"Disdainful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... earth; And so they sentinel the woods, the wilds that know their worth; And so they scour the startled plains and mock at hurt and pain, And read their Crimson Manual, and find their duty plain. Knights of the lists of unrenown, born of the frontier's need, Disdainful of the spoken word, exultant in the deed; Unconscious heroes of the waste, proud players of the game, Props of the power behind the throne, upholders of the name: For thus the Great White Chief hath said, "In all my lands be ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... curiosity, but received me with all the obliging civility possible. I know no European court, where the ladies would have behaved themselves in so polite a manner to such a stranger. I believe, upon the whole, there were two hundred women, and yet none of those disdainful smiles, and satirical whispers, that never fail in our assemblies, when any body appears that is not dressed exactly in the fashion. They repeated over and over to me; "UZELLE, PEK UZELLE," which is nothing ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... elder brother, Sir Robert Bowes, Warden of the Marches, who seems to have acted as head of the family. Sir Robert turned out to be more hostile to the perilous alliance proposed for his niece than even her father; and Knox wrote that 'his disdainful, yea, despiteful words have so pierced my heart that my life is bitter unto me.' When Knox was about to have 'declared his heart' in the whole matter, Sir Robert interrupted him with, 'Away with ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... with a disdainful gesture, "at first, under the cloak of Christianity, the arena was drenched with the blood of the martyrs, and then, later, people were massacred and shut up in prisons and mad-houses. And now, every day, more blood is spilt than ever could be shed by a universal revolution. The worst ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... nothing but strange ordinances, ridiculous precepts, impertinent ceremonies, puerile customs, oblations, sacrifices, and expiations, useful indeed to the ministers of God, but very burthensome to the rest of the citizens. I see likewise, that these laws often tend to make men unsociable, disdainful, intolerant, quarrelsome, unjust, and inhuman, to those who have not received the same revelations, the same ordinances, or ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... intimacy with them was always strained and soon ended of itself. Once, indeed, I did have a friend. But I was already a tyrant at heart; I wanted to exercise unbounded sway over him; I tried to instil into him a contempt for his surroundings; I required of him a disdainful and complete break with those surroundings. I frightened him with my passionate affection; I reduced him to tears, to hysterics. He was a simple and devoted soul; but when he devoted himself to me entirely I began to hate him immediately and repulsed ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... With a disdainful exclamation the man sprang to his feet. For a time he paced the room in silence, watched by Billy's fearful eyes; then he came back and dropped into the low chair at Billy's side. His whole manner had undergone a complete ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... be carried out the door flew open. A tall young woman, barely more than twenty years of age, stood in the doorway, her head thrown back, cheeks flushed, her look proud and disdainful. In her right hand ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... tall, cleanly built, and evidently as hard as a wire nail. His hair missed red by the merest fraction, and his eyes were a clear blue, level and direct. He moved as lightly as a prowling animal, and he met the supercilious and disdainful glances of his fellow passengers with a ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... King of Jerusalem, treated as a princess, and moved in too high a sphere to be approached by a simple squire. At first he was astonished to find that they were separated by so wide a gulf, and the Espec pride made him almost disdainful. Still, the fair demoiselle was present in all his visions by day and his dreams by night; and while consoling himself with building castles in the air when he was to reside in baronial state with her as his 'lady and companion,' he ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... bench; at other times a personal dislike to one of his puisnes caused him to derogate from the dignity of his court, in cases where he was especially careful to protect the interests of suitors. With silence more disdainful than any words could have been, he used to turn away from Mr. Justice Willes, at the moment when the latter expected his chief to ask his opinion; and on such occasions the indignant puisne seldom had the prudence ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... like Suzette Beauvais," Felice replied, absently. She was not thinking of Suzette. She had forgotten even the stranger, whose disdainful eyes, fixed upon herself, had moved her sweet nature to something like a rebellious anger. Her thoughts were on the beautiful young mother of alien race, whose name, for some reason, she was forbidden to speak. She saw her glide, gracious and smiling, along the smooth floor; ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... they showed themselves before. And let me make some use hereof, fair ladies, to you not to stand over-nicely conceited of your beauty and good parts when men solicit you with their best services. Remember then this disdainful gentlewoman, but more especially her, who being the death of so kind a lover was therefore condemned to perpetual punishment, and he made the minister thereof whom she had cast off with coy disdain, from which I wish your minds to be free, as mine is ready ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... nature's fairest ill, The woe of man, that first created curse, Base female sex, sprung from black Ate's loins, Proud, disdainful, cruel and unjust, Whose words are shaded with enchanting wiles, Worse than Medusa mateth all our minds; And in their hearts sit shameless treachery, Turning a truthless vile circumference! O, could my fury paint their furies forth! For hell's no hell, compared to their hearts, Too simple ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... he had copied from the English gentry, his manners, his dress, his curled whiskers, his outward distinction; the woman, with her grand manners, her supreme elegance, all the stiffness and formality of the upper middle class, represented admirably the pride of money. Their disdainful politeness, their haughty amiability, seemed to come down to people. There was a kind of insolence which was visible in their tastes even. M. Bourjot had neither any pictures nor any objects of art; his collection ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... me that she will kill herself," I answered, thinking that this resolve would startle Henriette. But when she heard it a disdainful smile, more expressive than the thoughts it conveyed, flickered on her lips. "My dear conscience," I continued, "if you would take into account my resistance and the seductions that led to my fall you would ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... do words mean to me now? (Then suddenly starting to his feet and flinging off her hand with disdainful strength—violently and almost insultingly.) What damned rot! I tell you we'll win! We must! Oh, I'm a fool to waste words on you! What can you know? Love isn't in the materia medica. Your predictions—all the verdicts of all the doctors—what do they matter to me? This is—beyond ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... at him curiously, with a half-disdainful smile, and was just on the point of saying, 'But suppose the man of my own choice won't propose to me?' However, as the words rose to her lips, she felt there was a point at which even she should yield to convention: ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... disdainful laughs that burst from the restrained seamen were a sufficient pledge of their indifference to so trifling a danger. Borroughcliffe noted their hardened boldness, and taking the supper bell, which was lying near him, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... which in his opinion his country possesses. If he grants nothing to other nations, neither does he solicit anything for his own. The censure of foreigners does not affect him, and their praise hardly flatters him; his position with regard to the rest of the world is one of disdainful and ignorant reserve: his pride requires no sustenance, it nourishes itself. It is remarkable that two nations, so recently sprung from the same stock, should be so opposite to one another in their manner of feeling ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... very glad of the privilege of standing on the ground for once and looking up at an object; for I confess it afflicts my kindly-affectioned nature to be forever looking down upon this goodly earth, as if in disdainful contempt of its manifold beauties. So, to-morrow, ladies and gentlemen," added he, rising, "we are to pay our respects to this 'Old Man.' I hear music below. You young people would like to join the merry groups, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... with a Spaniard, cut off his head, agreeable to their savage manner of waging war, and presented it to the General in his camp: but he rejected it with abhorrence, calling them barbarous dogs, and bidding them begone. At this disdainful behaviour, however, the Chickesaws were offended, declaring, that if they had carried the head of an Englishman to the French, they would not have treated them so: and perhaps the General discovered more ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... that, Mr. Balderby," the cashier answered; "if I am any judge of human nature, Henry Dunbar will hate us because of that very crime of his own, knowing that we are in the secret, and will be all the more disagreeable and disdainful in his intercourse with us. He will carry it off with a high ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... locality, and attaching itself to outstanding figures and fresh events without changing its essential spirit and character. The more formal Muses despised these rude and unlettered rhymes—when they noticed them at all it was in a disdainful or patronising spirit—and this holds true of the eighteenth century almost as much as of the sixteenth. It is not that ballad poetry was dumb, but that history was deaf and blind ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... thanks and reproof:—thanks for the brilliant education you have given her, and reproof for the faults which your acuteness must have noticed, but which your indulgence has passed over. She is good-tempered, but cold; well-informed, but disdainful; lively, but deficient in judgment. She pleases no one, and it gives her no pain. She fancies the renown of her uncle and the gallantry of her father are every thing. Teach her, but teach her plainly, without mincing, that in reality they ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... after the catastrophe, when Eugenie's most intimate friend, the music teacher, Louise d'Armilly, came to condole with her, the proud daughter of the banker repulsed her with a disdainful laugh. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... cake-sellers, its fruiterers, its turbaned Ethiopians, its black Nubians, and almost fair Egyptians; one can visit the bazaars, or on a market morning spend an hour at Shareh-el-Gamaleyeh, watching the disdainful camels pass, soft-footed, along the shadowy streets, and the flat-nosed African negroes, with their almost purple-black skins, their bulging eyes, in which yellow lights are caught, and their huge hands with turned-back thumbs, count their gains, or yell their disappointment over a bargain ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... too strange for the palate of their day, and is now too familiar, perhaps. It is a peculiar fate, and would form the scheme of a pretty study in the history of literature. But in whatever she did she left the stamp of a talent like no other, and of a personality disdainful of literary environment. In a time when most of us had to write like Tennyson, or Longfellow, or Browning, she never would write like ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a disdainful fingernail and followed his wife into the drawing-room. She gave him some tea to keep him quiet; he drank it in passionate gulps. Then he felt better, and lay back in his chair biting ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... of his hands, and nodded when I asked him if his mother was at home. As he glanced at me, his face dimpled with a seizure of irrelevant merriment, and he shot up the windmill tower with a lightness that struck me as disdainful. I knew he was peering down at me as ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... private liberty by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the 'moral unity of France.' To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, for example, alludes to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost comical were the theme less ghastly. 'At Reims,' he observes, 'about eight persons were killed—and two were afterwards hanged for doing it.' The contest of this curious passage plainly shows that he ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... burning throne, Where she should sit for men to gaze upon. The outside of her garments were of lawn, The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn; Her wide sleeves green, and bordered with a grove, Where Venus in her naked glory strove To please the careless and disdainful eyes Of proud Adonis, that before her lies. Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain, Made with the blood of wretched lovers slain. Upon her head she ware a myrtle wreath, From whence her veil reached to the ground beneath. Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves Whose workmanship both man ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... before the sun, so God hath assured me." When Mr. David delivered this message, the captain seemed to be much moved, but after a little conference with Lethington, he returned to Mr. Lindsay, and dismissed him with a disdainful countenance and answer. When he reported this to Mr. Knox, he said, "Well, I have been earnest with my God anent that man, I am sorry that it should so befal his body, yet God assureth me, there is mercy ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... through the long hall to the drawing-room. James followed, and en route he observed at the extremity of a side-hall two young people sitting with their hands together in a dusky corner. "Male and female created He them!" reflected James, with all the tolerant, disdainful wisdom of his years ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... her gloves a disdainful, careless twirl, and went on her way to her room. To her astonishment, a few moments later, she heard the front door slam. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... order it," said she. "I'll send the pot-boy to wait on you." In a perfectly affable manner she took the money from the uncouth digger, and then, throwing a disdainful glance at Carnac, she tossed her head defiantly, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... who lightly scoffed was there, With jewels in her midnight hair, Her dark, disdainful eyes, And proud ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... from much which has already passed, it might erroneously be inferred that Young Dick was a mean and money-grubbing soul. On the contrary, he was at that instant entertaining secret thoughts and plans so utterly regardless and disdainful of his twenty millions as to place him on a par with a drunken sailor sowing the beach with ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... it is not one of the radiant Sympathies, with fair golden heads and dazzling faces and wings and robes of tender green, of the "Purgatory," not one of the living topazes or golden splendors of the "Paradise"; but is stern, disdainful, silent, waving from before his face all contact with the filthy gloom. His Lucifer is no flickering, gentlemanly, philosophic man of the world like Goethe's Mephistopheles, nor like Milton's Fallen ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... on piazzas? She could not know my tastes, and perhaps she had thought but little on the subject, and had taken her ideas from her father. He is just the man to be contented with nothing else than a vast sprawling hotel, with disdainful menials expecting tips." ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... an empire!" The dark stranger paused for an instant, as if in meditation, then abruptly continued: "I take your inheritance, fair child!—I rob the orphan and the fatherless!"—and the smile of disdainful pride which followed these words said more than whole piles of parchment ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... teeth'll stay in," said Jake flatly. He separated a green slip from the letter and held the two covered while he read. "Well, well," he said. "Our little Shakespeare!" With a disdainful grunt Jake ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... as her beauty, and she had a spirit before which no man could stand if she chose to be disdainful. To some she was so, and had the whim to flout them with great brilliancy. Encounters with her were always remembered, and if heard by those not concerned, were considered worthy both of recollection and of being repeated to the world; she had a tongue ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... repeated Angelina, in a disdainful tone. "Oh, detain me not in this cruel manner!—I want no Tenby oysters, I want no Welsh rabbits; only let me be gone—I am all impatience to see a dear friend. Oh, if you have any feeling, any humanity, detain me not!" cried she, clasping ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... called one of the wonders of te world. King Nicomedes of Bithynia offered vainly to the people of Cnidos the entire amount of their state debt for its possession. Lucian described the goddess as having a smile somewhat proud and disdainful; yet the eyes, moist and kindly, glowed with tenderness and passion, and the graceful lines of the shoulders, the voluptuous curves of the thighs, are full of sensuous feeling. The goddess, as represented in coins, stood beside a vase, over which ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... at the very Council-table, to ruin him in his master's favour. The king himself, while steadily supporting him against his rivals, was utterly unable to understand his drift. Charles valued him as an administrator, disdainful of private ends, crushing great and small with the same haughty indifference to men's love or hate, and devoted to the one aim of building up the power of the Crown. But in his purpose of preparing for the great struggle with freedom which he saw before him, of building up by force such ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... turn his way but preceded him, so that he only saw their backs. But he had no doubt who one of the couple was. The fair hair, the tall, slim, long-limbed figure, the perverse sloppiness of dress which could not quite obscure her grace of youth, betrayed the disdainful prodigy of Rackham Park. The creator of Linda Spavinsky swam ahead of him. Had he doubted her identity, a glance at the door from which she had emerged would have dispelled the doubt. It was the entrance to a picture gallery, where, cubes and curves having served their turn ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... reply save by a disdainful flirt of her skirts as she set off down the lane, followed by Perkins, Cameron and Tim bringing up ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... recorded. In the year 1776, a lady at the West End lost one night, at a sitting, 3000 guineas at Loo.(100) Again, a lady having won a rubber of 20 guineas from a city merchant, the latter pulled out his pocket-book, and tendered L21 in bank notes. The fair gamestress, with a disdainful toss of the head, observed—'In the great houses which I frequent, sir, we always use gold.' 'That may be, madam,' said the gentleman, 'but, in the LITTLE houses which I frequent, we ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... shared a secret admiration for the brilliant qualities which were flashed before their eyes; they privately agreed that May was more of a real lady than either the baronet's hard-tongued wife or the disdainful Hilda Shale. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Seymour's sketches. Nor is the true explanation irrelevant to the spirit and power of Dickens. Very delicate, slender, and bizarre talents are indeed incapable of being used for an outside purpose, whether of public good or of private gain. But about very great and rich talent there goes a certain disdainful generosity which can turn its hand to anything. Minor poets cannot write to order; but very great poets can write to order. The larger the man's mind, the wider his scope of vision, the more likely it will be that anything suggested to him will seem significant and promising; the ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... don't keep up with the news?" Jerry asked, his expression disdainful. "Of course there's a ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... will be welcome after the fatigue of the game. Will you honor my poor house, mistress? and you, too, ma'am? Gentlemen, you must fight among yourselves for the privilege of escorting Lady Sue to the house, and if she prove somewhat disdainful this beautiful summer's afternoon, I pray you remember that faint heart never won fair lady, and that the citadel is not worth storming an it is ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... devil in his flesh with prayers and sufferings, and so alien is it all to the whole thought and system of the modern Christian, that he either rejects such stories altogether as monks' impostures, or receives them with disdainful wonder, as one more shameful form of superstition with which human nature has insulted heaven and ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... their new toilettes; her mother, a majestic lady, with a big nose and gold glasses, treated the ladies of the noblest families with familiarity; but in spite of this intimacy there was apparent around the mother and daughter the gap of somewhat disdainful affection, in which commiseration bore no small part. They were poor. The father had been a diplomat of some distinction who, at his death, left his wife no other source of income than the widow's pension. Two sons ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... name, his age, his residence: "I am Danton, tolerably well known in the revolution; I am thirty-five years old. My residence will soon be nothing. My name will live in the Pantheon of history." His disdainful or indignant replies, the cold and measured answers of Lacroix, the austere dignity of Philippeaux, the vigour of Desmoulins, were beginning to move the people. But the accused were silenced, under the pretext that they were wanting in respect ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... correct some of his inaccuracies, but he never attempted it again. Old Russell listened attentively and respectfully, but when the lecture was over he dismissed the subject with a superior shake of the head and the disdainful remark, "Well, sir, I have heerd tell of people who think with you." Never a bit though did he make any change in his own peculiar rendering of the Bible and Book of ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... miserable lie!" cried the general, with a disdainful smile. "The Austrians will not be so bold as to take the offensive, for they know full well that the great Emperor Napoleon will consider every invasion of Bavarian territory an attack upon France herself, and that we ourselves should ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... the door to find Mr. Creighton and Mr. Holmes huddled on the mat. They came in with an eagerness which was only surpassed by Satan, wet and displaying cold anger towards his mistress, whom he passed with a disdainful flirt of his tail as he headed ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... surprise or impertinent curiosity, but received me with all the obliging civility possible. I know no European court where the ladies would have behaved themselves in so polite a manner to a stranger. I believe in the whole, there were two hundred women, and yet none of those disdainful smiles, or satiric whispers, that never fail in our assemblies when any body appears that is not dressed exactly in the fashion. They repeated over and over to me, "Uzelle, pek uzelle," which is nothing but Charming, very charming.—The first sofas were ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... begotten, or at the least a transfusion of prejudices, making life easier for both. But the Englishman sits apart, bursting with pride and ignorance. He figures among his vassal in the hour of peace with the same disdainful air that led him on to victory. A passing enthusiasm for some foreign art or fashion may deceive the world, it cannot impose upon his intimates. He may be amused by a foreigner as by a monkey, but he will never condescend to study him with any patience. Miss Bird, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he exclaim, "that disdainful Apollo. Thus cold, callous, and triumphing in the work of destruction, must be the angel of death, who winged the shaft at my ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... man, in shocked but disdainful surprise, blinking his eyes at the prince as though he could not believe his senses. "No, sir, you cannot smoke here, and I wonder you are not ashamed of the very suggestion. Ha, ha! a ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... haughtiness; and pretended, that every thing he suffered them to possess, ought to be esteemed a favour; adding this farther insult, "That they ought either to overcome like brave men, or learn to submit to the victor."(676) So harsh and disdainful a treatment only fired their resentment; and they resolved rather to die sword in hand, than to do any thing which might derogate from ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... high collars with anchors embroidered in gold, and black stocks, men who had fought off Cape Saint Vincent and Trafalgar; and after them Jaime's great grandfather, an old man with large eyes and disdainful mouth, who, when Ferdinand VII returned from his captivity in France, had sailed for Valencia to prostrate himself at his feet, beseeching, along with other great hidalgos, that he reestablish the ancient ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... it seems you speak this to oppose The saying of a sister Song of mine: This lowly Lady whom you call divine, Your sister called disdainful and morose. Though Heaven, you know, is ever bright and pure, Eyes may have cause to find a ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... worldly life were deemed utterly inconsistent with a preacher of righteousness, and were disdained with haughty scorn by the prophets of the Lord, as they were by Elijah and Elisha in the days of Ahab. "What went ye out in the wilderness to see?" said our Lord, with disdainful irony,—"a man clothed in soft raiment? They that wear soft clothing are in king's houses,"—as much as to say, My prophets, my ministers, rejoice not in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... still called Kensington Gore. Men of Hammersmith will not fail to remember that the very name of Kensington originated from the lips of their hero. For at the great banquet of reconciliation held after the war, when the disdainful oligarchs declined to join in the songs of the men of the Broadway (which are to this day of a rude and popular character), the great Republican leader, with his rough humour, said the words which are written in gold upon his monument, 'Little birds ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... ... a thundercloud, ... (talking of storms!) and even seek no further than this table for a first witness; this letter, I had yesterday, which calls me ... let me see how many hard names ... 'unbending,' ... 'disdainful,' ... 'cold hearted,' ... 'arrogant,' ... yes, 'arrogant, as women always are when men grow humble' ... there's a charge against all possible and probable petticoats beyond mine and through it! Not that either they or mine deserve ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... but a passing pleasantry, and Mary should not have allowed it to bring the color to her cheek, and that peculiar, half-disdainful look to her eye ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... despite the breach Germain had made on his own account, was still plenteous enough to produce its effect. The widow did not look unaware of its presence, and the suitors cast disdainful glances in its direction. ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... me some coffee," replied the thief. Victurnien sank into a bewildered stupor, darkness settled down over his brain. Visions of past rapture flitted across the misty gloom like the figures that Raphael painted against a black background; to these he must bid farewell. Inexorable and disdainful, the Duchess played with the tip of her scarf. She looked in irritation at Victurnien from time to time; she coquetted with memories, she spoke to her lover of his rivals as if anger had finally decided her to prefer one of them to a man who could so ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... lost child and the gracious father; but that his thorough searching wisdom knew the estate of Dives burning in hell, and of Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, would more constantly, as it were, inhabit both the memory and judgment. Truly, for myself (me seems), I see before mine eyes the lost child's disdainful prodigality turned to envy a swine's dinner; which, by the learned divines, are thought not historical acts, but ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... him, and laughed; a cold laugh, disdainful, yet not bitter. "You wanted that before, my lord; yet you neglected the opportunity my folly gave you. I thank you—you, after ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... the disdainful demeanor and grudging disposition of the Supreme Council, and irritated by the arbitrariness of its decrees and the indefensible way in which it applied principles that were propounded as sacred. Before restoring the diminutive cantons ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... As exemplified by Plato it has, though, its limitations. There is no charity in it. Plato preached humility, but there is none in his sermons. His thought is a winged thing, as the thought of a poet ever should be. But in the expression of it he seems smiling, disdainful, indifferent as a statue to the poverties of the heart. That too, perhaps, is as it should be. The high muse wears a radiant peplum. Anxiety is banished from the minds that she haunts. Then, also, if, in the nectar of Plato's speech, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... c'est alors, Quakere? Quel drole de mot! Je ne suis pas Quakere, moi!' he might have answered, with a disdainful shrug of his high, narrow, aristocratic French shoulders. Yet here he ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... other, and had the same brilliant complexion, rich chestnut hair, delicately arched brows, and dark blue eyes. Though only eight years of age, a most unchildlike self-possession distinguished them. The expression of their countenances was haughty, disdainful, and supercilious. Their beautiful features seemed quite unimpassioned, and they moved as if they expected everything to yield to them. The girl, whose long ringlets were braided with pearls, was ushered to a seat next to her father, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... to the door at the lower end of the gallery. So standing, with her eyes strangely bright, and her perfect figure drawn up to its fullest height, she looks superb in her disdainful beauty. ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... most lucid intellects. Nothing is indeed more terrible than these hidden struggles that sometimes take place between the self-willed artist and his rebellious art. Nothing is more moving than these fits of rage alternating with invocation, in turn supplicating or imperative, addressed to a disdainful or fugitive muse. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... me not. You, who have known my heart from infancy And all its feelings of disdainful pride, Spare me the shame of disavowing all That I profess'd. Born of an Amazon, The wildness that you wonder at I suck'd With mother's milk. When come to riper age, Reason approved what Nature had implanted. Sincerely bound to me by zealous ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... one of these rough followers of the criminal? All hanging hereabout to gather how he's going to bear Examination in the hall." She flung disdainful glances on The shabby figure standing at the fire with others there, Who warmed them ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... she was, maintained an air of reserve which raised a barrier beyond which none of the curious might penetrate; and as if insolently disdainful of the attention she attracted, her face remained veiled; not too thickly, but effectively enough to set at naught these ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... Edwy, with disdainful mien The little Naiad of the Downton Wave? High 'mid the rocks, where her clear waters lave The circling, gloomy basin.—In such scene, Silent, sequester'd, few demand, I ween, That last perfection ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... give the disdainful lady an opportunity of expressing her opposition to his suit, and, pretending to interpret her silence favorably, he took his hat, and said, "I thank you for the cordial manner in which my proposition has been received; I hope to have the pleasure of visiting Mademoiselle de Merrivale this ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... was so disdainful to all the Princes who danced with her, that night. But nobody wondered any more when Honey the gardener's son arrived; and this really happened, only three days later. And he came, all in his gardener's ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... from the dipper, unseen forces dragged Seesaw from his seat to go and drink after her. It was not only that there was something akin to association and intimacy in drinking next, but there was the fearful joy of meeting her in transit and receiving a cold and disdainful look from her ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... surprised me most was, that though this spectacle filled me with horror, the sultan my uncle, instead of testifying his sorrow to see the prince his son in such a condition, spat on his face, and exclaimed, with a disdainful air, "This is the punishment of this world, but that of the other will last to eternity;" and not content with this, he pulled off his sandal, and gave the corpse of his son ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... again with disdainful obedience, and the red-faced man was moving forward grunting to himself, when through the open skylight the hail "On deck there!" arrested him short, attentive, and with a sudden change to amiability in ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... had become a stale added piece of room-furniture by the bed-side; but in recording that fact, I record also this other: that, accompanying this mortal sallowness, which painfully shewed up her poor freckles, was a steady smile, a little turned-down: a smile of steady, of slightly disdainful—Confidence. ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... not been so often to the theater that they could afford to be disdainful over almost any passable play, and from the very moment the curtain went up their interest was aroused. Certainly, there was something extremely romantic and interesting about the lonely little figure ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... say what they have to say without preface, and in literary undress, without a superfluous word, without the joints and bands of structure; they say it in brief, rapid sentences, which come down, sentence after sentence, like the strokes of a great hammer. No wonder that in their disdainful brevity they seem rugged and abrupt, "and do not seem to end, but fall." But with their truth and piercingness and delicacy of observation, their roughness gives a kind of flavour which no elaboration could give. It is none the less that their wisdom is of a somewhat cynical kind, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... only place in the world where you can wave a magic wand like that," said Birotteau, with an Asiatic gesture worthy of the Arabian Nights. "You will do me the honor to come to my ball, monsieur? Men of talent are not all disdainful of commerce; and you will meet a scientific man of the first order, Monsieur Vauquelin of the Institute; also Monsieur de la Billardiere, Monsieur le comte de Fontaine, Monsieur Lebas, judge and president ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... doctrine was to withdraw the devotee more and more from the public service, to concentrate his thoughts on his own spiritual emotions, and to breed in him a contempt for the present life which he regarded merely as a probation for a better and an eternal. The saint and the recluse, disdainful of earth and rapt in ecstatic contemplation of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is ready ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the more remarkable for being so much under her restraint, fixed Clennam's attention, and kept him on the spot. It flashed out of her dark eyes as they regarded him, quivered in her nostrils, and fired the very breath she exhaled; but her face was otherwise composed into a disdainful serenity; and her attitude was as calmly and haughtily graceful as if she had been in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... heads. He seemed to look on, dispassionate and imposing, in his lonely greatness, spreading his branches wide in a gesture of lofty protection, as if to hide them in the sombre shelter of innumerable leaves; as if moved by the disdainful compassion of the strong, by the scornful pity of an aged giant, to screen this struggle of two human hearts from the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... my mind," said Romola Borria with a disdainful toss of her pretty head. "Besides, I think the Herr Captain would have a word ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... viewing the world through the top of his hat. Did the most active man calmly and without egotism dissect the sum of his useful accomplishment, he would be highly discouraged, for time is a relentless destroyer. But a man can not take so disdainful a measure of his own value. He must live. To superior minds like the philosopher's or Stacy Shunk's he may be living his tale of years happy in constantly hoodwinking himself with the idea that he is an important factor in some ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... a peculiarly limited art, dealing with a specially abstracted range of subjects; and the Greek sculptor as a workman almost exclusively intellectual, having only a sort of accidental connexion with the material in which his thought was expressed. He is fancied to have been disdainful of such matters as the mere tone, the fibre or texture, of his marble or cedar-wood, of that just perceptible yellowness, for instance, in the ivory-like surface of the Venus of Melos; as being occupied only ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... boisterously arrogant, blusteringly disdainful of his intellectual superiors, and brazenly foul-mouthed. It was as though he was shouting: "I don't have to fear or respect anybody now! I have got a lot of money. I can do as I damn please." More than one pure man became dissolute in the riot of easily gotten wealth. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... time the inhabitants of Southwark complained that "the Knight Marshal's men were very unneighbourly and disdainful among them," with every indication that a prolonged insurrection would endure. However, the matter was brought to the attention of the lord chamberlain, and such edict went forth as assured the inhabitants of the borough freedom from further annoyance. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... her hair tumbled like a tomboy's, but she is no backwoods girl, I'll bet on that. I'm afraid I was a little rude, but after taking such a stand I could not weaken, especially before such a haughty and disdainful little vixen. It was too great a temptation. What eyes she had! Contrary to what I expected, this little frontier settlement bids ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... trusted to those reluctant pledges wrung from the chiefs, but because I felt that if properly handled in that open country our force was of sufficient fighting strength to repel any ordinary attack from ill-armed savages, my long border experience rendering me a bit disdainful of Indian courage and resourcefulness. So it was that my restless mind dwelt rather upon other matters more directly personal. I could not put away the thought of the half-seen girl flitting about amid the dusk of the Pottawattomie ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... his romantic qualities, lacked any perception of the noble and beautiful in life, and it could be positively asserted that his estimate of Mrs. Maldon was chiefly disdainful. But of Mrs. Maldon's secret opinion about John Batchgrew nothing could be affirmed with certainty. Nobody knew it or ever would know it. I doubt whether Mrs. Maldon had whispered it even to herself. In youth he had been the very intimate friend of her husband. Which fact would scarcely ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... to him. Safe in a dim corner of the deserted saloon, she seized him in a vindictive embrace; then, as if it had been he who suggested the idea of such a loathsome relation, hissed out the hated words, "Your sister!" and released him with a disdainful repulse. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... replied the second mate, shortly. There was contempt in his voice, and I knew, when I looked at his grim, disdainful face, that he had had no hand in the affair. Bucko Lynch might kill a man in what he considered the line of duty, but snapping men off a yardarm was not his style. But I also knew that he was an officer of an American ship, and would consider it his duty to back ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... go, the milestones are grave-stones;" "He had gone but a little way before he espied a foul fiend coming;" "When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance." ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... turning from me with a disdainful swirl of her short petticoat, began to descend into the depths below, seeing which, I scrambled to my feet and crossed to the trap, only to behold her standing beneath me, the ladder dragged quite out ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol |
