"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kidney who find Harry Champion vulgar. His is the robust, Falstaffian humour of old England, which, I am glad to think, still exists in London and still pleases Londoners, in spite of efforts to Gallicize our entertainments and substitute obscenity and the salacious leer for honest fun and the frank roar of laughter. If you want to hear the joy of living interpreted in song and dance, then go to the first hall where the name of Harry Champion is billed, and hear him sing "Boiled Beef and Carrots," "Baked Sheep's Heart stuffed with Sage and Onions," ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... you don't know much about lightin' a fire. Lemme show you. Let the White hunter learn the Injun somethin' about the woods," said he with a leer. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: the Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. "Ah, master," says the gipsy, "that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing—" The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the money with her that he had crossed her hand ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... Botticelli. Now, Botticelli builded on Giorgione, while Burne-Jones builded on Botticelli. Aubrey Beardsley, dead at the age at which Keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where Burne-Jones placed faith and abiding trust. Aubrey Beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in Botticelli's "Spring," I need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes about the face of one ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... equally incident to his calling, hollowed out after her,—"The top of the morning to you, Moggie. Have a care o' Gunderby Hill, young one. Robin Hood's dead and gwone, but there be takers yet in the vale of Bever. Jeanie looked at him as if to request a farther explanation, but, with a leer, a shuffle, and a shrug, inimitable (unless by Emery*), Dick turned again to the raw-boned steed which he was currying, and sung as he employed ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... struck blows that sounded horrible to me. Angel was hitting out wildly. When the boy saw me, he hooked his leg behind Angel's and threw him on his back with deadly ease, at the same time administering a kick in the stomach. He turned then to me with a leer. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... goods; the "widow who bounced" from one end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a description in romantic style suggest ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... woman," she answered, with a devilish leer. "You hate me, and you are afraid of me without any reason. If not, tell me, good sir, why you were so frightened the first time ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... and recall dire happenings to Captains who had elected to effect their repairs in the outer harbour—just here, at Port William. Old Jock's square jaw was set firm, his eyes were narrowed to a crafty leer; he looked on everyone with unconcealed suspicion and distrust. He was a shipmaster of the old school, 'looking after his Owners' interest.' He had put in 'in distress' to effect repairs.... He was being called upon to ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... returned the porter, in a bland tone, "so all three shall go in; and as to who is to play Doll Wango, the master of the ceremonies will settle that, so you need give yourself no more concern about it; but if I were called on to decide," he added, with an amorous leer at Dame Baldwyn, whose proportions so well matched his own, "I know where my choice would light. There, now!" he shouted, "Open wide the gate for Squire Nicholas Assheton of Downham, and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... death to say, "Now you can bring me the American protest," has gone behind the moustache to the face, and behind the face to the type and the spirit. The Emperor is not commanding in a lordly voice from a throne, but with a leer and behind a curtain. In the few lines of the lean, unnatural face is written the real history of the Hohenzollerns, the kind of history not often touched on in our comfortable English humour, but common to the realism of Continental art: the madness of Frederick William, the perversion ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... forecastle by the larboard rigging stood a big, broad-shouldered fellow, who nodded familiarly at the second mate, cast a bit of a leer at the captain as if to impress on the rest of us his own daring and independence, and gave me, when I caught his eye, a cold, noncommittal stare. His name, I shortly learned, was Kipping. Undeniably he was impudent; but he had, nevertheless, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... and then at Mr Cripps's face. There was the same ugly leer about the latter, into which a spark of anger was infused as the boy still held ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... broil in the Cheel house was about to be produced in public. It was stopped by Jonas, who rose to his feet, and with a leer and chuckle round, he said, "Neighbors and friends and all. Very much obliged for the complerment. But don't think it is all about a baby. Nothin' of the kind. It is becos I wanted all, neighbors and friends, to be together whilst I made an announcement which will be pleasant ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... eyes from the cup into which he had been gazing, absorbed as gazes a seer into his crystal, he caught on the Seneschal's lips so odious a smile, in the man's eyes so greedy, hateful a leer as he bent them on the Marquise, that he had much ado not to alter the expression of that flabby face by hurling at ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... menaced house—I know not how she fared—whether she gazes for ever, disconsolate, at the deed, remembering only in her smitten mind, at which the little boys now leer, that she once knew well those things at which man stands aghast; or whether in the end she crept away, and clambering horribly from abyss to abyss, came at last to higher things, and is wise and eternal still. For who knows ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... lanes! I have missed the clue Of the close labyrinth. Nowhere in sight, Just when I lack it, a stray gaberdine To pick me up my thread. Yet when I haste Through these blind streets, unwishful to be spied, Some dozen hawk-eyes peering o'er crook'd beaks Leer recognition, and obsequious caps Do kiss the stones to greet my princeship. Bah! Strange, 'midst such refuse sleeps so white a pearl. At last, here ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... was the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or perhaps a present from a friend—what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... of natives swarmed aboard. The man in the frieze coat followed more leisurely, and with such dignity as became the owner of a stone-walled house. He sauntered up to the skipper, a leer in his eye. "You will have lost something the last time you were here, Captain?" he said. "It is not I that will be responsible this time ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... happy to act as friend to the elderly viscount, and to carve the fowl, and to make the salad at supper. When Pen and his young lady met the viscount's party, that noble peer only gave Arthur a passing leer of recognition as his lordship's eyes passed from Pen's face under the bonnet of Pen's companion. But Tom Tufthunt wagged his head very good-naturedly at Mr. Arthur, and said, "How are you, old boy?" and looked extremely knowing at the god-father ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the middle of the street, with a cunning leer on his face. The change of purpose supported his belief that ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... herself in the entrance where she had a view of both men, saw the cruel leer that accompanied Walcott's words and understood their significance as her father did not. Her hand sought the bosom of her dress for an instant, then dropped quietly at her side, but swift as the movement ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... clevaire," said the maid with an evil leer,—"she would rob Madame, would she? She would play the espionne, hein? Eh bien, ma petite, you stay 'ere ontil you say what you lave done wiz ze ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... Foxey Jack Quinn standing near at hand, a leer on his wide mouth and in his pale eyes, and his nunney-bag on his shoulder. His skinnywoppers (high-legged moccasins of sealskin, hair-side inward) were glistening with moisture of melted snow, and his face was red from the rasp of raw wind. He looked as if he had slept in his clothes—which ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... for a walk in the country. (Tournour makes a leer of contempt) Do you never go for a walk in the country, ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... the First favoured the court with a fascinating leer, which left no doubt on any one's mind that he had been ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... And see, the King is about to rise. Go forward, Monsieur," he continued benevolently. "A young man should show himself. Besides, his Majesty likes you well," he added, with a leer. He had an unpleasant sense of humour, had his Majesty's Captain of the Guard; and this evening somewhat more than ordinary on ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... coachman was interested. He carefully noted the number of the house again, and when she passed up his fare looked into her face with a knowing leer. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... the stamping of feet. Everything was "wide open," and there was not even the thinnest veneer of respectability. Drinking and gambling and dancing go on all night long. Drunken men reel out upon the snow; painted faces leer over muslin curtains as one passes by. Without any government, without any pretence of municipal organisation, there is no co-operation for public enterprise. There are no streets, there are no sidewalks save such as a man may choose to lay in front of his own premises, and the simplest sanitary ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... praise, assent with evil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer. Pope, Prologue to the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Elodie held up a cheap bedroom wall-mirror. He played his one-stringed fiddle. I admired the technical perfection of the famous cigar-act. I noted the stupid bewilderment with which he received a typhoon of hoops thrown by Elodie, and his waggish leer when, clown-wise, he had caught them all. If the audience packed within the canvas amphitheatre had gone mad in applause over this exhibition of exquisite skill interlarded with witty patter, I might have been carried away into enthusiastic ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... say there till of good words a foyn[128] On height; Over your heads my hand I lift, Out go your eyes, fore to do your sight, But yet I must make better shift, And it be right. What, Lord? they sleep hard! that may ye all hear; Was I never a shepherd, but now will I leer[129] If the flock be scared, yet shall I nap near, Who draws hitherward, now mends our cheer, From sorrow: A fat sheep I dare say, A good fleece dare I lay, Eft white when I may, But this will ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... mob was struggling at a window, beneath a blaze of electric light. A soldier was standing there like a statue, his face fixed with a leer of horror. In his hands was a rifle, with a blood-stained bayonet, dripping upon the hardwood floor at the edge of the rug. Upon the rug itself a stream of blood was spouting out ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... shocked; yet the leer of the gipsy's eye made him think of the lying magpie. So he left her, and hastened on, and, behold! there stood before him the village maypole, bedecked with roses and ribbons, and a living garland of youths and fair maidens dancing ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... unhealthy." As he said this he watched the young man with the inscrutable smile that at moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest had once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but now he detected in it the suavity of the hypocrite and the leer ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... men laughed gruffly at these remarks, and threw leer-eyed looks at me. I asked one who seemed bad, what calibre his gun was. 'Forty-five ha'r trigger,' he answered. I nosed around over their plunder purpose. They had things drying around like Bannock ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... with her hand. The stout man with the reddish beard came up, like some huge, dull animal called by its mistress. His sensuous, fat face was pallid with seasickness, and as he looked at Mrs. Carey there was a senile leer ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... heavens answered again and drowned her supplication. One man screamed—a shrill, high neigh like that of a hurt horse. Janice caught a momentary glimpse of the pallid face of Joe Bodley shrinking below the edge of the counter. There was no leer upon his fat face now; it expressed ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... with her eyes wide open, that at length Little Dorrit, to entice her from her box, rose and looked out of window. As she glanced down into the yard, she saw Pancks come in and leer up with the corner of his eye as ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... at any rate," replied the giant, with a wide grin at his witticism. "And if Yellow Franz is the particular wolf you're after, my friend, why here I am," he concluded, addressing the American with a leer. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... him! Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves," said Raoul bitterly. "The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it... Picture it: a man who lives in a palace underground!" And he gave a leer. ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... Lease lukontrakto. Leash ligilo. Least malplej. Least, at almenaux. Leather ledo. Leave lasi. Leave (bequeath) testamenti. Leave (depart) deiri. Leave off cxesi. Leaven fermentilo. Leavings (food) mangxrestajxo. Lecture parolado. Leech hirudo. Leer flanken rigardi. Lees fecxo. Left, on the maldekstre. Leg (limb) kruro. Leg (of a fowl, etc.) femuro. Leg of mutton sxaffemuro. Legacy heredajxo. Legal legxa. Legation (place) senditejo. Legation senditaro. Legend legendo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Thieves of renown, and pilferers of fame: Their front supplies what their ambition lacks; They know a thousand lords, behind their backs. Cottil is apt to wink upon a peer, When turn'd away, with a familiar leer; And Harvey's eyes, unmercifully keen, Have murder'd fops, by whom she ne'er was seen. Niger adopts stray libels; wisely prone To covet shame still greater than his own. Bathyllus, in the winter of threescore, Belies ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... feet; but the business was over in two twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the slender, imperious judge in the council-chamber with a defiant leer on his face. If he went down into the depths he would drag with him the fairest treasure he had coveted in all his years of lust ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... done, you bring it to my hotel. Everyone knows me. I will give you what you want for it. It's way up; better than the original," says the Argonaut, with a leer at its loveliness. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... responded to with a few jeers and a good many dark, threatening looks. Tinville himself had bowed to him with mock sarcasm and an unpleasant leer. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... care of. Then Theodore Dodge was found lying bound and gagged on the floor. A ragged, foul-smelling coat had been substituted for the one that had been left at the river's bank. The banker looked up at the intruders with a stupefied leer, betraying neither alarm ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... with an appraising leer. "Don't have to say so," he drawled, "if you ain't, what have you-alls got them dinky little canoes for, an' if you were after 'gators you'd be packing big rifles 'stead of them fancy guns. You ain't got no call ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Hell hath wrought, Worm-like vapours skirr thro' the halls And reach a distant, lurid moat, Where sighs and groans upon a flood Ascend to heights of a grey ghaut— Satellites to Destiny's crypt! And Vespers that the Twilight brought— More dooms that prayers nor sighs can break— Leer at each thought to Fancy's flight; And to the dais whereunder sit A demon-quire that Circe taught, Songs that echo to the isles in lake And valley deep, ravage the night Until Idols pall at the scene. And stationed Mounts toward the West Whose bones portray ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... it begins at once, and will be perfected. The bloated look of self-indulgence passes away like the leprosy of Naaman, the cheek grows pure, the lips return to the smile of hope instead of the grin of greed, and the eyes that made innocence shrink and shudder with their yellow leer grow childlike and sweet and faithful. The mammon-eyes, hitherto fixed on the earth, are lifted to meet their kind; the lips that mumbled over figures and sums of gold learn to say words of grace and tenderness. The truculent, repellent, self-satisfied face begins to look ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Deputy, with a shrewd leer of recognition, and smoking an imaginary pipe, with his head very much on one side and his eyes very much out of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... triumphant he again acknowledged the applause. Nothing was said between Blanquette and myself, but she became my sworn sister from that moment. And Narcisse sat at our feet looking down on the crowd, his tongue lolling out mockingly and a satiric leer ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Black Donald and would die before you would give him up? Ah! you little vampire, how you thirsted for my blood! And you pretended to like me!" said Black Donald, eying her from head to foot, with a sly leer. ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... hunting when he could be talking to you instead?" said old Astrardente, whose painted face adjusted itself in a sort of leer that had once been a winning smile. Every one knew he painted, his teeth were a miracle of American dentistry, and his wig had deceived a great portrait-painter. The padding in his clothes was disposed with cunning wisdom, and in public he rarely removed the gloves from his small ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... decoration. In another house or in another land you might find me employing, again solely for decorative purposes, the prints of Japan, the landscapes of the modern impressionists, the rugs of the East, or the blankets of the Arizona desert. Free me, then, from the reproach implied in that covert leer at my Early Sienese." Yes, we must, I think, exclude from the ranks of the true zealots all who in any plausible fashion utilise the objects of art they buy. Excess, the craving to possess what he apparently does not need, is the mark of your true collector. Now these visionaries—at ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... caught the general idea on the instant. The two exchanged looks, such as are only current between very 'cute, knowing, sharp-witted men. Hiram was betrayed into returning Mr. Bennett's leer before he was aware of it. It was a spontaneous recognition, and he felt ashamed at being thus thrown off his guard. He colored slightly, and said something about his duty ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... just within the door, rose and came to his chief's side. Jose felt his brain whirling. Fernando stepped outside and took his arm. The Alcalde's unlovely face expanded in a sinister leer. "It is permissible to place even a priest in the stocks, if he becomes ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... because of England's sea power; because of the unblushing, shameless, gilded corruption of the French court, which cared less for the fate of Canada than the leer of a painted fool behind her fan. But be this remembered,—and here was the hand of overruling Destiny or Providence,—the fall of New France, like the fall of the seed to the ready soil, was the rebirth of a new nation. Henceforth it is not New France, the appendage ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... But they parted, weak and wan: And he left the shore; His ship diminished, was low, was gone; And she heard in the waves as the daytide wore, And read in the leer of the sun that shone, That they ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... industry." Her work was in the finishing room where a number of girls were crowded at machines and tables, filing, clipping, and packing bottles. Her task was to take the screw-neck bottles that came from the leer, and chip and file their jagged necks and shoulders until all the roughness was removed. It was dirty work, and dangerous for unskilled hands, and she found it ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... demanded sharply. "Woman, away: am I not busy? Is not this the very Passion week of preparation before the Easter of the Assizes?" Then with an upward leer of his eyes, that were now filled with frolicksome humour, whilst at the corners of his mouth flickered a grim smile, he continued: "Mona Macdonald, I am neither selfish nor sensual, though women call ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... leer at her with amorous eyes when he spoke, and he began to find frequent occasions for taking hold of her arm. He managed to make himself odious in the extreme, so that in sheer self-defense Marion made haste to bring his thoughts back ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... the Lizard, with a ferocious leer, "that is the kernel under the limpet's tent! And I have uncovered it—I, Robert Garenne, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... expect to see in a nun's hood. Yet so little in the character of the cloister did this countenance keep, that it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an unnatural smile half-way between a leer and a grin. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Temistocle, taking it, nevertheless, and examining it by the moonlight. "It has no visa," he added, with a cunning leer. Nino gave him another. Then Temistocle ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... have understood the full meaning of this aspersion of her purity, had she not caught Humphreys's eye. His expression, half sneer, half leer, seemed to give her mother's saying its full interpretation. She put out her hand. She turned white, and said: "Say one word more, and I will go away from you and never come back! Never!" And then she sat down and cried, and then Mrs. Anderson's ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... to sage Piraeus sped the seer, His honour'd host, a welcome inmate there. O'er the protracted feast the suitors sit, And aim to wound the prince with pointless wit: Cries one, with scornful leer and mimic voice, "Thy charity we praise, but not thy choice; Why such profusion of indulgence shown To this poor, timorous, toil-detesting drone? That others feeds on planetary schemes, And pays his host with hideous noon-day ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... busy himself in arranging the objects upon it. In reality his long ears were stretched for sounds coming through the little door. Having satisfied himself that the Deaves' were good for several minutes in there, he came towards Evan with an ingratiating leer. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... inquiringly, and he honored me again with his little languid leer. "Do you know the ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... cigars, he liked sport and travel too, and music and painting and books. His eighty-guinea breechloaders were dearer to him than the lady of the ivory frame. Who was the lady of the ivory frame? Gaston would have been happy to define with the leer of the boulevards the relations between his master and Philippa Cleve. Gaston had no doubt of them, nor had Frederick Cleve; Philippa had high hopes; Lawrence alone hung fire. If he continued to meet her and she to offer him lavish ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... Gunch delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of the women, "Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks aren't looking? Got something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... description. There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better away, a latent corruption,—a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours,—but not all. The foul satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon." Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I will then let my reader go ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... the operative, with a knowing leer. "Anything from planting divorce evidence to shoving the queer. I've been working for a pal of Pad's in St. Louis for three or four years—that's why I'm strange around here. Pad's up in the air ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... the big image held extended towards him with a cynical leer the big, polished diamond which seemed rather to give out light from within itself than to reflect the altar flames. It blazed with a brilliancy that he had never seen equalled save by the ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of him. But Peace would listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the picture. At times he had threatened her with a revolver. On one occasion when he was ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... you will be to me, my lord, for having enabled him to establish the right," says Sampson, with a leer on his face. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... himself into the vein, "the agitations of his mind and body" were an astonishment to all who knew him. Such a course as this, however pleasant to a thirsty vanity, was lowering to his nature. He sank more and more towards the professional Don Juan. With a leer of what the French call fatuity, he bids the belles of Mauchline beware of his seductions; and the same cheap self-satisfaction finds a yet uglier vent when he plumes himself on the scandal at the birth of his first bastard. ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of an established profession. The translation the reader will find in a note below [45]. "Am sorgfaeltigsten, meiden sie die Autorschaft. Zu frueh oder unmaessig gebraucht, macht sie den Kopf wueste and das Herz leer; wenn sie auch sonst keine ueble Folgen gaebe. Ein Mensch, der nur lieset um zu druecken, lieset wahrscheinlich uebel; und wer jeden Gedanken, der ihm aufstosst, durch Feder and Presse versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt, und ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... it than to oppose them. It prevented noise, she said, and saved time.'[2] Let us behold what a picture Macaulay draws on the strength of this passage. 'If his first attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill-received,' Macaulay says of Addison, 'he changed his tone, "assented with civil leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and deeper into absurdity.' To compare this transformation of the simplicity of the original into the grotesque heat and overcharged violence of the copy, is to see the homely maiden of a country ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... censure. It was a reverend and dignified pillar of the church, as demure as a saint, turning up his eyes, and professing and preaching morality, which I had more than once or twice before heard him do, while, with a sanctified leer, he expressed great horror at my breach of conjugal chastity, or violation of the marriage vow. The reader will easily imagine the manner in which I eyed him, while he was uttering these truly religious and moral doctrines, when I inform him that, only ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... see—let me see:—Before George, I have it, and it comes as pat too! Go me to the very judge that sate upon him; it is an amorous, impotent old magistrate, and keeps admirably. I saw him leer upon you from the bench: He will tell you what is sweeter than strawberries and cream, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... look at it, my Lord," said the man, with a leer, half servile, half cunning. "There came two young gentlemen of fashion yesterday morning, and almost lost their wits at sight of it. Either would have bought it, but both had had ill luck at basset for a week ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Tom Hewlet came on, and no other word was spoken until he stopped three feet away. Swaying slightly, and looking into Brent's face with a simpering leer, in ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... deep curtsy and smoothing down her apron. "Tell ye w'at, ye Debil's spinster!" added she, with a sudden change of tone, as Flor began to mimic one of Miss Agatha's opera-tunes and with her hands on her hips slowly balance up and down the room, and came at last, bending far on one side, to leer up in the face of her elder with such a smile as Cubas was wont to give her Spanish lover in the dance. "So mighty free wid yer dancin', 'pears like you'll come to dance at a rope's end! W'at's de use o' talkin' to you? 'Mortal sperit, it 's my b'lief dat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... be as much surprised at what we are going to do as the manner in which we are going to do it," replied Duval, with an evil leer. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... young gentleman about twenty years of age, son of a neighbouring small Squire, who lived in the doubtful capacity of parlour-boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen. The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the cowardly villain to defend himself, and in another minute ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he, "that's nothing. Would ye believe me now, that before the Act came out, and when there were weepons in this country, I could shoot? Ay, could I!" cries he, and then with a leer: "If ye had such a thing as a pistol here to try with, I would show ye ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Kostka, and ask him to tell us confidentially and upon honour what it is that has changed his views, making him discover the leer of Baal-Zeboub where he once saw the smile of the spiritual Eos, he turns Trappist at once, and goes into retreat with M. Huysman; there is not a syllable of information in all his beau volume as ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... stopped short at the door on seeing a stranger, twirled in his hand a perfectly round old hat without any vestige of a brim, and resting himself now on one leg and now on the other and changing them constantly, stood in the doorway, looking into the parlour with the most extraordinary leer I ever beheld. I entertained a grateful feeling towards the boy from that minute, for I felt that he was the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... messenger minute instructions and a liberal gratuity, Carter dismissed him and the despatches from his thoughts. Later in the day he was to be reminded not only of them but of the evil leer bestowed by Johann at the munificent tip dropped ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... Noll paused by the door, while Tip, with a confident leer on his face, strode into ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... what's the matter with you?' "'Aw,' said the soldier, with a leer, 'I've got de lapsy-palls, and I wanter go to ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... interrogated, mildly added to his "No, sir" the explanatory sentence, "except finding him there when I went for my boots"; and Munger, the cad, added to his answer, "but I'll try to find out," with a leer and an oily smile, which Ainger felt strongly tempted to acknowledge by a kick as he passed back to his place. Stafford, painfully aware that he was one of the "mentioned" ones, looked horribly confused and red as he answered to his name, and satisfied several ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... sir," said the man. "Glad to see a new customer, sir." He pocketed the money and showed them out, standing to look after them with a malicious leer as they disappeared, and jerking his left ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... added the Gorilla with a leer, "as for myself, I am so confident of being considered an Apollo that I wish for nothing so much as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... likeness, that she was invited everywhere; though how she, at her age, could fly about to so many parties, unless she was a fairy, no one could say. Behind the fairy, up the marble stairs, came the most noble Farintosh, with that vacuous leer which distinguishes his lordship. Ethel seemed to be carrying the stack of flowers which the Marquis had sent to her. The noble Bustington (Viscount Bustington, I need scarcely tell the reader, is the heir of the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... protestations of fairness were accompanied by a cunning leer and a wink from one or other of his wicked little eyes, the impression ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... contemptuously on his heel, with military precision. Then he chuckled Dolores under the chin with a leer, to have his hand indignantly pushed aside. As the girl glared at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes, he stalked into the taproom, followed by ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... to see; there was an easel and a small canvas thereon, an open black japanned paint-box, a large wooden palette blotched with many colours lying on a bed of fern, and whose thumb-hole seemed to comically leer up at the boys like some great eye. Then there was a pair of big, sturdy legs, upon which rested a great felt hat, everything else being covered in by a great opened-out white umbrella, perfectly useless then, for, as Will had said, all was now ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... was a little dried-up mummy of a man, the ugliness of whose countenance was, as it were, emphasized by a disagreeable leer which would ever and anon deepen into a broad grin; this man, with his dreary jokes and vapid small-talk, was equally ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... stood with their hands in their pockets, doubting whether to hear him to the end or to take their wonted way to the public-house. One moment their eyes would be fixed upon him, filmy, unintelligent, then they would look at one another with a leer of cunning, or at best a doubtful grin. Socialism, forsooth! They were as ready for translation to supernal spheres. Yet some of them were attracted: 'percentage,' 'interest,' 'compound interest,' after all, there might be something in this! And perhaps they gave their ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the book-stall. That be Mr. Waffles,' continued he, giving his master a touch in the ribs as he jerked his portmanteau into a fly, 'that be Mr. Waffles,' repeated he, with a knowing leer. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... tresses hid; he, in delight Both of her beauty and submissive charms, Smiled with superior love (as Jupiter On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds That shed May flowers), and pressed her matron lip With kisses pure. Aside the Devil turned For envy, yet with jealous leer malign Eyed them askance; and to himself thus plained:— 'Sight hateful, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... do we know only the burlesque of your Maxim's and your Catelans? Do we, when the week's work of your humbler people is done, see the laughter in dancing eyes in the Rue Mouffetard or, in the revel of your Saturday night, do we see only the belladonna'd leer of the drabs in the Place Pigalle? Do we hear the romance of your concertinas setting thousands of hobnailed boots a-clatter with Terpsichore in the Boulevard de la Chapelle, in Polonceau and Myrrha, or do we hear only your union orchestra ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... and gave a leer which, if possible, made her face more hideous than ever. Without thinking Harvey caught her by the arm and ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... well known to his friends, as well as to his creditors. Lord Guildford met him one day. 'Well, Sherry, so you've taken a new house, I hear.'—'Yes, and you'll see now that everything will go on like clockwork.'—'Ay,' said my lord, with a knowing leer, 'tick, tick.' Even his son Tom used to laugh at him for it. 'Tom, if you marry that girl, I'll cut you off with a shilling,'—'Then you must borrow it,' replied the ingenuous youth.[8] Tom sometimes disconcerted his father with his inherited wit—his ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... while his girl, with the ends of a fly-blown boa floating out behind, aped a woman of fashion. Her swain moved a stick with a ragged bit of string dangling from the end, reproducing with strange fidelity the circular flourish of Swithin's whip, and rolled his head at his lady with a leer that had a weird ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ANTONIO.—La separacion de mandos en Puerto Rico. Discurso escrito y comenzado a leer ante la Comision del Congreso de los Diputados. ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... lofty sense of honor often fallen from their original nobility, and revelled in self-degradation? And it somehow seemed as though, at the last, the dwarf had looked up at her with a strangely knowing leer. And was it merely her imagination that made her think there was a certain sly approach to undue familiarity in the usually deferential deportment ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... naturally enough then, was beginning his investigation with the ground floor room. And yet, why then had the Wolf, deliberately in that case, sent his pack off on a false scent? In the mirror he could see that huge jaw outthrust, the black eyes narrowed, an ugly leer on the working face—and a revolver in the Wolf's hand that held a bead on his, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the lid and again covered the basket with a blanket, after which he looked up with a cunning and triumphant leer. ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... is it?" said the pedler with a leer that was good-humoredly knowing. "Well, old fellow, as you've given me quite a lesson how to behave myself, I guess I must show you that I understand how to prove that I'm thankful—so here, Caesar, is a cut for you from ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... standing with his back to the window, and sprang forward, as pale as she, and grasped her, with a white leer that she never forgot, over his shoulder, and the Venice glass was ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... breakfast. Everything about the place looked bleak and dreary and as grey as a granite tombstone. Hawkes, who but twelve hours before had seemed the embodiment of life in its most resilient form, now appeared as a drab nemesis with wooden legs and a frozen leer. My coffee was bitter, the peaches were like sponges, the bacon and rolls of uniform sogginess and the eggs of a strange liverish hue. I sat there alone, gloomy and depressed, contrasting the hateful sunshine with the soft, witching ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... human kind. But let me now, for I can do it well, Your conduct in this new employ foretell. And first: to make my observation right, I place a statesman full before my sight, A bloated minister in all his gear, With shameless visage and perfidious leer: Two rows of teeth arm each devouring jaw, And ostrich-like his all-digesting maw. My fancy drags this monster to my view, To shew the world his chief reverse in you. Of loud unmeaning sounds, a rapid flood Rolls from his mouth in plenteous streams of mud; With these the court ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... for many murders. "About three weeks ago," said he, "when you passed up here, I saw three men on board. Where are the other two?" I answered him briefly that the same crew was still on board. "But," said he, "I see you are doing all the work," and with a leer he added, as he glanced at the mainsail, "hombre valiente." I explained that I did all the work in the day, while the rest of the crew slept, so that they would be fresh to watch for Indians at night. I was interested in the subtle cunning of this savage, knowing ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... as a revelation to the three sports. She had been hidden behind so much glass and leather that the transformation was startling. The horsy gentlemen uttered murmurs of surprise and gratification. One of them sidled up to her with a leer. ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne |
