled in his grasp with an almost irresistible impulse. He could hardly restrain himself, as he heard those horrible, incredible words, and saw the loathsome smirk on the speaker's face by which they were accompanied, from leaping then and there at the savage's throat, and plunging his blade to the haft into the vile creature's body. But by a violent effort he mastered his indignation ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... religion of the little. The low hills are a-smirk with flowers and greenery; the dominating peaks, austere and desolate, holding a ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... four feet of her, she perceived that this was an illusion created by the proportion and thickness of his body. He was, in fact, half a head taller than she, and Stella stood five feet five. His gray eyes met hers squarely, with a cool, impersonal quality of gaze. There was neither smirk nor embarrassment in his straightforward glance. He was, in effect, "sizing her up" just as he would have looked casually over a logger asking him for a job. Stella sensed that, and resenting it momentarily, failed to match his manner. She flushed. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... comely than Janet, and having the smirk of a perfunctory greeting upon her flabby face, stood within the room assigned to Mistress Katherine. As her eyes fell upon the maid, she stepped back surprised, and with a confusion she essayed to hide in her coarse voiced ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne |
