"Cynically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still such girls—but they are not often met with, and, once met with, are likely to have changed on a second meeting. "Pale ghosts of a passionate past come thronging," at times, to them perhaps; more likely they join with their companions in cynically singing: ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... to be led away by the court attendant. The fortune snatched from his client had procured for him the most adroit of counsel, the most exhaustive of trials. He knew that nothing had been left undone to enable him to evade the consequences of his crime, and he was cynically content. ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... Bill, grinning cynically, "and all in five-thousand-dollar sacks! Did it ever occur to you that it will take some time to carry the gold down to the drain's mouth? It's close by three-quarters of a mile, that ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... of relief from lean and pinching days. He has from time to time made public appearances in Paris as a pianist in concerts of chamber music; and he has even resorted—one wonders how desperately?—to the writing of music criticism for various journals and reviews. "Artists," he has somewhat cynically observed, "struggle long enough to win their place in the market; once the sale of their productions is assured, they quickly go backward." There is as yet no sign that he himself is fulfilling this ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... compelling a troop of actors whom he met by chance on the road to perform in his presence. At the close of the performance Ratsey, according to the memoir, addressed himself to a leader of the company, and cynically urged him to practise the utmost frugality in London. 'When thou feelest thy purse well lined (the counsellor proceeded), buy thee some place or lordship in the country that, growing weary of playing, thy money may there bring ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... (one egg is enough for six people), on "most-bolajie" (bread made with sweet new wine instead of with water), and other local delicacies, including "mabos," or alternate slices of dry salted peaches and dry sweetened apricots. This condiment is cynically known as married life. In the voorhuis of Boschendaal lay nineteen fine leopard skins, and Mr. Louw, the courtly mannered old farmer, who would be described by his countrymen as an "oprechter Burger," explained to me in slow and laborious ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... private life because they violated the principles for which the church stands. The church in Canada is not a dead issue. It is not the city of refuge for the failures and the misfits. It voices the ideals of Canadian men and women busy nation-building. It has been cynically said that the church in England, as far as public men are concerned, lays all its emphasis on the Eighth Commandment, and none at all on the Seventh; and that the church in the United States lays all its emphasis on the Seventh Commandment ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... that would save him was to smile as though he knew more than he was telling. It did not, he remembered, make any difference whether or not the smile was real. If he merely looked the miller up and down, and smiled cynically, he was ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Percival mentally apostrophised the missing Brian Luttrell. "One would think that she was glad of what I told her." He was thoroughly put out by this reflection, and munched his breakfast in sulky silence, listening cynically to his step-mother's idle utterances and Kitty's vivacious replies. He was conscious of some disinclination to meet Elizabeth's tranquil glance, of which he bitterly resented the tranquillity. And she scarcely ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the hills, Bear Valley way,' she replied, still scrutinizing him. She marked the look of relief in his eyes and laughed cynically and withal a trifle bitterly. 'On the Red Hill trail. Going ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... profound that it is tragic. It was he who was more interested in the thoughts,—the passion, the protest, the defiance, and the dread,—which the sight of that face set to boiling within me. Sometimes he smiled cynically at the turmoil, and at other times he watched it with what seemed to me bitter ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... should see and hear nothing. Had they been newly imported from the moon they could scarcely have less acquaintance with terrestrial conditions; but afterwards, when ruthlessly, with the grinning assistance of the onlookers, the facts of the social scheme were cynically revealed, and the role imperiously allotted—with much admonition and moving appeals to conscience and religion, and all the other aides-de-camp at command—after all that, how in the name of heaven could they continue to "babble of green ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Cynically assured, therefore, at bottom of his own power with this ebullient nature, the squire was quite prepared to make external concessions, or, as we have said, to pay his price. It annoyed him that when Elsmere would press for ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Madeleine smiled half cynically, half wistfully, shook hands with her host and made him a pretty little speech, nodded to the others and went obediently to bed. The doctor, whose manners were courtly, escorted her to the door of their parlor and returned to Masters' rooms. The other women left ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... cynically; 'I won't say it is your fault: it is my ill-luck, I suppose. I had no real right to question you—everybody would say it was presuming. But when we have misunderstood, we feel injured by the subject of our misunderstanding. You never said you had had nobody else here making love ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Bulletin it was a gleeful occasion. Nonchalant reporters sat down with that amazing front page spread out before them, studied the brutal face of Stone and chuckled cynically. Lean Doc Miller, "assistant city editor," or rather head copy reader, lit one cigarette from the stub of another and observed, to nobody in particular but ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... all about me that one lover usually means two, three, half a dozen lovers, since men grow weary and change and women, in loneliness or desperation, change also. Never would I let myself sink to the degrading level of sex complaisance that is sadly or cynically accepted by many women, self-supporting and self-respecting, in many American cities, simply because they cannot combat conditions that have been created and ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... her shoulders cynically. She had a certain kind of loyalty to her friend, and said all her harsh things to Lottie herself, and not behind ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... intellectual man provoked him to extraordinary exertions in cases wherein he fancied he might win for himself the glory of strengthening and verifying matters which in themselves perhaps lacked almost the elements of existence. "Spiritual truths," he once cynically remarked to Sainte-Beuve, whom, by the way, he detested, "will take care of themselves; it is the nursing of spiritual falsehood which needs all the care of the clergy." On the Sunday in question he had surpassed himself. With biting ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... mapped out his plan of campaign. He reviewed every detail of the interview that had taken place on New Year's Eve—more than a week ago—and it pleased him to re-construct the scene, but without the slightest indignation or excitement, only smiling cynically both at Elena and himself. Why had she come?—Simply because this impromptu tete-a-tete with a former lover, in the well-known place, after a lapse of two years, had tempted a spirit always on the look-out for fresh ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... that Miss Cursiter should always be there to witness her confusion. Nothing escaped Miss Cursiter; if her face grew tender for the young girls and the eight-year-olds, at the sight of Miss Quincey it stiffened into tolerance, cynically braced to bear. Miss Cursiter had an eye for magnificence of effect, and the unseemly impact of Miss Quincey was apt to throw the lines into disorder, demoralising the younger units and ruining the spectacle as a whole. To-day it made the ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... and Susanna declined to touch the work, the latter cynically offering to lend her apron ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... Tom and her mistress remained there among the horde, cynically reviling the monstrous state and yet adhering to it, like a man who reviles his mistress, yet who is in love with her. She knew her Uncle Tom perceived what was going on. But she knew moreover that in spite of his criticism and condemnation, he still ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... shuddered again. Yes. The truth would do! Apparently it would do. Exactly. And receive thanks, he thought, formulating the unspoken words cynically. "Fall on my neck in gratitude, no doubt," he jeered mentally. But this mood abandoned him at once. He felt sad, as if his heart had become empty suddenly. "Well, I must be cautious," he concluded, coming to himself as though his brain had been awakened from a ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... advantages. The pack, as he cynically thought of them, would have started at the Clark ranch and the cabin. He would get to them, of course, but he meant to start on the outside of the circle ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... temper which delights in reading of murder and sudden death weeps with anguish at the mere hint of oppression. No cheek is so easily bedewed by the unnecessary tear as the cheek of the ruffian—and those who compose the "editorials" for Mr Hearst's papers have cynically realised this truth. They rant and they cant and they argue, as though nothing but noble thoughts were permitted to lodge within the poor brains of their readers. Their favourite gospel is the gospel of Socialism. They tell the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... is, we'll all turn nesters for the good of the cause!" finished Pink somewhat cynically, getting up and following Cal and Slim ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... upon society and humanity by a large proportion of our population," he would have cynically observed to any caviller, "is by ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... flicked away the end of his cigarette. He looked at the boys, smiling cynically, and ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... hundreds and thousands of dedicated foreign communists, people in nearly every free country who will serve Moscow's ends. Thus the masters of the Kremlin are provided with deluded followers all through the free world whom they can manipulate, cynically and quite ruthlessly, to serve the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... at Blanche Farrow. She had a way of being right about worldly matters—the triumph of experience over hope, as she had once observed cynically. But this time he felt sure she ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... the warmest friendship prevented jealousy between men," Stephen Strong said, a little cynically—he had suffered a ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... into a joke. At one time she invited the old Spanish bishop to marry her to Dudley, and next day said she would never marry at all. But she never ceased to flirt with Dudley, who, when his intrigue with Spain fell through, cynically appealed to the French Protestants for support. They were in no position to help him, and by January 1562, he was cringing to Spain, and pretending to be Catholic. But English Catholics hated him, and he was now no fit instrument ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... sir; and in the composition of a soup doubtless you would have more confidence in the judgment of your cook than in mine," added the professor, cynically; for, intellectually, the cook and the captain appeared to be on the same level to him; and as a professor of Greek, he did not regard it as any more derogatory to his dignity not to know anything of the principles ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... there were theatres here—huge extravagant places! Algernon went over to an entrance of one, to amuse his mind, cynically criticizing the bill. A play was going forward within, that enjoyed great popular esteem, "The Holly Berries." Seeing that the pit was crammed, Algernon made application to learn the state of the boxes, but hearing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... struck the broader path to the house, the cackling laugh of a goat chained to a roadside log followed her cynically. Where had she heard this bleat before? Ah, yes, from the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... and a new title by which to win soft words, admiring looks, and sympathetic pressings from pretty hands. Who could blame Lady Richard for murmuring, "There, my dear, now you see!"? Who could wonder that Aunt Maria looked cynically indifferent? Was it strange that a good many people, without going to the length of declaring that the orator had suffered nothing at all, yet were inclined to think that he knew better than to waste, and quite well how to improve, the opportunity that a ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... cynically. "It seems they're a dour crop to shift. Sir Erchibald was sayin' that him and the lassie had been to the Chief Constable, but the man was terrible auld and slow. They persuadit him, but he threepit that ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... keep to the lanes and alleys whose shelter he dared not leave; but he was spurred on now by a sort of grim, unholy joy. He knew now who had murdered the Magpie, and why; he knew now who was making a tool, a cat's-paw of the Gray Seal; he knew now who had so cynically elected him, if caught, as a substitute for the other to the electric chair. It was Virat! Frenchy Virat, the suave, sleek gambler, confidence man and crook! Well, the game was of Virat's choosing—and they ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... through all the bitter years he had borne that smiling face upon his wall, cynically indifferent to the beauty which had been the rapture and the agony of his life,—a man released from the place of his torment because his capacity for ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... ashamed. But at heart he is more dismayed, more demoralized, more thoroughly prostrated than George Sand. He has not fortitude actually to face the degree of depravity which he has always imputed to the human race, the baseness with which his imagination has long been easily and cynically familiar. As if his pessimism had been only a literary pigment, a resource of the studio, he shudders to find Paris painted in his own ebony colors, and his own purely "artistic" hatred of the bourgeois, translated into a principle of action, expressing ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... well enough, though we don't unite to spoil each other with flattering demonstrations," and he smiled cynically at the other two, and peered quizzically at Mrs. McVeigh, who presented him with a crimson beauty of a rose, for which he returned a very gracious, "Thank you," and continued: "Yes, Gertrude's a very good girl, though it's a pity it wasn't a boy, instead, who came into the Loring family that ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... and twisted his mouth cynically. "Huh! Then it's good-bye tools, I suppose. I'm no churchmember, thank God, but I've heard that once the Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all hell ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the chair, leaned roguishly toward Merton Gill, placed a small hand upon the sleeve of his coat and peered archly at him through beaded lashes, one eye almost hidden by its thatch of curls. Merton Gill sunk low in his chair, cynically tapped the ash from his tenth cigarette into the coffee cup and raised bored eyes to hers. "That's it—shoot ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... nothing could ever heal it thoroughly again. He read the letter in silence; read it twice over; and when his wife broke out into a series of rapt congratulations, and reproached him mildly for not appearing to think it true, he rather cynically inquired what then, if true, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... literally surrounded—I presume in consequence of some extravagance of joy at the first sight of so much money. The odds are so far in your favour, but the match is not yet won. Questions will arise of undue influence, of sequestration, and the like: I have my witnesses ready. I tell it you cynically, for you cannot profit by the knowledge; and, if the worst come to the worst, I have good hopes of recovering my ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his feet set well apart and his hands thrust into his trousers pockets. The trim, natty figure, the spruce and Summer-like attire, the small, wizened face with its cynically humorous and wide-awake aspect— above all, a certain jauntiness of air and cocksure expression— certainly did not suggest a comedian ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... think he'll have any objection to making that quite clear to us if he is," I replied, cynically. "I should say he'd be rather proud of it. But—I think we shall hear a good deal of him ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... the law of duty seem to me all one. I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think "Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... carefully fostered readiness to sacrifice their lives for them if necessary; 600,000 men and women who are persuaded that by their way alone is humanity to be saved; who are persuaded (to put it as cynically and unsympathetically as possible) that the noblest death one can die is in carrying out a decision of the Central Committee; such a body, even in a country such as Russia, is an enormously strong embodiment of human will, an instrument of struggle capable ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... planting, and the ploughman, being deaf, answered in a forensic bellow, so that Addington, passing the brick wall in its goings to and fro, heard, and communicated to those at home that Jeffrey Blake, dear fellow, was going back to the land. Jeffrey did, as he had cynically foreseen, become a cause. All persons of social significance came to call, and were, without qualification, kind. Sometimes he would not see them, but Anne one day told him how wrong he was. If he hid himself he put a burden on his father, who stood in the breach, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... over these concessions at the Lord Mayor's banquet, joking somewhat cynically at his own policy in disposing of territories over which he had no rights. One country, amongst others, given to France, has provided my good English friends with an inexhaustible ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... I smiled cynically as I sat down to supper. "This doesn't surprise me in the least," I remarked. "I never yet knew a woman who could argue, or even understand the first step in an argument, and I don't suppose I ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... even cynically cool, "I shall stalk you no more. The chase is at an end. I think I have taken all out of you I intended to. Perhaps it was a bad joke and was carried too far. I wanted to prove to you that there were circumstances which ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... time, the count on the 23rd of March made himself drunk from daybreak, in order to pass in oblivion the dreaded anniversary which awoke in his mind a remorse which was only slumbering. "That's the regular mode of deposition in Russia," said Talleyrand, cynically, on hearing of the emperor's assassination. The First Consul's anger overcame his judgment. "The wretches!" he exclaimed; "they failed here on the 3rd Nivose, but they have not failed in St. Petersburg." And bent on showing his spite towards his enemies, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... her husband until he opened the door with a loud kick. The alferez appeared pale and gloomy, and when he saw what was going on he threw a terrible glance at his wife, who did not move from her place but stood smiling at him cynically. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... cynically. "You are right, mon vieux. I would be delighted to have the chance. But this time it is impossible. The stones are too big. They are worth—pouf!—millions of francs, so I must be content to receive my pay, which ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... merciless persistency of the weazel—a man who lived his code to the last letter of the law, without pity and without favoritism. At least so he was judged, and his hard, narrow eyes, his thin lips and his cynically lined face seldom betrayed the better thoughts within him, if he possessed any at all. In the Service he was regarded as a humanly perfect mechanism, a bit of machinery that never failed, the dreaded Nemesis ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... was as doubtful as the love; we might then have stayed comfortably in Valmy," answered Commines cynically, and La Mothe's eyes twinkled as he thought how much better he had read the King in his single hour than Commines had in all his ten years of intimacy. "The woman," he went on, "must be Ursula de Vesc, and if so you can spend your ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... as asserting his own powers to realize it. With regard to these he speaks very modestly of himself as a beginner, a pioneer only. In fact the question of his own particular genius is, he says, irrelevant, and has nothing to do with the other one, adding rather cynically that genius is often ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... physical senses." That is precisely what every sinner would like to believe. "I have done that, says my memory. I cannot have done that, says my pride, and remains obdurate. In the end, my memory gives in." So wrote Nietzsche, keenly and cynically observant of his kind. As a matter of fact, men would give almost anything to be able to convince themselves that they "have not done that"—not necessarily from pride, but in order to be rid of shame, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... red-faced, magnificently mustached, and always a little out of breath. With a cigar in his hand, over a glass of beer, he talked most cynically about his ship, in the immemorial fashion of engineers. But in reality, Watkins was foolishly infatuated with Dierdre, idealized her, humanized her, and couldn't conceive ...
— Death Wish • Robert Sheckley
... to four and threatening to wipe it out altogether. But the prospector stuck to it and eventually succeeded in giving mankind a firm hold on this wilderness. In memory of what he and succeeding settlers went through, the village received its cynically descriptive name. ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... patiently and preside at the School Board meeting, convened, as usual, in the great parlour at Hall. All the Board was there: the Clerk, Mr. Benny, and the six Managers; two Churchmen, three Dissenters, and himself—a Gallio with a casting vote. He was used to reflecting cynically that these opponents trusted him precisely because he cared less than a tinker's curse for their creeds, and reconciled all religious differences in a broad, impartial contempt. But to-night, as Parson Endicott ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... much time as I can with her, however, during the day, and make up for it by working at night after she has gone to sleep; and when I question her, she only laughs, and answers that she loves to have me all to herself. (Here you will smile cynically, I know, and say, 'Humph, I wonder will she say the same when they have been married six years instead of six months.') At the rate I am working now I shall have finished my first volume by the spring, and then, my dear fellow, ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... Tonet became again the harbor rowdy of his early boyhood, the ragamuffin stranger to respect and consideration for other people. He smiled ferociously, cynically, back ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... trying. He has blue, honest, direct-gazing eyes with small humour wrinkles at the corners. I never knew a man with fewer theories, or with a simpler devotion to the thing at hand, whatever it may be. At everything else he smiles, not cynically, for he is too modest in his regard for his own knowledge; he smiles at everything else because it doesn't seem quite real ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... satisfied his conscience by the performance of what no doubt seemed to him sacred duties, Caius at once set to work to build up his new constitution. It is commonly represented that in order to gain over the people to his side he cynically bribed them by his Lex Frumentaria. Now if this were true, and Caius were as clear-sighted as the same writers who insist on the badness of the law describe him to have been, it is hard to see how they ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... of France fallen so low that it sends its women to intercede for the lives of its men? But, perhaps," he added cynically, "it had not far ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... the relations of Great Britain and Germany, when Count von Buelow, with the ink hardly dry on the Anglo- German treaty of October, 1900, which was supposed to be intended to protect China against further Russian advances on the north, cynically went out of his way to make a statement in the German Parliament that the treaty did not apply to Manchuria. The reply of the British Government was the Anglo-Japanese treaty of February 11th, 1902. [Footnote: Reventlow (German Foreign Policy, 1888-1914) ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... to tea, while a vivid note of colour was added to the scene by the picturesque uniforms of a couple of officers of an Algerian regiment who were consuming unlimited cigarettes and Turkish coffee, and commenting cynically in fluent French on the paucity of pretty women to be observed in the streets of ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... a blade of grass beneath, his feet, tumbled off and gave vent to his feelings in a belated "chirr." Overhead somewhere a raven croaked dismally and cynically at intervals. Ralph's ears heard these things as he waited, with every sense on the alert, at the ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... said the Chief Inspector cynically. "You will be preached to, no doubt, before they put you into the dock. And in the end you may yet get let in for a sentence that will surprise you. I wouldn't trust too much the gentleman who's been talking ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... era of materialism. Force was the prime minister, self -gratification the supreme legislator. Exaggerated superstition was balanced by decaying faith. It was a time of coordinately high mental activity, an intellectuality that cynically rejoiced at its own failure to solve the riddle of the universe, maliciously suggested new difficulties, raised barriers against its own research, and prostrating itself in the name of mere brutism, worshipped nature as the ready panderer to its worst ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... has ceased to love him as she has discarded her "white wimples," which, if she marries this inferior person, she may long for once again! And he adds, rather cynically, for a blessed soul in Purgatory, that through ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... bestial quality in human nature they did not find everywhere east of the Rhine, or west of it if they were Germans. The bestiality was there all right. But after the victory, eternal peace. Plenty of this is quite cynically deliberate. For the skilful propagandist knows that while you must start with a plausible analysis, you must not keep on analyzing, because the tedium of real political accomplishment will soon destroy interest. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... palms. She could not bear it. She had made Osborn burst into a big, harsh laugh one day when she had hinted to him that there were occult things to be done which might prevent ill luck. He had laughed first and scowled afterwards, cynically saying that she might as well ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... poverty that awaits her. Then the pilgrim discloses to her that he it is who is the King of Gaul, and Cordelia marries him. Instead of this scene, Lear, according to Shakespeare, offers Cordelia's two suitors to take her without dowry, and one cynically refuses, while the other, one does not know why, accepts her. After this, in the old drama, as in Shakespeare's, Leir undergoes the insults of Goneril, into whose house he has removed, but he bears these insults in a very different way from that ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... earnestly urged him to give juster laws to the women of Piedmont, who, in all that appertained to the right of inheritance, were greatly inferior to men. M. de Cavour laughed, half cynically, as at an expression called forth by a certain esprit de corps; but afterwards he discoursed seriously on the difficulties which, particularly amongst an agricultural population, stood in the way of an equal right of inheritance. Miss Bremer listened with greater pleasure when he added, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... "Have you," she asked cynically, "always been so straight that you don't know what temptation means? Have you never wanted anything ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... that he wanted only carnal indulgence, and would have got it, if need be, through threats and blows. He recognises, in his past, only a feeling which, now it is over, fills his ascetic mind with nothing but disgust and burning shame, and hence he tries, by degrading it still more, by cynically raking up all imaginable filth, to separate that past from his present. So far, were only he himself concerned, one would sympathise, though contemptuously, with this agonised reaction of a proud, perhaps a vain, man of mere intellect. But the atrocious thing is, that he treats her ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... are silent. Audley first roused himself with a quick, writhing movement. "We two," said he, smiling half sadly, half cynically,—"we two must not longer waste time in talking sentiment. We know both too well what life, as it has been made for us by our faults or our misfortunes, truly is. And once again, I entreat you to pause before you yield to the foolish suit ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to the Shoreham. The cafe looked cheerful, as it always does. We ordered an extensive supper. It was good. There were pretty women in the room, but we looked at them with the austere eyes of disillusioned men, and talked cynically of life. I cannot recall any of the things we said, though I remember thinking at the time that both of us were being rather brilliant, in an icy way. I suppose it was mainly about women. That was to be expected. Women, indeed! What ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... told Hinpoha that after school was out she was to go West and live with Aunt Grace, and then sat cynically watching the unbelieving delight which flashed into her face at this announcement. But after the first flush of rapture Hinpoha reconsidered. In her mind's eye she saw Aunt Phoebe living on alone, unloving and unloved, to a lonesome old age. Again she saw the cedar chest ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... documents he compiled so laboriously. Stopping from time to time to shape a quill pen to his liking, he would write a few lines carefully, kill a number of flies, take a peep at Alban from beneath his shaggy brows and then resume the cycle of his labors. Alban pitied him cynically. This labor of docketing scarred backs seemed wretchedly monotonous. He was really glad when the fellow spoke to him, in as amazing a combination of tongues ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... when one hundred of it was promised for a typewriter? Harlan had parted with his managing editor on terms of great dignity, announcing that he had forsworn journalism and would hereafter devote himself to literature. The editor had remarked, somewhat cynically, that it was a better day for journalism than for literature, the fine, inner meaning of the retort not having been fully evident to Harlan until he was some three squares away from ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... said, cynically. "Just so! I expected something of that sort. That's all part of ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... Max, cynically tolerant, looked on from afar; and Daisy, who had been feeling somewhat conscience-stricken at his entrance, rapidly found herself detesting him more heartily than ever. She was glad when Major Hunt-Goring drifted to her side and engaged her in conversation, ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... a pit for others and falling into it yourself," Millar remarked cynically. "However," he went on, "things are not so bad. I have reliable information that the later crop ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... cynically, and we meanwhile mounted to our seats, Hawkesbury and Whipcord being in front, and I, much to my disgust, being placed beside Masham on ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... yellow tattered scroll royally, reconfirming lands and title to John, the most distinguished of all the Caradocs, who had unfortunately neglected to be born in wedlock, by one of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies of most old families. Yes, it was there, almost cynically hung in a corner; for this incident, though no doubt a burning question in the fifteenth century, was now but staple for an ironical little tale, in view of the fact that descendants of John's 'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly to be found among ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Hadley cynically; "surely you don't anticipate anything of that sort. Girls don't ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... he told her somewhat doggedly, but not unkindly, to cease. "Do you know what the bells are ringing for?" he asked cynically, after a ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... part of Miss Wickham's disagreeable relatives as they noted their aunt's doting fondness for her hired companion. And while she felt that they richly deserved this little punishment, it was humiliating to be so cynically made ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... seems a desperately long while to wait; and that is the very shortest time, she thinks, in which she could get ready—though the dear child has consented to wait for most of the little things which she wants until we get on the other side." Mr. Port smiled cynically at the announcement of this concession. It struck him that when Dorothy was turned loose among the Paris shops, backed by the capacious purse of a doting elderly husband, she would mow a rather startlingly broad swath. "So you won't oppose ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... to see his friends the Tristrams with a good deal of frequency, though if you had listened to Mrs. Tristram's account of the matter you would have supposed that they had been cynically repudiated for the sake of grander acquaintance. "We were all very well so long as we had no rivals—we were better than nothing. But now that you have become the fashion, and have your pick every day of three invitations to dinner, we are tossed into ...
— The American • Henry James
... Virginia; to Ellen Glasgow, present-day Virginia; to Stewart Edward White, the great northwest. Others cultivate a field peculiar to themselves. Frank R. Stockton is whimsically humorous, Edith Wharton cynically dissective; Mary Wilkins Freeman is most at home with rural New England character; and Thomas Nelson Page has done his best work in the South of ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... me? Why, goddamn it, we sat in that coffee shop for half an hour while I leveled with you. No chance! You held out on me." King laughed cynically. "I guess that's human nature. With a couple of bucks at stake even honest men ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... Arbuthnot' we recognize in Pope ideals of independence, of devotion to his art, of simple living, of loyal friendship, and of filial piety which shine in splendid contrast with the gross, servile, and cynically immoral tone of the age and society in ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... his teeth, raised himself slowly on his legs, and shading his eyes with his hand from the severe perspective of six feet, gazed admiringly down upon his work. Rupert, with his hands in his pockets and his back to the window, cynically assisted ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... of the congregation of St. Chrysostom who discussed Vane's sermon on their way home. In fact, whether people walked or rode home, it was the universal topic. Some discussed it with timorous sympathy; others, perhaps with more worldly wisdom, talked of it quietly and cynically as the outburst of a half-fledged clerical enthusiast who would very soon find out that his superiors, on whom he depended for preferment, regarded the doctrines of Christianity as one thing and the practises of the Church as ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... have to gallop," Porter was saying. They were close up, and Crane could see that Lucretia had got to the bay colt's head, and he was dying away. He smiled cynically as he watched Westley go to the whip on The Dutchman, with Lucretia half a length in the lead. Most certainly Langdon was an excellent trainer; The Dutchman was just good enough to last into second place, and Lucretia had won handily. What a win Crane ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... congratulate the Hon. W.M. TWEED upon his inestimable boon to the public—the Free Baths. With regard to a certain class—and a very large class—of the public of New York City, it has sometimes been cynically asked, "Will it wash?" Since the establishment of Free Baths under the Department of Public Works, that question has been satisfactorily replied to in the affirmative. Hardworked mechanics at once recognized the chance for a wash, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... Oliver; for Oliver, as will be presently seen, and all his tribe were fed upon no other food than the possessions of the Church. Cromwell, in his business of suppressing the great houses, embezzled quite cynically—if we can fairly call that "embezzlement" which was probably countenanced by the King, to whom account was due. Indeed, it is plainly evident from the whole story of that vast economic catastrophe which so completely separates the England we know ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... tell you that," said Chip, cynically. "There's just two bunches to choose from. There's the Sweet Young Things, that faint away at sight of a six-shooter, and squawk and catch at your arm if they see a garter snake, and blush if you happen to catch their ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... Englishwomen who knew him quite well teased him and said how beautiful his bride was and how strange-looking, and what an iceberg he must be to be able to come out to supper and leave her alone! And they wondered why he then smiled cynically. ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... those who offended her were not given the opportunity of doing so twice. To have had small quarrels followed by reconciliations would have been impossible to her. Very few things were worth quarrelling about at all, still fewer worth forgiving! Mrs. Ogilvie was cynically indifferent to transgressions against herself; but when she sat in judgment she always gave ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... one Mohammedan country left to attack, and it was Russia's turn to make the attack. Northern Persia—the most civilized and fruitful half of Persia—had been placed under the protection of Russia, and Russia, after cynically doing her best to make good government in Persia impossible, seized on the pretext of the bad government to invade the country. If the Powers of Europe had wished to demonstrate the necessity for a great international tribunal, with a mighty force behind it to ensure the observance ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... cynically what would happen if some one at that moment had appeared with the authenticated secret. She continued to gaze at the books. "There are plenty of rare chances for a young mining engineer in ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... from the standpoint of my neighbors; to my mind life did not swing on this hinge. I had my occupations—there were a goodly number of needy folk to be looked after; there was my reading; my music; my friends, and other pleasures, and altogether I felt I was very well off. Not that I was cynically opposed to marriage; I intended to marry, if the right man called, but if he did not I was content to end life as I had ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... Bradley smiled cynically as he looked down toward the tent. He could not, of course, distinguish the figures as plainly as Jimmie could with the glass, but he knew from the excited manner of the boys that something ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... been educated, but never tamed; her life had been thrown strangely among those who were great in the world's possessions, but she was not of them. Her soul was in such darkness that she had never seen it; she would have danced away cynically from the belief that there is such a thing, and now all at once she had passed from disbelief to knowledge. Is not love God's doing? To Gavin He had given something of Himself, and the moment she saw it the flash ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... practised. Debauchery, as an incidental weakness of human nature, has been advocated as the lesser evil; libertinism as preferable to concubinage, and the latter as better than marriage. One of their most austere teachers cynically declares that 'it is wiser to live with beasts than to be joined to a wife; to frequent many women in secret, rather than to live with ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... his chances on the threshold of manhood in trying to serve a world which, so far from thanking him, will very effectually resent his most disinterested efforts on its behalf; when he is reminded of some once aspirant who, young and confident as he, set out to reform the world, and now cynically affirms that the only wisdom is to let the world go to the devil in its own way—the young man who is strong says: "I acknowledge your facts, such as they are, but they are not facts for me. I, too, may be beaten in the right, but I would rather be that a thousand times over than ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... or four desks near the long windows and a table by the door. Only one desk was occupied—the one in the farthest corner of the room. The young man sitting behind it—he was very young indeed, smooth-shaven, with expressionless, heavy-lidded eyes, and a mouth that drooped cynically at the corners,—barely glanced at his visitor, and then dropped his eyes once more to the papers on his desk. Betty waited a moment, while he wrote rapidly on the margin of one sheet with a blue pencil, and then, seeing that he apparently ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... he had said, cynically, "of a truth a man brave in the day can be turned into a quaking coward at night; you have but to present him a danger substantial enough to quicken his imagination. These Greeks have withstood you stoutly; try them now with your power a vision ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Ages matrimony seems to have given your sex the same privileges," philosophized her companion cynically. ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... happened?" Claude demanded at last with a voice hoarse and guttural with abhorrence; and the advocate shrugging his shoulders cynically replied: ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... cynically remind me that nothing will come of the Determinists' protest against the evil social conditions. Perhaps not. Let us waive that question for a moment, and consider our ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... cynically. "Come with me and I will show you the church records and the minister ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... the duellists themselves, settled down to watch the conflict between Lady Torridon and Beatrice Atherton. Its prolongation was possible because for days together the hostess retired into a fortress of silence, whence she looked out cynically, shrugged her shoulders, smiled almost imperceptibly, and only sallied when she found she could not provoke an attack. Beatrice never made an assault; was always ready for the least hint of peace; but guarded deftly and struck hard when she was directly ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... He saw very little of the world in his later years, save that part of it which at odd intervals found its way to the delights of Leasowes; indeed, he was not of a temper to meet the world upon fair terms. "The generality of mankind," he cynically says, "are seldom in good humor but whilst they are imposing upon you in some shape ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... like the road to Alfredston now. It stared him cynically in the face. The wayside objects reminded him so much of his courtship of his wife that, to keep them out of his eyes, he read whenever he could as he walked to and from his work. Yet he sometimes felt that by caring for books he was not escaping common-place ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... said he; "I must get out of it. Max, if you persist in going with me to the wharf, you're a fool. When your friends are doing well, you should stick to them; when they have got into a mess, you should have appointments elsewhere." Although he spoke cynically, there was underneath his scoffing tone a strain of tenderness. He turned quickly to the girl at this point, as if afraid of betraying more feeling than he had intended to do. "You've delivered your message," said he, ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... dean has injured you, but cannot injure me; for long since has my fame winged its way to a station from which it can never descend." One is surprised to find such a Miltonic spirit in the contracted soul of Hobbes, who in his own system might have cynically ridiculed the passion for fame, which, however, no man felt more than himself. In his controversy with Bishop Bramhall (whose book he was cautious not to answer till ten years after it was published, and his adversary was no more, pretending he had never heard ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... don't agree with Grant much more than you do. But you're a lot of old hens, cackling around here because Grant Adams invades the roost to air his views. Let him talk. Let 'em all talk. Talk is cheap; otherwise we wouldn't have free speech." He grinned cynically as he asked, "Haven't you any faith in the Constitution of the fathers? They were smart enough to know that free speech was a safety valve; let 'em blow off. Then go down and organize and vote 'em afterwards according to the dictates of your own conscience. Politics is the antidote for free ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... from the outside. I could hear birds settling down for the night, and cheeping drowsily to each other. My cat came on the scene and, seeing me, looked at me with serious, expanding eyes, twitched her whiskers cynically, and passed on. Presently I heard the voices of my family. They were re-entering the sitting-room. Supper was over—supper, with its cold meats and shining jellies, its "floating island" and its fig cake. I could hear a voice that was new to me. It was deeper than my mother's, and ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... the young man, cynically. "You have the pleasure, then, which your dear friend Joanna there never enjoyed, of seeing your own prophecy accomplished; and I, for my part, have three hundred pounds to solace myself with for what has certainly ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... blood from the face of the corpse. "Yes, it is he; I know him well," said Guise, kicking the body as he spoke. "Well done, my men," he continued, "we have made a good beginning. Forward—by the King's command." He mounted his horse and rode out of the court-yard, followed by Nevers, who cynically exclaimed as he looked at the body, "Sic transit gloria mundi." Tosinghi took the chain of gold—the insignia of his office—from the admiral's neck, and Petrucci, a gentleman in the train of the Duke of Nevers, cut off the head and carried it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... under the oppression of the Liquor Traffic with its terrible licensed temptations, would then be permanently crushed under one of the most perilous of all the political tyrannies that ever sapped the strength and the freedom of a great people. For these Liquor Traffickers have proclaimed cynically their anti-social aloofness, from the ideals of good citizenship; "they know no interest but their own," and their defiant boast is heard at all ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... skinned the wrong party?" cynically observed Mr. Galloway. "You are too hasty with your tongue, Roland Yorke. My nephew, Mark, ran in just now to tell me of the holiday being denied, and that was the first I had heard of the affair. Mark thinks one of the seniors ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... lamentably addicted to intoxicants. On more than one public occasion he was the worse for his cups; and when, after his death, a subscription was started to place his statue in Westminster Abbey, Samuel Rogers, the poet, cynically said, "Yes, I will gladly give twenty pounds any day to see dear old Tom Campbell stand steady on his legs." It is a matter of congratulation that the most eminent men of the Victorian era have not fallen into some of the unhappy habits of their predecessors ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... overlooking the leopard's kill. We lay here looking the place over inch by inch through our glasses, when an ejaculation of disgust from Kongoni called our attention. There at another spot that confounded beast sat like a house cat watching us cynically. Either we had come too soon, or she had heard us and retired to what she considered a safe distance. There was of course no chance of getting nearer; so I sat down, for a steadier hold, and tried her anyway. At the shot she leaped high in the air, rolled over once, then recovered ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... converted armybomber smelled like exactly what it was—a barn. Ten sheep and a solitary goat were tethered to stanchions along the sides. The sheep bleated continuously, the goat looked cynically forbearing, and all gave off an ammoniacal smell which was not absorbed by the bed of hay ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Station" he saw one of his companions, breathless and wild with excitement, narrating to an ever growing throng how the four had been attacked and surrounded by a howling mob, and had been nearly torn to pieces. While he stood listening, smiling cynically, several dapper young men stood by with notebooks in their hands, and it was not more than two hours later that Jurgis saw newsboys running about with armfuls of newspapers, printed in red and black letters ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Thurston in existence? Why couldn't life be simple and straightforward with people like his father and himself and that girl Maggie alone somewhere with nothing to interfere? Life was never just as you wanted it, always a little askew, a little twisted, cynically cocking its eye at you before it vanished round the corner? He didn't seem to be able to manage it. Anyway, he wasn't going to have that ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... wreath struggling between two police agents, who were arresting her in a marketplace of old time, in a strangely costumed crowd, which was clamouring violently. The poor bridegroom was being held back by his friends; a handsome young man in knee-breeches and a cocked hat watched the proceedings cynically in the right-hand corner, whilst on the left a big fat man frantically endeavoured to recover his wig, that had been lost in the melee. The advertisement was headed, 'Morton and Cox's Operatic Company,' and concluded ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... animals, or of abortions, of everything hurried untimely into existence: machines, sheds, bridges, trams, motor-cars: not one line corrected, not one angle smoothed, for the sake of the eye, of the nerves of the spectator. And all of it, both decorative futility and cynically hideous practicality (let alone the various exotic raree shows from distant countries or more distant centuries) expect to be enjoyed after a jostle at the doors and a scurry along the crowded corridors, and to the accompaniment ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... into town, stopped at the sheriff's office, and demanded cynically the thousand dollars offered by the ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... Finally he succeeded in getting his left foot on her slipper. She tried to pull her foot back, but the more she tried the harder he bore down on it. She looked at him in amazement; but he smiled cynically, and in a few minutes they were desperately intimate. After dinner they withdrew to a hidden corner, and you could ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... and tiger hunts which had, by their duration and magnificence, threatened to disrupt the efficiency of the British military service,—whimsical excesses, not understandable by his intimate acquaintances who cynically arraigned him as the fool ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... mean, but a few extras don't make much difference when one is so liberally supplied already," he said cynically. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... said another cynically. "It'll just be a case of 'Found drowned' and the regular twenty-five dollars to HIM, and five to the man who found the body. That's enough ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... had a dance out in the country, she invariably went with Fred. "Well, I don't know what Fred Badger has got over Steve Mullane, or Jack Winters, or even Joel Jackman," said another voice, rather cynically, as though the speaker did not wholly subscribe to Mollie's view that Fred stood out as a shining mark above the rest of ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... men in the world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair; bright, laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,—fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... of letters the man writes her. Perhaps, as the novels tell us, love is a wonderful thing——" She looked at Micky with a comical expression in her queer eyes. "I should say it must be if it's reformed that man," she added cynically. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... the two hundred employees of the factory with many of their wives and children were gathered in the factory yard. At first they seemed cynically amused by what they called Moore's bluff. By mid-afternoon, however, after repeated assurances from Roger that his father was going to be a farmer, the crowd became surly. A strange man got up and made a speech. He said that capitalists like Moore should ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... whom Morgan called the princes and who, on sofas with the girls, talked French very loud—though sometimes with some oddity of accent—as if to show they were saying nothing improper. Pemberton wondered how the princes could ever propose in that tone and so publicly: he took for granted cynically that this was what was desired of them. Then he recognised that even for the chance of such an advantage Mrs. Moreen would never allow Paula and Amy to receive alone. These young ladies were not ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... greeted the end of his exordium; for the French people in general, and the political world in particular, manifest a depraved taste for that sort of eloquence. Encouraged, the fine speaker entered the heart of his subject, and cynically sang his recantation. He abjured none of his opinions, he repudiated none of his acts; he would always remain liberal (a blow on his chest), but that which was good yesterday might be dangerous to-day; truth on the other side of the Alps, error on this side. The ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... us in America very little, and we smile cynically at the not altogether untruthful portraits of "Potash and Pearlmutter," and their vermin-like business methods. There is an undercurrent of feeling in America, that the virile blood is still there which will stop at nothing to throw off oppression, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... is always pleasing to think that one is distinctive. And turning from Sir Owen to Innes, Ulick told him how, finding himself in London, he had availed himself of the opportunity to run down to see him. Owen sat criticising, watching him rather cynically, interested in his youth and in his thick, rebellious hair, flowing upwards from a white forehead. The full-fleshed face, lit with nervous, grey eyes, reminded Owen of a Roman bust. "A young Roman emperor," he said to himself, and ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... I smiled cynically, and was justified ten minutes later, when Herbert's conscience, troubled and apologetic, reminded him about that guinea ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various |
