"Gibe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing; for as I passed a group of young English revue girls who had come along to see the "show," I heard one exclaim, "A little bit of heaven, and they call it Ireland!" and everyone laughed; and another threw out the gibe: "Irish, and proud ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... was there to gibe at, Sybrandt?" remonstrated Catherine more mildly. "Is not our Kate afflicted? and is she not the most content of us all, and singeth like a merle at times between her pains? But I am as bad as thou; prithee read on, lass, and stop our gabble ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... writers—the epithet jovial, which is derived from the Latin name of its head. It is a life of all the pleasures of mind and body, of banquet and of revel, of music and of song; a life in which solemn grandeur alternates with jest and gibe; a life of childish willfulness and of fretfulness, combined with serious, manly, and imperial cares; for the Olympus of Homer has at least this one recommendation to esteem—that it is not peopled with ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... with ardent letters, to which she had not deigned to answer one word. Now she assumes an air of injured innocence, and accuses him of unkindness! She even promises to see him, but cannot resist the temptation to qualify the concession with a gibe. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... fisherman—"all that he did not know we have taught him, therefore," he added slyly, "let your young men watch him so that they may learn how to fish in deep and rough water, such as ours." These remarks were of course duly made public, and caused much indignation, neither the minister nor his flock liking the gibe about the deep, rough water; also the insinuation that anything about fishing was to be learnt from the new white man was ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... unshaven face of Bull Hunter quite awakened her. Bull could feel her watching him, as she glided about the room. He sunk his head between his shoulders and glared down at the table. No doubt she would begin to gibe at him before long. Most women did. He prepared himself to meet with patience that incredible sting and penetrating hurt ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... right across the statue, and the cruel face with its leering eyes seemed to smile down upon her mockingly, jeeringly, and she actually shrank, as if she dreaded to hear the satyr lips shoot some evil gibe at her. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... turned red with furious anger. His strange blue eyes grew cold with hatred, and he thrust out his scarlet lips till he had the ruthless expression of a Nero. The gibe at his obesity had caught him on the raw. Susie feared that he would make so insulting a reply that a quarrel ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... du Croisier's faction went so far as to use the poisoned weapons of savages—in this warfare the advantages of wit and delicate irony lay on the side of the nobles. But it should never be forgotten that the wounds made by the tongue and the eyes, by gibe or slight, are the last of all to heal. When the Chevalier turned his back on mixed society and entrenched himself on the Mons Sacer of the aristocracy, his witticisms thenceforward were directed at du Croisier's salon; he ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... troubled him, I conceive, was the fear of being ridiculous. The position of a poor tutor aspiring to the favours of the heiress destined for his master invites the unkind gibe. And Harry could not be sure that Alison herself was free from the desire to make him a figure of scorn. Such a suspicion might disconcert the most ardent of lovers. Harry Boyce, whatever his abilities in the profession, was not that yet. But the very fact that he had come to feel ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... Brueghel's pictures—a procession of ignorant and covetous monks who by their sanctimony and humbug impose upon the trustful multitude and fare sumptuously themselves. As a fixed motif (such motifs are numerous with Erasmus) there always recurs his gibe about the superstition that a person was saved by dying in the gown of ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... soldiers, who followed Archias, began to gibe at his cowardice on seeing this movement. Archias went in, renewed his persuasions, and begged him to rise, as there was no doubt that he would be well treated. Demosthenes sat in silence until he felt in his veins the working ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... round to give the only reply possible to such a gibe. These breakfast interludes had not lost piquancy in all these months. "I'm half a mind to go to this thing. I would, if it didn't break up ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Him, vexes—ha, Could He but know! and time to vex is now, When talk is safer than in winter-time. Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep 20 In confidence, he drudges at their task, And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe, Letting the rank ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... but it was so easy to fancy what one wanted to. She read it through again—this time, she felt almost sure that it had been dictated to him. If he had composed the wording himself, he would never have resisted a gibe at the law, or a gibe at himself for thus safeguarding her virtue. It was Rosek's doing. Her anger flamed up anew. Since they used such mean, cruel ways, why need she herself be scrupulous? She sprang out of bed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to brook the fellow's saucy gibe, "That if the peasant must have bread to eat, Why, let him go and draw the plough himself!" It cut me to the very soul to see My oxen, noble creatures, when the knave Unyoked them from the plough. As though they felt The wrong, they lowed and butted with their horns. On this I could contain ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... before him the stern faces of Mr Hippetts and Mr Sibery, with the jeering crowd of schoolfellows, who could laugh at and gibe him for his downfall, and be sure to call him Gentleman Coleby, as long as they were together, the name, under the circumstances, being sure ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... barber to increase it. Yet in spite of his mature years, the swift anger with which he had sprung up when the king refused his plaint, and the keen fiery glance which he had shot at the royal court as they filed past him with many a scornful smile and whispered gibe at his expense, all showed that he had still preserved something of the strength and of the spirit of his youth. He was dressed as became his rank, plainly and yet well, in a sad-coloured brown kersey coat with ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Davies was in the great Secret, a world of others must have shared le Secret de Polichinelle. Yet none hints at it, and only a very weak cause could catch at so tiny a straw as the off-chance that Davies KNEW, and used "Terence" as a gibe. {149a} ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... indefinitely blocked, since it was certain death for a player to attempt the recovery of his throwing-knife, and the rules did not permit the substitution of fresh weapons. The crowd laughed ironically as the situation dawned upon them, and the discomfited players were compelled to submit to many a gibe. The bull remained master of the field, and the spectators, grown tired of waiting, began to ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... After the evening at the Albion Chrystie set him down as "hopeless," and when he refused two dinner invitations, said they ought to have asked him to wait on the table and then he would have accepted. To this gibe Lorry made no answer, but that night before the mirror in her own room, she ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... I know not that; I know how folk would gibe If one of us pushed courtesy so far. She has always loved love's fashions well; you wot, The marshal, head friend of this Chastelard's, She used to talk with ere he brought her here And sow their talk with little kisses ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the Yankee trickery, The Yankee gibe and sneer, Till Yankee insolence and pride Know neither shame nor fear; But ready now with shot and steel Their brazen front to mar, We hoist aloft the Bonnie Blue Flag ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... to express the generally accepted sense of exacerbaverunt: and here a cognate language will show us the way. Icelandic geip, futilis exaggeratio; atgeipa, exaggerare, effutire: aegype, then, means to mock, to deride, and is allied to gabban, to gibe, to jape. In the Psalter published by Spelman it is rendered: hi gremedon spraece godes. In Notker it is widersprachen, and in the two old Teutonic interlinear version of the Psalms, published by Graff, verbitterten ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... to the spring hies he, where the women there gathered fill his ears with tittering, questioning tattle as he is filling his jar. "I wish I were Najma," says one, as he passes by, the jar of water on his shoulder. "Would you cement his brain, if you were?" puts in another. And thus would they gibe and joke every time Khalid came to the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Pao-y was in Tai y's apartments relating about the rat-elves, when Pao-ch'ai entered unannounced, and began to gibe Pao-y, with trenchant irony: how that on the fifteenth of the first moon, he had shown ignorance of the allusion to the green wax; and the three of them then indulged in that room in mutual poignant satire, for the sake of fun. Pao-y had been giving way to solicitude lest Tai-y should, by being ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... fond of quoting a foolish gibe: "Be good, and you may be happy; but you will not have a good time." The wise, however, soon become aware that if, in the course of life's journey, you achieve goodness and happiness, you will almost certainly ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the Indian Poet Amir Khusru, puts in the mouth of his king Kaikobad a contemptuous gibe at the Mongols with their cotton-quilted dresses. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... if I were the sayer or propounder of them, you might say that my arguments walk away and will not remain fixed where they are placed because I am a descendant of his. But now, since these notions are your own, you must find some other gibe, for they certainly, as you yourself allow, show an inclination to be on ...
— Euthyphro • Plato
... gelihen. II. biegen, to bend biuge bouc bugen gebogen; sieden, to seethe siude s[o]t suten gesoten. III. binden, to bind binde bant bunden gebunden; h[e:]lfen, to help hilfe half hulfen geholfen. IV. n[e:]men, to take nime nam n[a]men genomen. V. g[e:]ben, to give gibe gap g[a]ben geg[e:]ben. VI. graben, to dig grabe ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... Bethel lest that gentleman should imagine that he was on the edge of a proposal for his daughter's hand. He thought that all the world must know of it, and he blushed like a girl at the thought of its being laid bare for Pendragon to laugh and gibe it. It was so precious, so wonderful, that he kept it, like a rich piece of jewellery, deep in a secret drawer, over which he watched delightedly, almost humorously, secure in the delicious knowledge that ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... thrives on it, if I'm any judge. I believe a hiss is music to his ears and a curse is a hushaby, lullaby song. Put him out of business? Why say, doesn't nearly every editorial writer in the country jump on him every day, and don't all the paragraphers gibe at him, and don't all the cartoonists lampoon him, and don't all of us who write news from down here in Washington give him the worst of it in our despatches?... And what's the result? Mallard takes on flesh and every red-mouthed agitator in the country and every mushy-brained peace fanatic ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... position, but to lose their actual means of livelihood. Perhaps the truth in the final summing up can best be gotten from those who have made no vows that they will not change their opinions, and have nothing to lose if they fail occasionally to gibe ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... alien to his thoughts; that, on the contrary, his motive for action deserved high praise—it was to compel the rebellious Rumanians to obey the behest of the Conference and withdraw to their frontiers. The plenipotentiaries bore this gibe with dignity, and decided to have recourse once more to their favorite, and, indeed, only method—the despatch of exhortative telegrams. Of more efficacious means they were destitute. This time their message, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... aroused at last to the imminent importance of her call to expansion by sea, that it was greeted by a general pealing of the bells, which drew from the reluctant prime minister, Walpole, that bitter gibe, "Ay, to-day they are ringing their bells, and to-morrow they will be wringing their hands." Howe embarked with Anson's squadron, celebrated for its sufferings, its persistence, and its achievements, to waste the Spanish colonies of the Pacific; but the ship ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... was not worth answering: indeed, I knew it was not meant for an answer; it was a palpable gibe. I held my tongue, but now I knew I should get no information out of this soft-voiced ruffian until it suited him to give it. Our fate was still a mystery—if we were beaten in the struggle that was imminent, and I could not flatter myself with ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... limit it to the land or to any particular continent. Now, did our believers in the Balance of Power ever wish to see power balanced anywhere else than on the continent of Europe? That, if we studied history in any other language than our own, we should know was the gibe which other peoples flung at our addiction to the Balance of Power. We wanted, they said, to see a Balance of Power on the continent of Europe, to see one half of Europe equally matched against the other, because the more anxiously Continental States were ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... and To-la-go-to-de indulged in more than one sarcastic gibe at his less successful hunters over the manner in which they had been beaten by "No Tongue and the Yellow Head—an old pale-face and a boy." He even went so far as to say to Steve Harrison, "Good shot. The Yellow Head will be a chief some day. He must ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... the grass in Heaven's Meadow, They tore the flowers about, And flung them on the earth beyond the paling, With gibe, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... Milton' is nothing to me. Nature has created me a lover of the picturesque. In heart and soul I am an artist, I dabble in colours, I dream of lights and shades and glorious effects; but the power of working out my ideas is denied me. If I try to paint a tree my friends gibe at me. I am a poor literary hack; but I give you my word, my dear old Philistine, that I would willingly change places with you." Anna smiled, she was accustomed to this sort of talk; but to her surprise Verity, who had just rejoined them, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... much what kind of people he had in his College, or how their minds were developed in the highest sense, so long as they came out well in the Schools List. He was alleged, that is, to take a tradesman's view of learning. These kinds of gibe I naturally found soothing, for I was able to imagine myself as a scholar, though not as a winner of a First. Incidentally, also, though I did not acknowledge it to myself, I think I was a little hurt by the Master's want of what I might call humanity, or at any rate courtesy in his treatment ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... had been accustomed to use. He had been wont, in the days of his greatest insolence, to speak of the most eminent nobles as zanies, lunatics, and buffoons. The embroidered fool's cap was supposed to typify the gibe, and to remind the arrogant priest that a Brutus, as in the olden time, might be found lurking in the costume of the fool. However witty or appropriate the invention, the livery had an immense success. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... said the archbishop; "let not the gibe and jest go round; there be matters of graver import that should occupy us this night. To-morrow, let the elements be propitious, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Say I was scared, friends! Call me fool and coward, but nothing worse! Jeer at the fool and gibe at the coward! 'Twas ever the coward's curse That fear breeds fancies in such: such take their shadow for substance still, —A fiend at their back. I liked poor ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... or rather no-system, there has never been a consistent votary, if we except Pyrrho himself; and whether he were not an insincere sceptic, the world will always be most sincerely sceptical. But forgive me my passing gibe. In wishing you to be as inconsistent as nine tenths of Christians are, I did not mean to prejudice your arguments, such as they are. I know it is not in your power to be otherwise than inconsistent; and I shall always have that argument against you, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... all assembled in the salon as usual after dinner when M. Vergniaud was announced. The little princess was radiant. She had never been merrier in a school-girl frolic or more ready with gibe and jest and laughter. She sang her best songs, putting her whole soul into them—"Si tu savais comme je l'aime." Rene Vergniaud was so dazed that he came near bidding farewell to his senses for ever. He evidently thought that all this brilliancy was for him, and was in such a rapture ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... to consent to this on the ground that in all likelihood Bill's claim would last but a few years, anyway. It seemed too good an opening for Brick to lose; but instead of refreshing himself with his customary gibe, the huge fellow sat dark and glowering, his eyes staring upward at the crevice in the rock roof, the lantern-light showing his forehead deeply ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... Wilhelm Schwab, taking Schmucke's quaint inquiry for a gibe, of which that perfect Christian ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Curiously enough, while bringing forward all the evidence she could adduce to prove that Burton was a Christian, Lady Burton makes no reference in her book to this paper. Perhaps it was because Sir Richard continued to gibe at the practices of her church just as much after his "conversion" as before. However, it gratified her to know that if he was not a good Catholic, he was, at any rate, the next best thing—a Catholic. An intimate friend of Burton to whom I mentioned this ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... I was one morning playing at marbles in the village ball alley, with a light heart and lighter pocket. The gibe and the jest went gaily round, when suddenly there appeared amongst us a stranger, of a very remarkable and very cheerful aspect; his intrusion was not the least restraint upon our merry little assemblage, on the contrary, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... Englishmen mounted and formed up on the quay, the mob, which consisted of about two hundred wharf labourers, with a small sprinkling of half-breed women and fifty or sixty boys, gave back sullenly and scowlingly with a few low-muttered threats and an occasional hissing gibe of hereticos! But there was no attempt at violence except when some half-dozen boys began to throw stones. But the stringing of the Englishmen's bows, and the fitting of a few arrows to the strings, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... cowardly, dishonest—a mere fraction of a man both in soul and body. He is represented by the thinnest fellow in the company; his starved person and frightened look are the unfailing signals for a laugh; and he is never spoken to but in a gibe at ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... his opponent to pay his flippant gibe the honor of repartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect in his slender grace, was moved to a slight, disdainful smile, but it evidenced scarcely the appreciation that anybody less impervious to criticism ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... Would you jeer and gibe if you saw a man sinking in the waves time after time in spite o' rafts and life-preservers thrown out to ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... quick life crops out In watchful mutual mockery. Gibe and flout In low asides flow freely. Oh, bland elysium for the brave and fair, Whose pleasures are the snigger and the stare, Chill snub, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... indifferently, as if the heresies which the old man hurled at him were some old worn-out song. Seeing, however, that the schoolmaster's flush of enthusiasm seemed on the point of dying out, he roused himself to gibe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... the Chorus. When[1] flagons were foaming, And roisterers were roaming, And bards flung about them their gibe and their joke; The holiest song Still was found to belong To the sons ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... of the Border, and I present it to my English readers, as a worthy representative, in these latter days, of those ludicrous songs of our country in the olden time which are so admirably suited to show, notwithstanding the gibe of Goldsmith, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... early route; and further, that the river which passed near Sobitche ran to the south. Enarea is not very extensive, but a high table-land, on every side surrounded by high mountain ranges, and is situated (see Geographical Bulletin, 1839) at the confluence of two rivers, the Gibe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... this pleasantry as one might suppose he would. His own primitive aversion to the strange, deformed child made him weakly sensitive. He recoiled from Falstar's gibe with a sneaking shame he dared not defend by a ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... to Siegmund that he was meriting the old gibe of the atheists. He was shirking the responsibility of himself, turning it ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... moonlit vale above! Listen! dearest, etc. "Why is't thus, this sylvan Petrarch Pours all night his serenade? 'Tis for some proud woodland Laura, His sad sonnets all are made! But he changes now his measure — Gladness bubbling from his mouth — Jest and gibe, and mimic pleasure — Winged Anacreon of the South! Listen! dearest, etc. "Bird of music, wit and gladness, Troubadour of sunny climes, Disenchanter of all sadness, — Would thine art were in my rhymes. O'er the heart that's beating by me, I would weave a spell divine; Is there aught ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... school the student hears no mention of living immigrant or pioneer save in terms of gibe and sneer and taunt. The color and high romance of his own township is a thing undreamed of, as vague and shapeless as the foundations of Enoch, the city of Cain. And for his own farmstead, though for the first time on earth a man made here a ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... black Bononian beast, That I do flout, do gibe, or jest, No, no, thou Beer-pot, know that I, A noble ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... ole niggers wus raised right an' de young niggers ain't. Iffen I had my say-so dey'd burn down de nigger schools, gibe dem pickanninies a good spankin' an' put 'em in de patch ter wuck, ain't no nigger got no business ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... This time the docile animals had refused to obey their mistress, and the duchess expressed the suspicion that she had not intended to call them off; for, though she had carelessly apologised, she asked, as if the words were a gibe, if there was anything more delightful than to curb a refractory steed. She had an answer ready for Cordula, however, and retorted that the disobedience of her dogs proved that, if she understood how ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "Thy gibe is no answer, brother Kenneth," said the Saracen; "for know, that had my assailant been in very deed the Prince of Darkness, thou wert bound not the less to enter into combat with him in thy comrade's behalf. Know, also, that whatever there may be of foul or of fiendish about the Hamako belongs more ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... of a gibe lately cast at him by himself, the Duke had paused and, impulsively looking back into the hall, had beckoned Katie to him; and she had come (she knew not how) to him; and there, standing on the doorstep whose whiteness was the symbol of her love, he—very lightly, it is true, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... might have bent that iron will; but the mention of the consent of the French deputies roused the spleen of the autocrat, who, from amidst the scented water, mockingly bade his brother go into mourning for the affair, which he, and he alone, intended to carry out. This gibe led Joseph to threaten that he would mount the tribune in the Chambers and head the opposition to this unpatriotic surrender. Defiance flashed forth once more from the bath; and the First Consul finally ended their bitter retorts by spasmodically rising as suddenly falling backwards, and drenching ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Margaret eyed his elegant attire, his face with its expression of an intelligence concentrated upon the petty and the paltry. Her eyes suggested a secret amusement so genuine that she could not venture to reveal it in a gibe. She merely said: "I confess I was more interested in him than in what ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... that hoose," Brodie burst out, ignoring the baker's gibe. "Dod, there's a chance, sirs. I wonder it never occurred ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... citizen, washed artisan, And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air: Thy coach of hackney, whiskey,[87] one-horse chair, And humblest gig through sundry suburbs whirl,[da] To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow make repair; Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl, Provoking envious gibe from each ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... ejaculated as a signal! and click! went the glasses in the hands of a party of tipsy men, drinking one night at the bar of one of the middling order of taverns. And many a wild gibe was utter'd, and many a terrible blasphemy, and many an impure phrase sounded out the pollution of the hearts of these half-crazed creatures, as they toss'd down their liquor, and made the walls echo with ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... that Pacifists of any kind have ever urged that war is impossible is due either to that confusion of thought just touched upon, or is merely a silly gibe of those who deride arguments to which they have not listened, and consequently do not understand, or which they desire to misrepresent; and such misrepresentation is, when not unconscious, always ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... The gibe that followed this remark was cut short by the approach of the lighter on which the passengers were to ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... "is life; we have seen and see, And with a living pleasure we describe; And fits of sprightly malice do but bribe The languid mind into activity. Sound sense, and love itself, and mirth and glee, Are foster'd by the comment and the gibe." 20 Even be it so: yet still among your tribe, Our daily world's true Worldlings, rank not me! Children are blest, and powerful; their world lies More justly balanced; partly at their feet, And part far from them:—sweetest melodies Are ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... difficult to gain a very clear idea of the Bishop's speech; but it is certain that it was eloquent and facile, and that it appealed strongly to the religious prejudices of the majority of the audience. He ended by a gibe which, under ordinary circumstances, might have passed simply as the rude humour of a popular orator, but which in that electric atmosphere stung Huxley into a retort that has become historical. He asked Huxley whether he was related by his grandfather's or grandmother's side ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... Dick knew, that they had come to the end of the road, and that nothing lay beyond. In his own unpleasant way Fred Gregory had made a case for his sister that tied their hands, and the crux of the matter had lain in his final gibe: "As a man sows, Clark, so shall he reap." The ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen; but as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... telling a horrible tale, and the rest rejoicing in it; and the bright sun, glowing on their withered skin, discovered perhaps no viler thing in all the world to shine upon. One of them even pointed at my mill-wheel with a witty gibe—at least, perhaps, it was wit to him—about the Sawyer's misfortune; but the sun was then in his eyes, and my dress was just of the color of the timber. So on they rode, and the pleasant turf (having lately received some rain) softly answered to the ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... There was a distinct gibe in this, and Grange at once retreated to a less exposed position. "I am quite willing to wait for her," he said. "And she ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... the cheerful voice of aid? Begins the time, his heart has prayed, When men may reap and sow? Ah, God! back to the cold earth's breast! The sages chuckle o'er their jest! Must they, to give a people rest, Their dainty wit forego? The tyrants sit in a stately hall; They gibe at a wretched people's fall; The tyrants forget how fresh is the pall Over their dead and ours. Look how the senators ape the clown, And don the motley and hide the gown, But yonder a fast rising frown On ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... a smoldering fire, heart of a lion at bay, Patience to plan for tomorrow, valor to serve for today, Mournful and mirthful and tender, quick as a flash with a jest, Hiding with gibe and great laughter the ache that was ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... spirit is so highly developed that they find it hard to praise any one or to hear any one praised—their criticism leaps to the surface in one way or another, in the sneer, in the "butt," in the joke, in the gibe, in the openly expressed attack. This way of being superior may be direct and open, more often it is disguised. Many a woman (and man) who denounces the sinner receives from her contemplation of that sinner the most of her feeling of virtue ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... coarse practical jest, conveying a rude insult, and the quickly returning nobleness of his nature made him ashamed of it, as soon as he had clambered back with his trophy. He felt that the sanctity of Saul's office as the anointed of the Lord should have saved him from the gibe. The king goes his way all unawares, and, as it would seem, had not regained his men, when David, leaving his band (very much out of temper no doubt at his foolish nicety), yields to a gush of ancient friendship and calls loudly after him, risking discovery and capture ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... sturdy block, and fitted up with jury-stumps. Old Joe pulled rather the better oar, and called his son "a one-legged fiddler" when he missed the dip of wave; while Mordacks stood with his leg's apart, and playing the easy part of critic, had his sneers at both of them. But they let him gibe to his liking; because they knew their work, and he did not. And, upon the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... you dare! And yet in the little heap of interwoven, fine steel rings there was nothing to move either laughter or contempt, and if the quaint velvet mask which lay beside the coat of mail was effeminate in the tinsel of its gold embroidery, it was at least no child's toy to raise a sneer or gibe a moral. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... taunt, imitate, gibe, ridicule, jeer, schout; balk, disappoint, delude, tantalize, elude; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Admiral and drew blood. The Admiral, all bruised and bloody, ran straight to the Duke to complain, and with the intent of praying him to inflict some heavy punishment upon the gentleman of Ca Barbaro.—"What wouldst thou have me do for thee?" answered the Duke: "think upon the shameful gibe which hath been written concerning me; and think on the manner in which they have punished that ribald Michele Steno, who wrote it; and see how the Council of Forty respect our person."—Upon this the Admiral answered, "My Lord Duke, if you would wish ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... twenty years, had conscientiously striven to chill her readers' blood, should be compelled at last to turn round and gibe at her own spectres, reveals into what a piteous plight the novel of terror had fallen. When even the enchantress disavowed her belief in them, the ghosts must surely have fled shrieking and affrighted and thought never more ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... her snowy flank stained with blood; she made for the enchanted cot, and for entrance you too had the pass-word. Did you fail on her traces, nor fox nor mole was too busy to spare a moment for friendly advice or information. Little hands were stretched to trip you, fairy gibe and mockery pelted you from every rabbit-hole; and O what Dryads you have kissed among the leaves, in that brief blissful moment ere they hardened into tree! 'Tis pity, indeed, that this sort of thing should have ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... analyzed her feelings, however, she was obliged to allow that they were mixed. Though the prospect of settling down at Seaton filled her with dismay, Percy's gibe at her probable failure touched her pride. Winona had always been counted as the clever member of the family. It would be too ignominious to be sent home labeled unfit. She set her teeth and clenched her ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... past one. As the pair walked on, prostitutes in their gay attire accosted them from the doorways in which they lurked, but looking into Leandro's grim countenance and Manuel's poverty-stricken features the girls let them walk on, following them with a gibe at ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... physical endurance had pulled him out of the arms of violent death. There had been no shot fired from the shops. The strikers saw the utter futility of forcing armed men, so they had hung about with gibe and ribald jeer, waiting for some one careless enough to pass them alone. This Bennington did. His men had forgotten him. Bennington's injuries had been rather trivial; it had been his personal appearance that had terrified the women. He had fallen ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... all, is also pernicious to unenlightened and weak faith. The example in itself is potent for evil. The Catholic is usually not a persona grata as a Catholic but for some quality he possesses. Consequently, he must hide his religion under the bushel for fear of offending. Then a sneer, a gibe, a taunt are unpleasant things, and will be avoided even at the price of what at other times would look like being ashamed of one's faith. If ignorant, he will be silent; if he has not prayed, he will be weak; if vicious, he ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... spite of the difficulties and impediments besetting him at every step, his promise of greatness and usefulness was not belied. In the Introduction to his commentary on Maimuni's Guide to the Perplexed (Gibe'at ha-Moreh), in which he attempted to reconcile his master's system with that of modern philosophy—even as the master had tried to reconcile Judaism with Aristotelianism—he gave a brief sketch of the ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... and sots may swill, Cynics gibe, and prophets rail, Moralists may scourge and drill, Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail. Let them whine, or threat, or wail! Till the touch of Circumstance Down to darkness sink the scale, Fate's ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... In fact, the gibe was partly true. The detective had himself well in hand, and he knew that even though he were justified, a wounded man would lead to an inquiry which at the very least would prevent his going on with the Grell investigation for some time. But to let the taunt pass would invite disaster. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... off the hands and feet of Ermanaric. Then, as happens so often in old stories, they go too far, and a last insult alters the balance against them, as Odysseus alters it at the leave-taking with Polyphemus. The last gibe at Ermanaric stirs him as he lies, and he calls on the remnant of the Goths to stone the men that neither sword nor spear nor arrow will bring down. And that was the end ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... through thickets green. These kept not line, For Alp was still recounting battles old, Aodh of wizards sang, and Ir of love; While bald-pate Conan, sharpening from his eye The sneering light, shot from his plastic mouth Shrill taunt and biting gibe. The younger sort Eyed the dense copse and launched full many a shaft Through it at flying beast. From ledge to ledge Clomb Angus, keen of sight, with hand o'er brow, Forth gazing on some far blue ridge of ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... bear many a gibe for his publicly expressed hopes of peace. Mason denounced his letter to Virginia gentlemen as a "puny, pusillanimous attempt to hoodwink" the people of Virginia. But Douglas replied with an earnest reiteration ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... gill gem gibe germ tinge edge urge huge serge judge singe ledge large barge fudge lodge dodge ridge cringe lunge budge hedge badge sledge nudge wedge fringe range bridge merge grudge trudge mange smudge charge plunge ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... de delibrin (delivering) Sabior. Trus' Him. He lead yuh. He show yuh de way. Dat all yuh got tuh do. Beliebe—pray—praise. Ebery night befo' I lay on my bed I git on my knees an' look up tuh Him. Soon I wake in de mornin' I gibe Him t'anks. Eben sometime in de day I git on my knees an' pray. He been good to me all dese years. He aint forget me. I aint been sick for ober twenty-five years. Good t'ing too, nobody left tuh tek care of me. Dey all gone. But I don't care now, jus' so I kin ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... of such with your flaming red velvet and dazzling ermine. It makes ragged Lazarus doubly hungry to see Dives feasting in cloth-of-gold; and so if I were a beauteous duchess . . . Silence, vain man! Can the Queen herself make you a duchess? Be content, then, nor gibe at thy betters of "the Duke of B——'s ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in at-homeness in the world, in ability to take care of themselves under strange conditions or in an emergency, and in domestic hygiene they are inferior, and yet they are so competent to push the national military, industrial, and commercial ball along as men, that one wonders whether Bagehot's gibe at certain well-to-do classes of the Saxons, that "they spend half their time washing their whole persons," may not have a grain of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier |
