"Mocking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the sound of his mocking. He seemed again to become aware of himself. It was interesting to observe the quite visible effort he made to regain his self-control. In a moment he had mastered his excitement, and he turned ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... through leaves Blinkt the white morn, sprays grated, and old boughs Whined in the wood. He rose, descended, met The scorner in the castle court, and fain, For hate and loathing, would have past him by; But when Sir Garlon uttered mocking-wise; 'What, wear ye still that same crown-scandalous?' His countenance blackened, and his forehead veins Bloated, and branched; and tearing out of sheath The brand, Sir Balin with a fiery 'Ha! So thou be shadow, here I make thee ghost,' Hard upon helm smote him, and the blade flew Splintering ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... make an ado about nothing. What have you to bear, I'd like to know, with a roof over your head, and your child fed and clothed? Bear indeed!' and with a low, mocking laugh, Mistress Forrester stumped with her heavy tread up the stairs which led to the upper floor from the further ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... mocking tone. "We want that chief and his boy, whom you are harboring in your camp. According to our Indian companion, they own, or know of the hiding-place of, a fortune in plumes. If the plumes are not to be easily reached, we can still hold the chief and boy for a big ransom. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... song to sing, O! [SHE] Sing me your song, O! [HE] It is sung to the moon By a love-lorn loon, Who fled from the mocking throng, O! It's the song of a merryman, moping mum, Whose soul was sad, whose glance was glum, Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye. Heighdy! heighdy! Misery me - lackadaydee! He sipped no sup, and he craved no crumb, As he ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... who told me that he had been spending the summer just where I found him, I could have assaulted him for very envy. He was painting forsooth the interior of St. Mark's. To be a young American painter unperplexed by the mocking, elusive soul of things and satisfied with their wholesome light-bathed surface and shape; keen of eye; fond of colour, of sea and sky and anything that may chance between them; of old lace and old brocade ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... I am!" she said; "and what is worse you will all laugh at me. It was sheer fancy and nonsense, I know; but I declare that looking down into the water, I saw my own face there with such a wicked, mocking ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... rock bars his vision; there beyond, ever beyond, is that which alone he seeks. It moves as he moves; beckoning, calling, smiling. But always, like a will-o'-the-wisp, it eludes him, and draws forth the cry from his throat. The sweet, mocking face; the profound blue eyes, sparkling with laughter or brooding in perfect seriousness; the parted lips about the glistening teeth so luscious in their suggestion; the dark flowing hair, like a soft curtain of wondrous texture falling in delicate folds upon rounded ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... slave," she said, lightly enough. She, too, was brave. She drank wine to keep the colour in her cheeks, and she told herself that the pain at her heart was nothing. Nevertheless, some words of Borrowdean's were mocking her all ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and to grapple with the difficulties it entailed that the title of father of English comedy may be given him without the least reserve or hesitation. Sapho the haughty but amorous queen, Mileta the mocking but tender Court lady, Gallathea the shy provincial lass, and Pipenetta the saucy little maid-servant, fill our stage for the first time in history with their tears and their laughter, their scorn of the mere male and their "curst yeelding ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... you are mocking us," I rejoined, addressing myself to the brown-skinned, sibyl. "Ha! ha! ha! It is it that is mocking you. It mocks you, and yet it is not the mocking-bird. It is not the dove cooing gently to his mate, nor the screaming of the owl. It is the cuckoo that mocks you! ha! ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... of the men stepped forward and tore the doctor's mask roughly from his head. The mocking ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... moment we are falling some one else will grasp the banner of our faith. I will not even consider whether I am strong enough for such a fight, whether I can offer sufficient resistance; it may even be an honourable death to fall to the accompaniment of the mocking laughter of such enemies, whose seriousness has frequently seemed to us to be something ridiculous. When I think how my contemporaries prepared themselves for the highest posts in the scholastic profession, as I myself have done, ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... triumph,—it is my shame! Enjoy that triumph, but not in my sight. I was her betrayer—I am, her protector! Cross but her path— one word of scorn, one look of insult—nay, but one quiver of that mocking lip, and I will teach thee that bitter word thou hast graven ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... messenger at the gate who wears the livery of Mortimer," he said. "An insolent knave to boot, who flung his missive in the face of old Ralph, and spurred off with a mocking laugh. I would I had had my good steed between my knees, and I would have given the rascal a lesson in manners. I like not these messengers from Mortimer; they always betide ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... he was pleased to call her desertion of him. He proposed marriage, and offered to adopt the boy. Mary Wyvis accepted both propositions, and left England with him almost immediately, in order to escape mocking and ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of all my dreams and aspirations, and of the path which I know lies before me if I can only bide my time, and it seems a sin and a shameful thing to allow my resolve to be turned; and then comes the mocking suspicion, is this fine abstract duty of yours anything but a subtlety of your own selfishness? Have you not other ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... hours expecting and dreading to hear it again. The owls were not so sparing of their vocal performances, scores of them joining in concert to serenade the lost man. Sometimes their prolonged notes sounded like the wail of a deserted babe, sometimes like mocking laughter, and again like a deep guttural snore. Nothing worse than mosquitos, dismal sounds, and the dank vapor of the swamp afflicted the weary man, who, falling asleep at midnight, slept so soundly that on waking late next morning he reproached himself for not having ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... people now, who judge him by his drawings, would so much rather insist upon his perversity and his affectation. How can you reconcile that sort of thing with simplicity? They will ask, pointing to drawings of little mocking satyrs and twisted dwarfs and grotesques and extravagant forms and leering faces and a suggestion of one can hardly say what. But it might as well be asked why the mediaeval artist delighted to carve homely, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... mocking tones. "Hope you have a good time with the tabbies!" And then to Mittens, "Good-by, ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... longer wagging, purring, But visibly demurring, Grunting and snarling. One called her proud, Cross-grained, uncivil; Their tones waxed loud, Their looks were evil. Lashing their tails They trod and hustled her, Elbowed and jostled her, Clawed with their nails, Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking, Tore her gown and soiled her stocking, Twitched her hair out by the roots, Stamped upon her tender feet, Held her hands and squeezed their fruits Against her ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... became very expert, after the manner of the natives, in catching birds with a noosed string, and that he has thus caught thousands of ground parrots with a line about fifty feet long. The most remarkable bird is one to which Cook's people gave the name of the mocking-bird, from the extraordinary variety of its notes.[AQ] There is also another which was called by the English the poe, or poi bird, from a little tuft of white curled feathers which it has under its throat, ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... A species of mocking-bird which inhabits the bush is a ludicrous creature. It imitates everything, and makes many a camping party imagine there is a man near them, when they hear its whistle or hearty laugh. This bird is nicknamed the "Jackass," and its loud "ha! ha! ha!" ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... Tah!" rang out over our heads just like a mocking laugh, as a couple of jackdaws flew past, their dark shadows seeming to brush us softly ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... sheeted rain; Sharp lightnings rend in twain the sable gloom, While, cannon-like, the unchained thunders boom! On this wild tumult of the angry skies No ear discerns a woman's thrilling cries; Yet, ere its sullen echoes die away In caverns where the mocking spirits play, Faint, but rejoicing, on a couch of skins, A new-made mother ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... with the taunt of "Redan, no bono—Redan, no bono." I never saw any man look so helplessly angry as the Englishman did. For a few minutes he seemed absolutely rooted to the ground. Of course he could have crushed his mocking friend with ease, but how could he answer his taunt. All at once, however, a happy thought struck him, and rushing up to the Zouave, he caught him round the waist and threw him down, roaring out, "Waterloo was bono—Waterloo ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... down to her side, upon the bed, and wrapped half of the big cloak about her; and they sat there still in each other's arms, without speaking or weeping, while quarter after quarter of an hour passed away nobody knew how many. And the cold bright moonlight streamed in on the floor, mocking them. ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... they all slept soundly, dreamt of water, and awoke to the sad reality that they were tormented with thirst, and were on a sandy beach with the salt waves mocking them; but they reflected how many of their late companions had been swallowed up, and felt thankful that they had been spared. It was early dawn when they all rose from the forms which they had impressed on the yielding sand; and, by the directions of Philip, they separated in ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... turned up Ansdore's drive, now neatly gravelled and gated, and a flood of light burst over the gables of the house, pouring on Joanna as she climbed down over the wheel. She required no help, and he knew it, but she felt his hands pressing her waist; she started away, and she saw him laugh—mocking her. She nearly cried. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... Shadow Witch talked gaily with the Prince, she turned to him a face as radiant as though a light shone through it from within. Ever and again her laughter rang out low and clear, not the echoing, mocking laughter, known so well to the evil fairies of that land, but a laugh of rippling music, as if all sweet sounds, all gentle whisperings of the fire were caught up and gathered into it. The Prince listened to it with keen delight. Of all the notes of gladness that he had ever ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... some of you of the famous picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture, a calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win—and I should accept it as an image of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... no longer adapted to the transmission of sound; the atmosphere appeared MUFFLED, and, like a room hung with tapestry, lost all its sonorous reverberation. The "rover bird" so-called, the coroneted crane, the red and blue jays, the mocking-bird, the flycatcher, disappeared among the foliage of the immense trees, and all nature revealed symptoms of some ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... staff! my staff is lost again! where did I put it?" she exclaimed, when a little mocking voice was heard repeating her words, and skipping over the rocks was seen the well-remembered rabbit-skin ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... have little fear of the dog, and rarely ascends to a great height. It is often seen only a few feet above him, jerking its tail about, and apparently mocking its savage enemy below. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... which attracted my attention, as the cars left the Delaware depot, was a sign-board on my left, inscribed in large letters, "UNION CEMETERY." My gaze attracted the notice of others. A mocking bon-mot was uttered by a Yankee wit, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... rogue," Miss Muster explained; "would be only too glad to fly out, and scour the entire house, laughing at me, and mocking me as though possessed of the spirit of evil our great poet Edgar Allan Poe gave to the raven. But now that you have succeeded in getting the ladder, we shall ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... miracles, so, rather than live without, he will create for himself new wonders of his own making; and he will bow to and worship the soothsayer's miracles, the old witch's sorcery, were he a rebel, a heretic, and an atheist a hundred times over. Thy refusal to come down from the cross when people, mocking and wagging their heads were saying to Thee— "Save Thyself if Thou be the son of God, and we will believe in Thee," was due to the same determination—not to enslave man through miracle, but to obtain faith in Thee freely and apart from any miraculous influence. ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... have paid more dearly for them. You have heard of Fabert: I protected him.' 'Silence! silence!' I said to him; 'you lie! you lie!' 'As you please; but get ready, you have only half an hour to live.' 'You are mocking me; you deceive me.' 'Not at all; make the calculation yourself. You have really lived thirty-five years; you have lost twenty-five years: total, sixty years.' He started to go out.... I felt my strength diminishing; I felt my life ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... mocking tone of these letters, the constant comparison between the two peoples, with many a gibe at the English, but always turning to their advantage, the preference given to the philosophical system of Newton over that of Descartes, lastly the attacks upon religion concealed beneath ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... cried a mocking voice behind them, and three stealthy figures bounded out from a tangle of shrubbery. Betty, Madeline and Mary Brooks had come down the hill by the back path and, making a detour to leave Rachel at the gate nearest her "little white house round the corner," ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... you much more than that, Thomas," she replied, showing her corpse-like teeth with a ghastly smile of mocking ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... him a hideous doubt. What if Pluto had played him false? What if there followed him not Eurydice, but a mocking shade? As he climbed the steep ascent that led upwards to the light, his fear grew more cruelly real. Almost he could imagine that her footsteps had stopped, that when he reached the light he would find himself left once more to his cruel loneliness. Too overwhelming for him was the doubt. ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... come—lest when he woke he should find it had been carried away. He got out of bed, unscrewed the horse, and placed it under his pillow. But there it tormented him like an aching spot. It went on drawing him, tempting him, mocking him. He could not keep his hands from it. A hundred times he resolved he would not touch it again, and of course kept his resolution so long as he thought of it; but the moment he forgot it, which he did repeatedly in wondering why Joan did not come, the horse ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... that agony that tore thee now?— Why didst thou swoon and talk of murder, kings, Of hell and sulphur and the mocking fiends? ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... a mocking smile, restraining by a gesture the hasty exclamations of those around me who resented this fresh attack—"most willingly, caro signor! But excuse me if I fail to see wherein you consider yourself wronged. The lady who is now my fiancee ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... him and at his tormentor squatted by him like a mocking fiend, and as I looked the candle ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... features, though irregular, were not ugly or insignificant, but he wore a rather battered aspect; there were deep lines running from the corners of his mouth, and crowsfeet had started under the gray eyes which, in their turn, looked more skeptical than ardent, rather mocking than eager. Yet when he smiled, his face became not merely pleasant, but confidentially pleasant; he seemed to smile especially to and for the person to whom he was talking; and his voice was notably agreeable, soft and clear—the voice of a high-bred man, but not exactly of a high-bred ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... similar traditions are but mocking satires of the old Hebrew story—jarred and broken notes of the same strain; but with all their exaggerations they intimate how in the background of man's vision lay a paradise of holy joy—a paradise secured from every kind of profanation, and made inaccessible to the guilty; a paradise full ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... yoakes A smiling, with a sigh; as if the sighe Was that it was, for not being such a Smile: The Smile, mocking the Sigh, that it would flye From so diuine a Temple, to commix With windes, that Saylors ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... far as records inform us, was marked by any act or thought on his part which was reconcilable with generosity, humanity or honor. He was a tyrant and the instrument of tyranny, hating human freedom for its own sake, greedy to handle unrighteous spoils, mocking the sufferings he wrought, triumphing in the injustice he perpetrated; foul in his private life as he was wicked in his public career. A far more intelligent man than Berkeley, of Virginia, he can, therefore, plead less excuse ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... his shoulder and turned her dark eyes upon him. Teasing eyes they could be and mocking, yet sweet, too. Ah, sweet ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... observed. "Speak up. No hiding behind strange tongues. But first, I have the letter. That saves your worrying about it. You can clear your mind for action." Suddenly Nikky dropped his mocking tone. To be quite frank, now that the man was not dead, and Nikky had the letter, he rather fancied himself. But make no mistake—he was in earnest, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that a certain Numerius Suffustius of Praeneste was warned in dreams to cut into the rocks at a certain place, and this he did before his mocking fellow citizens, when to the bewilderment of them all pieces of wood inscribed with letters of the earliest style leaped from the rock. The place where this phenomenon occurred was thus proved divine, the cult of Fortuna Primigenia was established beyond peradventure, ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... been a lying or mocking spirit," said Mr. Dempster; "my faith in the truth of these manifestations is not to be shaken ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... doubt; and as he walked beside his boy upon the thronged street, elated in some strange way by the touch of that strong arm of the youth, whose blood was his own,—so dearly his own,—he pondered gravely with himself, if the mocking delusions of the Evil One were not the occasion of his pride? Was not Satan setting himself artfully to the work of quieting all sense of responsibility in regard to the lad's future, by thus kindling in his old heart anew the vanities of the flesh ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... ashamed of his weakness, he endeavoured to defy both the reproaches of his conscience and the opinion of the multitude, and sought to encounter criticism with bravado. If, by chance, he overheard some blind singer chanting in the streets the satirical verses which, faithful to the poetical and mocking genius of them ancestors, the Greeks frequently composed about him, he would order the singer to be brought, would bid him repeat his verses, and, applauding him, would relate some fresh anecdote of cruelty, saying, "Go, add that to thy tale; let thy hearers know what I can do; let them understand ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of mocking phantoms leaped through the portals of the Bygone—babbling of the glorious golden dawn that was whitening into a radiant morning, when the day-star fell back below the horizon, and night devoured the new-born day. Memory comes, sometimes, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... crimson ribbon that mingled with the rest? His eyes had flashed along the advancing lines of charging impi, led by Zulu chiefs. Yet never had they flashed with braver light than now, when, facing that half-mocking, ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... to the grate to hear the muster-roll. (Called, in the mocking jargon of the day, "The Evening Gazette.") Her name was with the doomed. And the old priest, better prepared to die, but reserved from the death-list, laid his hands on her head, and blessed her while he wept. She heard, and wondered; but she did not ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... recollections of frequent tussles with the town boys, who were constantly mocking at me for my 'square' cap; and I remember, too, that I was very fond of rambles of adventure among the rocky banks ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... shoulders stood above the shade that enveloped the rest of her form and showed dark against the feeble light of the moon at her back. As he looked she uttered a droll sound—fair counterfeit of the harsh note a mocking-bird speaks to himself before his nightly outburst—and then broke forth in a voice as untrained, but as fresh and joyous and as reckless of reproof or praise, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Star-flower for his wife. And it was also told, that with the rising of the sun on the next morning, he would convince the Little Black Bear, that he had not a forked tongue, nor spoke with the lips of a mocking-bird. There was little sleep that night in the Otto village. Our nation awaited with great dread and much trembling the coming of the morning, fearing danger to themselves and the very earth on which they dwelt, from the threatened ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... kind. Instead of the kindly and unnecessary, even ridiculous little Gygi, there were big, grave policemen by the score, a whole army of them; and everywhere grinned the Notice Boards, like automatic, dummy policemen, mocking joy with their insulting warnings. The heart was oppressed with this constant reminder that safety could only be secured by great care and trouble— safety for the little personal self; protection from all kinds of robbery, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... A little, languid, mocking breeze That rustles through the Jasmin flowers And stirs among the Tamarind trees; A little gurgle of the spray That drips, unheard, though silent hours, Then breaks in sudden ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... dreadful desert, must Kate indeed die even yet, whilst she sees but cannot reach you? Outpost on the frontier of man's dominions, standing within life, but looking out upon everlasting death, wilt thou hold up the anguish of thy mocking invitation, only to betray? Never, perhaps, in this world was the line so exquisitely grazed, that parts salvation and ruin. As the dove to her dove-cot from the swooping hawk—as the Christian pinnace to Christian batteries, from the bloody Mahometan corsair, so flew—so tried ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... growled the engineer unable to stand more. The Manager's mocking laugh followed him out ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... beg Anne Ashton's pardon," returned Lady Maude; her tone this time unmistakably mocking. "Anne is so common ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was no exception to this rule, but his hearers would not have had him shorter. It was, however, the personality of the man that carried weight and nothing that he has left for a mocking generation to wonder over gives slightest hint of reason for the spell he cast over congregations, under the cathedral towers, or in the simple meeting house in the new Boston. The one man alive, who, perhaps, has gone through his works conscientiously and hopefully, Moses Coit Tyler, writes ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... which soared above the soft murmur of a viol still strumming in the villa as a skylark cuts the mists. It was not another nightingale as I at first thought, but Imperia's voice from the laurel thicket mocking the melody. As she sang there appeared within the circle of the tiny temple's columns a white-robed figure, outlined against the pale green and lemon yellow of the dawn. It might have been a statue save that ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... In this way it is its own range-finder. Its bark is almost as dangerous as its bite, for its reports have a brisk, insolent sound like a postman's knock, or a cooper hammering rapidly on an empty keg, and there is an unexplainable mocking sound to the reports, as though the gun were laughing at you. The English Tommies used to call it very aptly the "hyena gun." I found it much less offensive from the rear than when I was with the British, ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... otherwise—an influence unwelcome, displeasing, but effective—I again glanced round to see if M. Paul was gone. No, there he stood on the same spot, looking still, but with a changed eye; he had penetrated my thought, and read my wish to shun him. The mocking but not ill-humoured gaze was turned to a swarthy frown, and when I bowed, with a view to conciliation, I got only the stiffest and ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... sound to wake The primal forest's awful shade; And breathless lies the covert brake, Where many an ambushed form is laid: I see the red-man's gleaming eye, Yet all so hushed the gloom profound, That summer birds flit heedlessly, And mocking nature smiles around. ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... grand, this incomprehensible, this ever-wonderful realm of the Creator which men call the world. But whenever his companions happened to listen to this involuntary outburst of enthusiasm, they broke out in mocking laughter. A rose was to them a rose, and nothing more; an apple they valued higher, as something eatable; and, perhaps, over plum-pudding they would have got enthusiastic, too. As it was, poor John was a constant ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... minister of Siam enjoys no exemption from that mocking law which condemns the hero strutting on the stage of the world to cut but a sorry figure at home. Toward these helpless slaves of his nod his deportment was studiously ungracious and mean. No smile of pleased ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Terrible wag as he was, he no longer affected low-bred manners to the same degree as formerly; he already began to dress well, and although with his mocking nature he was still disposed to snap at everybody as of old, he pursed his lips into the serious expression of a fellow who wants to make his way in the world. With an air of conviction he added: 'I must say that I now regret ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... certain respect for a tyrant, Nevil. At least I should have had an occupation in mocking him and conspiring against him. Tyranny! There would have been some amusement ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... little cornelian talisman at the end of his watch-chain and looked at it bitterly. It was but a mocking symbol of illusion. He unhooked it and laid it on the table. He would carry it about with him no longer. He would throw ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Vow of Poverty, it is significant to find that he has taken his subject from Dante. Poverty appears as a woman whom Christ gives in marriage to S. Francis: she stands among thorns; in the foreground are two youths mocking her, and on either side a group of angels as witnesses of the holy union. On the left is a youth, attended by an angel, giving his cloak to a poor man; on the right are the rich and great, who are invited by an angel to approach, but turn scornfully ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... a louder voice, almost as a person calls for help. Another pistol-shot answered her, mocking at her in the sun. Then she heard a distant peal of laughter. It did not seem to her to be either Maurice's or Gaspare's laughter. It was like the laughter of something she could not personify, of some jeering spirit of the mountain. It died away at last, and she stood there, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the English poet, John Gay, (1685-1732) whose best known piece "The Beggar's Opera" was said to have made "The Rich gay and Gay rich"? He was buried in Westminster Abbey. His epitaph was by Alexander Pope, followed by Gay's own mocking couplet, "Life is a jest, and all things show it. I thought so once and ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... kept on calling just the same and a hideous echo from somewhere threw our words back at us in a broken, mocking answer. That was all. We were paralyzed with fear that Sahwah had wandered into the swamp or had fallen over the precipice in the dark into the lake. We turned the lights of the car on the swamp for a long distance, but ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... father's territory; then, summoning his savage friends he ordered a general massacre and killed them all, saving only Robert and little Mary. Robert had been good to him and had given him tobacco, and Duaterra adored Mary, and called her his Mocking Bird. The Maoris plundered and burnt the ship after they had murdered the crew, but they were kind to Robert and Mary, and built a native house for them. Here they lived for four years, for they ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... entire morning by the lake," Mr. Kennaston informed the party at large, "in company with a mocking-bird who was practising a new aria. It was a wonderful place; the trees were lisping verses to themselves, and the sky overhead was like a robin's egg in colour, and a faint wind was making tucks and ruches and pleats all over the water, quite as if the breezes had set up in business as mantua-makers. ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... go red, and I thought I'd done something she disapproved of. I stood there hardly knowing what to do, and she bent her head to finish her prayer. She told me afterwards that it was the first time anyone had ever bowed to her. She turned red because she thought I was mocking her, and then, I suppose, with pleasure. That was the ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... for the lieutenant's words to his young officer, for, far from giving vent to mocking laughter, the sailors stood together looking on with wonder and something like awe at the intensity of feeling displayed by the people, who as they marched slowly onward in the weird procession, kept on ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... say. "This world is the real hell, ending in the eternal naught. The dreams of a life beyond and of re-union there are but a demon's mocking breathed into the mortal heart, lest by its universal suicide mankind should rob him of his torture-pit. There is no truth in all your father taught you" (he was a clergyman and rather eminent in his profession), "there is no hope for man, there ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... at the mocking words, and cut the conventional phrase in two as with a razor; then fled to her own room and tore off her wreath, her veil, her pearls, and had already strewed the room, when Mrs. Dodd, with a foot quickened by affection, burst in and caught her half fainting, and laid her weary as old ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... soldiers under his command, and by implication Claverhouse himself, figure as relieving their sterner duties by a curious form of relaxation. They would call each other, he says, by the names of devils and damned souls, mocking in their revels the torments of hell. The authority for this surprising statement is Robert Wodrow, who was not born when Claverhouse returned to Scotland, and whose history of the Scottish Church was not published till more than thirty years after the battle of Killiecrankie.[18] ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... she interposed, with a mocking laugh. "Oh, Mr. Lepel, is it possible that a clever man like you can't see clearer than that? My girl in love with Mr. Rothsay! She wouldn't have looked at him a second time if he hadn't talked to her about you. When I complained privately to my lord of Mr. Rothsay hanging about ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... aspect. The first week in May had arrived; the trees had acquired a considerable part of their foliage; and the air, in the woods, was perfumed with the fragrant smell of numberless flowers and flowering shrubs. The music of the birds also was delightful: the notes of the mocking-bird or Virginia nightingale, in particular, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... she questioned no further, though I could have sworn her eyes retained for some time a mocking, teasing expression. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... Teutonic, domination and admixture. The main characteristics of the Gaulish people he judges to be, "a love of fighting and a magnificent bravery, great impatience of control, a passion for new things, a swift, brilliant, logical intelligence, a gay and mocking spirit—for 'to laugh,' says Rabelais, 'is the proper mark of man,'—an inextinguishable self-confidence." With the reign of Charlemagne began the development of the architecture of France, but not until ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... to murmur. Rabbi Nathan, the second legate, arose, and read the verse of Isaiah, "Out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." Then in a mocking voice, "Out of Babylon shall go forth the Law, and the Word of the Lord from Nahor-pakod." The congregation was in an uproar. "Alter not the word of God" was the universal shout. The legates then produced the third letter, threatening excommunication to all who would not obey their ...
— Hebrew Literature
... the name o' being a man of eminent godliness," answered the sergeant in a mocking tone; "and is even credited ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... clear sweeping breeze; the same long shining hours on the green prairies; but it all meant nothing to me, racked with pain and choking with thirst through the awful lengths of that summer day. Fitful unconsciousness, with fever and delirium, seeing mocking faces with snaky black eyes, looking long at me; food almost touching my lips, and floods of crystal waters everywhere just out of reach. I was on the bluff above the river at Fort Leavenworth again, ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... lord, you are against me too, and you are mocking me too, I find. I humbly thank you, gentlemen," cried Lady Anne, in a high tone of disdain; "from a colonel in the army, and a nobleman who has been on the continent, I might have expected more politeness. From a Cambridge ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... said she, in her usual mocking way. "My beloved Cary, do tell me, have you brought that delicious journal? Do let me ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... call 'wife.' I shrink from the blow of her cold lips, the curse of her stony eyes. She has seen, she has learnt; I feel it, I know it. Yet she winds her arms around my neck, and calls me sweetheart, and smooths my hair with her soft, false hands. We speak mocking words of love to one another, but I know her cruel eyes are ever following me. She is plotting her revenge, and I hate her, I hate ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... wherewith to find my way!" Then said the king to the lame man, "And you, have you been into my garden?" And he answered, "Surely my lord has forgotten my infirmity; it cannot be that he desires to hurt my feelings by mocking me!" So the king was perplexed, and went apart to consider how the two could have contrived the business—for he was sure that they were guilty. At last a thought came to him, and he set the lame man on the blind man's shoulders, and scourged them both together. Then ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... Rodolphe had detected indications of a superior character and a fine fortune. All these observations now recurred to his mind; he became thoughtful after having been trampled on, as it were, by Francesca's dignity. Gina, her half-grown-up confidante, also seemed to have a mocking expression as she gave a covert or a side glance at Rodolphe. This obvious disagreement between the Italian lady's rank and her manners was a fresh puzzle to Rodolphe, who suspected some further ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... which separated this apartment from that in which the duchess then was. The Empress, having also seen her, hastily advanced to meet her, and insisted on her entering. Before passing in, Madame Lefebvre turned to the usher, and said to him in a mocking tone, "Well, my good fellow, you see I got in!" The poor usher blushed up to his ears, and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and strength of his lungs would seem to be a victim of consumption. His eye is black as Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a mocking laugh. "'Our fair land of Spain'," he sneered, "is not the land of the Jew nor have we found it fair." But before he could speak further, the other clapped a warning hand over ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... lurid reek; for as yet leaves and flowers and blue skies and pure breezes were not,—nothing but whiffs of mephitic and lethal vapor ascending, as from a vast charcoal brazier. No lark or linnet or redbreast or mocking-bird could live, much less warble, in those carbonic times. The world, like a Mississippi steamer, was coaling, with an eye to the needs of its future biped passengers. The embryotic earth was then truly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... in peace. She began to admire her taste, her skill.... Lisa's heart beat violently and painfully. She could scarcely control herself, she could scarcely sit in her place. It seemed to her that Varvara Pavlovna knew all, and was mocking at her in secret triumph. To her relief, Gedeonovsky began to talk to Varvara Pavlovna, and drew off her attention. Lisa bent over her frame, and secretly watched her. "That woman," she thought, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... thousands of people, and has received nothing but the highest of praise from all. She possesses a voice of wonderful magnetism and great compass, and seems to have perfect control of the muscles of the throat, and can vary her voice as successfully as a mocking bird. As a public reader, Miss Brown delights and enthuses her audiences. In her humorous selections she often causes "wave after wave" of laughter. In her pathetic pieces she often moves her audience to tears. The following are ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... appearance of a man struggling violently, as it would seem, with an airy nothing, and calling for assistance against a vision, should have appeared ludicrous. Then, so great was my rage against the mocking crowd that had I the power I would have stricken ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... first thing next morning, and remained all day spinning the gold thread. The work progressed before their eyes, and it was only when evening came that he repeated his questions. Not receiving a satisfactory answer, he vanished in a fit of mocking laughter. Helen sat down by the window to think; but think as she might, no answer to these puzzling ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... fill the woods with a melody that is not only sweet, but so varied, that one would imagine he was surrounded by a hundred different sorts of birds when the little warbler is near. From these circumstances we named it the mocking bird. There are likewise three or four sorts of smaller birds; one of which, in figure and lameness, exactly resembles our robin, but is black where that is brown, and white where that is red. Another differs but little ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... through you, through you this joy! We press our hands upon our breast and look upward with adoring gladness. Soft waves of bliss break through us. "The peace with God." "The sense of sins forgiven." Methodists and revivalists say the words, and the mocking world shoots out its lip, and walks ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... and out from behind a silver-trunked beech tree danced a figure in spring green. Her arms were full of flowers, which she scattered as she danced, curtseying, mocking, beckoning the shadow that followed her along the daisied grass. Her little feet were bare, and flitted through the green folding of her draperies like white night-moths fluttering among rose leaves. Her hair fell over her shoulders, and curled below her waist. It was red hair that ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... troubled her no more waking, they came to her in her sleep, grown woman that she was, and many a night of nightmare was hers, filled with fluttering shapes, vague and meaningless. The talk with Canim had excited her, and down all the twisted slant of the divide she harked back to the mocking fantasies of her dreams. ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... away for the woods, his mind all intent upon finding a nest of young mocking-birds, and despoiling it, he met a juvenile companion, named ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... stern king, having eaten of it as a dainty morsel, and sent it as a mess to thy friends." Such is the kind of jokes they enjoy; the poet describes the speech of the Queen as "a word of mockery."[48] The exchange of mocking words between Loki and the gods is of the same order as Gudrun's speech. Cowards! cries Loki to the gods; Prostitutes! cries he to the goddesses; Drunkard! is the reply of both. There is no question ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... situation. They never acknowledge that they have fallen in love, as the phrase is, until the man has formally avowed the delusion, and so cut off his retreat; to do otherwise would be to bring down upon their heads the mocking and contumely of all their sisters. With them, falling in love thus appears in the light of an afterthought, or, perhaps more accurately, in the light of a contagion. The theory, it would seem, is that the love of the man, laboriously avowed, has ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... and all the forms of law gone through with as if it had indeed been a court of justice. The seaman treated the affair lightly, laughed and joked with the farmers, and the crowd began to disperse, when a burst of musical laughter, bitter mocking in its tones, was heard in the apartment. It came from no one there. All stood aghast. Many a stout-hearted countryman who would have faced a cannon without shrinking, trembled and turned pale. The women shrieked; ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... a great Anglo-Catholic declared to me with a mocking mordancy to be full of "edification," do often enter that region of religion which seems to demand an appeal to the emotions; moreover, it is not to be thought for a moment that the Bishop is not deeply concerned with all moral questions, that he is in the least degree ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... coming to the iron-barred gate we found it locked. Sir James and Somerville begged some of those that were passing to call the keeper of the park to let us out; but they said it was impossible, that we must wait till morning. A crowd assembled laughing and mocking, till at last we got out through the house of one of the keepers ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... the young man, fixing his keen, mocking blue eye on him; "but I suppose you'd let me have him for that, out of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "tall talk" is a snare of the Devil; and in these days of common sense and higher education we need to guard against it, and to remember that "a thing may be good enough for practical purposes, but not for ideal purposes." "Ideal life" is not tall talk, but our plain duty, unless our Lord was mocking us when He said, "Be ye perfect, as your ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby |
