"Cynicism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his youthful days awakened and he longed to rid himself of this shameful chain. The woman had bewitched him; she sent for him without any reason, she seemed to delight in making him suffer, she needed him for a plaything. She spoke of Monteverde and their love with quiet cynicism, as if the doctor were her husband. She had to confide the secrets of her life to some one, with that imperious naivete that forces the guilty to confess. Little by little she let the master into the secret of her passion, telling him unblushingly ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and folly, have I been wandering for years, and found no rest—as little in wisdom as in folly, in spiritual dreams as in sensual brutality. I could not rest in your Platonism—I will tell you why hereafter. I went on to Stoicism, Epicurism, Cynicism, Scepticism, and in that lowest deep I found a lower depth, when I became sceptical ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... incurring such suffering? Have they nobility and generosity and largeness of soul enough, while abstaining themselves for conscience sake, to share in the plans and sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence, and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there such a state of public opinion and usage in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... All her life she had gone about calmly and aloofly, her head in the clouds, her feet on mountain-tops. She had never done anything to arouse discussion in other women. Perhaps such a situation had never confronted her until lately. She had always looked forth upon life through the lenses of mild cynicism. So long as she was rich she might, with impunity, be as indiscreet as she pleased. Her money would plead forgiveness and toleration. . . . Elsa shrugged. But shrugs do not dismiss problems. She could have laughed. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... she had been speaking had crept the slight mocking smile which always told better than words of the cold cynicism that moved him at times. Did she know anything? Did she suspect him? The smile masked an interest that illumined his eyes very slightly as he looked ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of anger ran through the assembly, even the judge and the jury could not suppress their loathing at the unheard of cynicism of the prisoner. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... hard to find. Despite what foreigners may think of them, the Chinese are by no means fools. They possess the wisdom of the ages,—of their own peculiar kind. They have had a long experience with foreigners, saddening and enriching, and cynicism is the outgrowth of such experience. China has suffered at the hands of the great powers, has suffered at the hands of England, Russia, France, and Germany alike. She is virtually in the position of a vassal state, not to any one ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... at it. Yet he had come more clearly to an understanding of the girl; her cheerfulness, her unselfishness, and, above all, the sweet, beautiful philosophy of life that must lie back, to render her so uncomplainingly the slave of the self-willed woman, yet without the indifferent cynicism of Gerald, the sullen, yet real, partisanship of Kendrick, or ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... home folks, like yourself, from Oskaloosa and Richmond and Santa Barbara and Quincy. Few are native-born New Yorkers, and scarcely any of them go around with their noses in the air in an "upstage Eastern manner." Most of them are graduates of the newspaper school, and remnants of newspaper cynicism occasionally appear in their outspoken philosophy. But be not deceived by this, for even in the newspaper office the half-baked cub who is getting his first glimpses of woman's frailties and man's weak will is the only cynic who means all he says. All ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... power. His dialogues have been imitated by Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but they do not possess his humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but contents himself in ridiculing those who have proclaimed them; and, in his cold cynicism, depreciates human knowledge, and all the great moral teachers of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates. But he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all the learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm, he may ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... regarded as the besetting disease of middle-class Englishmen; and so we find Lyndon remarking, by the way, that Mr. Hunt, Lord Bullingdon's governor, 'being a college tutor and an Englishman, was ready to go on his knees to any one who resembled a man of fashion.' And the kindly cynicism which discoloured Thackeray's ideas about women, notwithstanding his tender admiration and love for the best of them, comes out pointedly in old Sir Charles Lyndon's advice to Barry on ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... tradition declared that he had been admitted solely for the beneficent purpose of keeping the more egotistic members in a permanent and pleasing glow of superiority. He was very rich, but otherwise quite harmless. In an access of unappreciated cynicism, Average Jones had once suggested to him, as a device for his newly acquired coat-of-arms, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... liked and sympathized with, not weak ones; the self-reliant, not the helpless. He felt that the solicitor of charity was always a lazy or drunken person, trying to live by plundering the sober and industrious." This malign distrust of fellow beings, this acrid cynicism of motives, this extraordinary imputation of evil designs on the part of the penniless, was characteristic of the capitalist class as a whole. Itself practicing the lowest and most ignoble methods, governed by the basest motives, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... of insinuating that a proper use of her charms might accomplish much in certain quarters, but there was something so calmly virginal and pure about the girl as she sat there in her half-sacred costume that instinct conquered cynicism and he refrained. Unattached and unchaperoned as she was, or appeared to be, the girl commanded respect even in Paris. Instead of answering at ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... opposite sides of the Channel. In London people quoted Butler, and vowed there was no wit so racy as the wit in "Hudibras." In Paris the cultured were all striving to talk like Rochefoucauld's "Maxims," which had lately delighted the Gallic mind by the frank cynicism that drew everybody's attention to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Sophie, you are a wicked girl!" whispered Janina, boiling with indignation at the cynicism of ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... bitterness towards them, which he has expressed in a note to one of his poems, on the occasion of some unfounded remark made upon him by an anonymous traveller in Italy; and it certainly appears well calculated to foster that cynicism which prevails in his latter works more particularly, and which, as well as the misanthropical expressions that occur in those which first raised his reputation, I do not believe to have been his natural feeling. Of this I am certain, that I never witnessed greater kindness ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... restrained for evil or for good his half-barbaric genius. He flung himself upon life with the irresponsible ardour of the discoverer of a new continent; shaped and re-shaped it as he chose; carved from it now the cynicism of Measure for Measure, now the despair of Hamlet and of Lear, now the radiant magnanimity of the Tempest, and departed leaving behind him not a map or chart, but a ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the hidden sources of human joy and have neither grown old in cynicism nor gray in utilitarianism, Miss Gale's charming love stories, full of fresh feeling and grace of style, will be a draught from the ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the Press is not a direct and open power. It depends upon a trick of deception; and no trick of deception works if the trickster passes a certain degree of cynicism. ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... true that the number of these corrupt legislators was small, far less than alarmists led the nation to suppose, but there were enough to cause wide-spread distrust, cynicism and want of faith in any patriotism or ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... his road to ruin," returned David. "Dear Eve, listen to me. A man needs an independent fortune, or the sublime cynicism of poverty, for the slow execution of great work. Believe me, Lucien's horror of privation is so great, the savor of banquets, the incense of success is so sweet in his nostrils, his self-love has grown so much in Mme. ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... the Middle West and had probably seldom been out of it before. He breathed American and was as pure a type as you could find. Nothing of the cynicism of Europe about him, for he was that old-fashioned and extra-lovable product, the God-fearing man. He was kind to every one, and had the natural religion of being kind. His door-keeper and sub-clerk at the main hut was an old Russian ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... commonplace and "the rule" in themselves, and at the same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them talk of themselves and their like BEFORE WITNESSES—sometimes they wallow, even in books, as on their own dung-hill. Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is called honesty; and the higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. There are even ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to our commercialized newspapers and magazines for our distorted views of human life and for the cynicism that it is the momentary fashion to affect, but that is always disfiguring to the mind that harbors it. Certainly we can get no such views and no such cynicism from our own experience or from personal knowledge of the men and women who surround us. Honesty ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... engineered certain lines of foreign railway. It seemed that Harvey had no purpose in life, save that of enjoying himself. Obviously he read a good deal, and Carnaby credited him with profound historical knowledge; but he neither wrote nor threatened to do so. Something of cynicism appeared in his talk of public matters; politics amused him, and his social views lacked consistency, tending, however, to an indolent conservatism. Despite his convivial qualities, he had traits of the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... Austria and Russia knew of the plot at least ten days before the murder and did nothing to stop it.[2] On the day after the crime the Fremdenblatt, the organ of the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office, published a leading article couched in terms of the utmost cynicism, and declaring that it mattered little to Austria-Hungary which dynasty reigned in Serbia. The Serbian Government might have been excused for enclosing a copy of this article in its reply to the Austrian ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... at the end of December, 1829, and caused quite a little scandal. The public did not understand Balzac's ideas, they recoiled from the boldness of his themes, which sounded like sheer cynicism, and remembered only the crudity of certain anecdotes, without trying to penetrate their philosophy. He was attacked in the public press, and even his friends did not spare him their reproaches. Balzac defended himself against ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... Dakie Thayne, though, for all that. He and Leslie and Cousin Delight,—the Josselyns and the Inglesides,—dear Miss Craydocke, hurrying up to congratulate,—Marmaduke Wharne looking on without a shade of cynicism in the gladness of his face, and Sin Saxon and Frank Scherman flitting up in the pauses of dance and promenade,—well, after all, these were the central group that night. The pivot of the little solar system ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... she had never before contemplated it. She seemed to be at a play, all personal interests forgotten for the moment, looking at the world of which she was no longer a part with a lively, critical curiosity, without regrets but without cynicism. The world did not seem to her bad—only man's higher instincts had little part in it. Such, at least, was what she thought, so long as people praised her for her courage, so long as the houses in which another Jacqueline de Nailles ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... exceptions, the historians of Bailly's last agony appear to me to have forgotten this duty. Was the truth, the strict truth, not sufficiently distressing? Was it requisite, without any sort of proof, to impute to the mass of the people the infernal cynicism of cannibals? Should they lightly make just sentiments of disgust and indignation rest upon an immense class of citizens? I think not, Gentlemen, and I will therefore avoid the cruelty and poignancy of chaining the thoughts for a long time on such scenes; I will prove ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Carlisle Heth had formulated the careering importance, even the nobility, of marrying high above her. Aspiration, not your ditchwater cynicism, was the mainspring of her real being, as her mother well knew; and this supreme fulfilment had long glittered ahead as the ultimate crown, not of triumph only, but of happiness consummate. A little too long, perhaps: waiting princesses grow discontented. Vague dissatisfactions possessed the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to the gendarme, who at once confronted the abominable malefactor with the obvious proofs of a horrible crime. But the depraved wretch stood by, Sir, perfectly calm and with a cynicism in his whole bearing which I ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... It is difficult to imagine the results of an impossibility—and knowledge in this case is an impossibility. Still at times the grim cynicism of the whole thing comes over one with a rush, and one—laughs. It is the only solution—laughter. Let us blot it out, all this strange performance in France: let us eat, drink and be merry. But some quotations are better ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... himself into this troublesome world, that is, however, less troublesome at Florence than elsewhere. He had done the like for Madonna Beatrice, and from the hour of her birth he, whom many blamed for a pagan cynicism and philosophic disdain of humanity, had watched over her life with the tenderness that watches the growth of some fair and unfamiliar flower. He was, besides being a master-physician, one that was thoroughly learned ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... as on many other occasions, the cynicism of Bonaparte's language does, not admit of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... seemed to have grown years younger. All that was careless, inconsequential, irresponsible, seemed to have disappeared in a single night, leaving a fresh, boyish enthusiasm quite free from surface cynicism—quite innocent of the easy, amused mockery which had characterised him. The subtle element of self-consciousness had disappeared, too. If it had remained unnoticed, even undetected before, now its absence was noticeable, for there was no ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... to note that Euphues embodies many of the characteristics of the Byronic hero—his sententiousness, his misogyny, his cynicism born of disillusionment, and his rhetorical flatulency; but he is no rebel like Manfred because he finds consolation in his own pre-eminence in a world of platitude. Conscious of his dearly bought wisdom, he makes it his continuous ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... dinner, tea, or supper! Bites can neither be fried nor boiled, measured nor weighed. A bite, indeed!'—and once more the cynic loses himself in laughter. That is all he knows about it, and it merely supplies us with another evidence of the superficiality of cynicism. The critic is sometimes right, but the cynic is never right; and the roar of laughter that I hear from the cynic's chair, as he talks about bites, is, therefore, rightly translated and interpreted, a kind ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... to walk without faintness—the supreme test of character. If he had been able to keep the wings of his youth I think he might have been almost the greatest man of British history. But luxury has invaded, and cynicism; and now a cigar in the depths of an easy-chair, with Miss Megan Lloyd George on the arm, and a clever politician on the opposite side of the hearth, this is pleasanter than any poetic ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... numbers hugely swelled by persons as little like their supposed teachers as a Marian or Elizabethan persecutor was like the founder of Christianity—a pest to society. Lucian's sympathy with the best Cynics, and detestation of the worst, make Cynicism one of his most familiar themes. The second is the class so vividly presented in The dependent Scholar—the indigent learned Greek who looks about for a rich vulgar Roman to buy his company, and finds he has the worst of the bargain. His successors, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... report of sleep-walking on board would only have served to broaden the lines of laughter in the chief officer's mercurial soul, and deepen the lines of cynicism around the second officer's cynical mouth when the one relieved the other on the bridge at the matutinal hour of ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... them into France as well as Denmark, Carlyle and his school made some effort to justify their Germanism, by pitting what they called the piety and simplicity of Germany against what they called the cynicism and ribaldry of France. But nobody could possibly pretend that Bismarck was more pious and simple than Hans Andersen; yet the Carlyleans looked on with silence or approval while the innocent toy kingdom was broken like a toy. Here again, it ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... inability to enjoy, of successful ambition and favoured, passionate love, is famous; and short of love even and ambition, we all know the flatness of long-desired pleasures. King Solomon, who had not been enough of an ascetic, as we all know, and therefore ended off in cynicism, knew that there is not only satiety as a result of enjoyment; but a sort of satiety also, an absence of keenness, an incapacity for caring, due to the deferring of enjoyment. He doubtless knew, among other items of vanity, that our wishes are often fulfilled without our even knowing ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... at the speaker with a glance of mingled cynicism and humor, and turning to the treasurer inquired, ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... things must inevitably contain a mass of rot. And with what one sees, on one side, with its tongue in its cheek, defying one to be real enough, and on the other the bonnes gens rolling up their eyes at one's cynicism, the situation has elements of the ludicrous which the poor reproducer himself is doubtless in a position to appreciate better than any one else. Of course one mustn't worry about the bonnes gens," Mark Ambient went on while ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... of his well-turned compliments. Whenever the Autocrat of All the Russias appeared in public, at a military review, or the Opera, or at Ascot, he received an ovation, and Baron Stockmar, with dry cynicism, has not failed to record the lavish gifts of 'endless snuff-boxes and large presents' which made his departure memorable to the Court officials. Out of this visit grew, though the world knew nothing of it then, the Secret Memorandum, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... his cynicism will be made bitterer still by the fact that, owing to his being (in all probability) unmusical, inartistic, and unable to amuse himself with any form of handwork, he will have no taste or hobby to distract him from himself. For a time, indeed, the "genial ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... had been better acquainted with the history of the social movement, he would have put his question the other way round. Why does the German bourgeoisie itself interpret the partial distress as relatively universal? Whence the animosity and cynicism of the political bourgeoisie? Whence the supineness and the sympathies of the unpolitical bourgeoisie with respect ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... old musician and the maiden of nineteen, who married in spite of the opposition of both families and in spite of the poverty that awaited them. There are many accounts of the domestic career of these two, written in a tone of patronage or cynicism. But this tone is gratuitous on the part of those who assume it. As thorough a study of the facts and documents as I can make, shows no ground whatsoever for refusing to accept this love-match as an ideal wedding of ideal congeniality, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... While at work they were always in a hurry, for to-day's news is dead to-morrow. They wrote on the run, without time for thought or reflection. Knowing beyond their years, the fruit of their wisdom was cynicism. Their knowledge withered for ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... at the awakening sense of this responsibility in our citizens during the past few months, and gratified that many instances have occurred which refuted the cynicism which has asserted that our system could not convict those who had defied the law and possessed the means to resist its execution. These things reveal a moral awakening both in the people and in officials which lies at the very foundation of the rule ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... believed in a kind of infallibility of the inner sense, of the intuition, and regarded as futile all sciences that proceeded by slow rational operations. He believed himself a mage and magician. From vanity he spoke of himself in the highest terms and from cynicism in the lowest. Doubt has been cast on his sincerity and also ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... laugh followed on this, but I think even the mutineers, brutal as they were, were aghast at this revolting cynicism. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... Mal. It is the spiritual bond that connects Wagner's operas with Turgenieff's novels, Amiel's journal with Marie Bashkirtseff's diary. Naturalism in fiction, "decadence" in poetry, realism in art, tragedy in music, scepticism in religion, cynicism in politics, and pessimism in philosophy, all spring from the same root. They are the means by which the age records ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... And Dick, between the joy with which her annexation of his honour filled him, and his weakened control, found himself on the edge of an explosion of feeling; but brought back common-sense and good-humour to them both with a touch of his antiseptic cynicism. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... you should not have told that. It will confirm Mr. Beverly in his cynicism regarding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... stock, and was in his own person a comely, sensible youngster a few years younger than the trooper. Tole was the nearest thing to a young friend that Stonor possessed in the post. They were both young enough to have some illusions left. They talked of things they would have blushed to expose to the cynicism of the older men. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... Scot, with that touch of cynicism which is occasionally seen in his race. "Can 'ee ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... little alteration in the fair placid face. Geraldine Challoner was not a woman to wear the willow in any obvious manner. She was still coldly brilliant, with just a shade more bitterness, perhaps, in those little flashes of irony and cynicism which passed for wit. She talked rather more than of old, Clarissa thought; she was dressed more elaborately than in the days of her engagement to George Fairfax, and had altogether the air of a woman who means to shine in society. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... frankly I had taken him to be a very much older man than that, and the only thing about him I didn't like was a certain cynicism and knowledge of the world which didn't look well in a man who ought to be thinking about the serious things of life. After this young Howard confided in me even more than before. He said that he didn't ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... this generation. In these Letters all sympathetic readers will find the man they have long known from his writings—the man with a heart so tender that the world often drove him back into a bitterness of opposition, into an assumed hardness and defensive cynicism. There are readers so unluckily constituted that they can see nothing in Thackeray but this bitterness, this cruel sense of meanness and power of analysing shabby emotions, sneaking vanities, contemptible ambitions. All of us must often feel with regret that he allowed ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... Under such cynicism Gideon would turn about and walk off as though nothing had been said to him. Palmer took an especial delight in teasing Gideon as to his mission labors. Gideon never deigned to notice the ridicule of Palmer, at least in words. Yet there was ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Bessy had thrown Lawrence over. This opinion was borne out by his woebegone appearance. He was thin and pale; his face had lost its youthful curves and looked hard and mature. He was moody and taciturn and his speech and manner were marked by a new cynicism. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... capable administrators and debaters of every party, and thus make up a Ministry which should be all-powerful, and of which all the power should be in his hands. Like his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, he had a sort of half good-natured cynicism which never allowed him to doubt that if the offices were offered to the men, the men would on any conditions accept the offices. The events that he had lately seen had not induced him in any way to modify ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... mistake, and it betrays a spirit of foolish cynicism, to maintain that all international governmental action is, and must ever be, based upon mere selfishness, and that to advance ethical reasons for such action is always a sign of hypocrisy. This is no ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... deliberately made up, the artificial, had a charm for her. Be this as it may, the Countess and Alfieri continued, in the opinion of all contemporaries, and according to the assurance of Alfieri himself, whose cynicism and truthfulness are equal, on the same footing as ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... sanctuary in spite of itself. It is unhealthy, there is vitiated air in it, but the irresistible phenomenon is none the less accomplished; all the holy generosities bloom livid in this cave. Cynicism and the secret despair of pity are driven back by ecstasy, the magnificences of kindness shine through infamy; this orphan creature feels herself to be wife, sister, mother; and this fraternity which has no family, and this maternity which has no children, and this ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Roundheads and the Banished Cavaliers of Mrs. Aphra Behn, who was a female spy in the service of Charles II., at Antwerp, and one of the coarsest of the Restoration comedians. The profession of piety had become so disagreeable that a shameless cynicism was now considered the mark of a gentleman. The ideal hero of Wycherley or Etherege was the witty young profligate, who had seen life, and learned to disbelieve in virtue. His highest qualities were a contempt for ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... his gaze flew upward, not, however, to the lady whom Francis had gallantly chosen for Queen of Beauty, but, despite his alleged cynicism, to a corner of the king's own box, where sat she who had once been a laughing maid by his side and with whom he had played that diverting pastoral, called "First Love." It was only an instant's return into the farcical but joyous past, and a moment later he was sharply ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... cynicism, Siegmund prepared to go downstairs. His sensitiveness had passed off; his nerves had become callous. When he was dressed he went down to the kitchen without hesitation. He was indifferent to his wife and children. No one spoke to him as he sat to the table. That was as he ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... moment and concluded that Uncle Ben was probably right. Rupert Filgee, who was a handsome boy of fourteen, was also a strongly original character whose youthful cynicism and blunt, honest temper had always attracted him. He was a fair scholar, with a possibility of being a better one, and the proposed arrangement with Uncle Ben would not interfere with the discipline of school hours and might help them both. Nevertheless he asked good-humoredly, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... ambidextrous trick! Green sold his "Orlando Furioso" to two different theatres, and is among the first authors in English literary history who wrote as a trader;[49] or as crabbed Anthony Wood phrases it, in the language of celibacy and cynicism, "he wrote to maintain his wife, and that high and loose course of living which poets generally follow." With a drop still sweeter, old Anthony describes Gayton, another worthy; "he came up to London to live in a shirking ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the excesses of Imperialism, while his follower, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, used the brief term of his power to reverse the policy of racial domination in South Africa and to prove the value of the old Gladstonian trust in the recuperative force of political freedom. It may be added that, if cynicism has since appeared to hold the field in international politics, it is the cynicism of terror rather than the cynicism of ambition. The Scare has superseded the Vision as the moving force in our external relations, and there are now signs ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... here, for God knows, she felt rejected and deficient enough elsewhere. In the life of thought, of the spirit, she was one of the elect. And she wanted to be universal. But there was a devastating cynicism at the bottom of her. She did not believe in her own universals—they were sham. She did not believe in the inner life—it was a trick, not a reality. She did not believe in the spiritual world—it was an affectation. In the last resort, she believed in Mammon, the flesh, and the devil—these ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... an impulse to ask his uncle to send him to college, but not only did pride strike at the words, but he reflected with some cynicism that the affection he inspired invariably expressed itself in blatant selfishness, and that he might better appeal to the enemies he had made to send him from the Island. He ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... other things, he suspected her of being in league with Marcia to protect the Christians. To him she represented the idealism that his cynicism bitterly rejected. The mere fact of her unshakable fidelity to Pertinax was an offense in his eyes; she presented what he considered an impudent pose of morality, more impudent because it was sustained. He might have liked her well enough ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... heard tolerably often from Livingstone during my absence. His letters were very amusing, containing all sorts of news, and remarks on men and manners. They would have pleased me more if they had not indicated a vein of sarcasm deepening into cynicism. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... argument, learned in the lore of our former constitution, and earnest for the republican change, on democratic principles. His elocution was neither flowing nor smooth; but his language was strong, his manner most impressive, and strengthened by a dash of biting cynicism, when provocation ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... realising that, after all, it was something to be a free agent, and to have comfortable rooms in Montague Street, with no old bear of a drunkard to disturb my peace. And then a sort of admiration sprang up in my heart, and the cynicism bred of melancholy broodings over solitary pipes was less ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... category of unattainable possessions. She was not the first woman for whom he had entertained an unpractical admiration. He had been in love with duchesses and countesses, and he had made, once or twice, a perilously near approach to cynicism in declaring that the disinterestedness of women had been overrated. On the whole, he had tempered audacity with modesty; and it is but fair to him now to say explicitly that he would have been incapable of taking advantage of his present ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... with a little gasp. He held his throat and looked imploringly towards the bottle. Trent shook his head stonily. There was something pitiful in the man's talk, in that odd mixture of bitter cynicism and passionate earnestness, but there was also something fascinating. As regards the brandy, however, ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... life which had become a part of the young girl was yet gaiety itself. Youth and health and beauty would not have even cynicism otherwise. But now, as she spoke, the irony was bitter, and worn, as of age. And behind it was a woman's reluctance before some abhorred sacrifice, a sacrifice which would entail ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... masses of black hair twisted about her head. She was not pretty but there was a certain charm of interest and mystery in her face, and Rilla found her fascinating. Even her occasional moods of gloom and cynicism had allurement for Rilla. These moods came only when Miss Oliver was tired. At all other times she was a stimulating companion, and the gay set at Ingleside never remembered that she was so much older than ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... push him toward the wall, into the shelter of a clump of palms and ferns. There, with his hands in his pockets, and upon his face what he thought an excellent imitation of Arkwright's easy, bored expression of thinly-veiled cynicism, he surveyed the scene and tried to judge it from the standpoint of the "common people." His verdict was that it was vain, frivolous, unworthy, beneath the serious consideration of a man of affairs ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... all pressed into the service of this patriotic cause. And it is to these permanent qualities, more even than to their thirty years' military and economic preparation, that they owe their many successes. The cynicism and ruthlessness of our arch-enemy should not be allowed to blind us to his enterprise, his stoicism, his meticulous applications of the law of cause and effect. These are among his most valuable ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... himself, can never resist a throb of amazement at the entertaining youthfulness of these young monks. How quaintly juvenile they are, and how oddly that assumption of grave superiority sits upon their golden brows! With what an inimitable air of wisdom, cynicism, ancientry, learned aloofness and desire to be observed do they stroll to and fro across the quads, so keenly aware in their inmost bosoms of the presence of visitors and determined to grant an appearance of mingled wisdom, great age, and sad doggishness! What ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... brought home to Mademoiselle de Guerchi how imminent was her danger. At first she had thought the commander's visit might be a snare laid to test her, but the coarseness of his expressions, the cynicism of his overtures in the presence of a third person, had convinced her she was wrong. No man could have imagined that the revolting method of seduction employed could meet with success, and if the commander had desired to convict her of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... into her habitual state of childish cynicism. The police had tricked her, no doubt. She was more than suspicious of this as she noted their approach towards a pile of buildings surrounded by a high wall, which reminded her of La Roquette. This wall had great iron spikes and broken glass bottles set in cement on top, and seemed ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... money, and thought that he could find in her another source of supply to be exhausted and practically thrust aside. Many tales that Nina had heard, many things that she had observed were not good for the girl's all too ready cynicism—and the hard little lines around her mouth that the princess so disliked to ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... their manners were perfectly correct. Rendsoul bore himself toward Blue Beard with the proper degree of familiarity which a husband displays toward his wife before a stranger. "But then," the chevalier asked himself, "how does this reserve accord with the cynicism of the widow, who declared so cavalierly that the Caribbean and the filibuster shared her good graces with the buccaneer, without the latter being jealous in the slightest degree?" The Gascon asked himself still further what could be the ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... admit the truth of these self-made charges. He did not mean to be all these things. At heart he was a good fellow. It was simply the fault of his training. He saw now the truth of what in his egotism and cynicism he had always scoffed at before, that some women are strong enough morally, brave enough physically to do anything, make any sacrifice for the sake of right. How unworthy he had proved himself of such a woman! ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... to-day, French, English, or Norwegian authoresses, and theoricians like Ellen Key, with her book on Love and Marriage, all these rebels have invented nothing. They have done nothing but take up once more the theories of the great feminist of 1832, and expose them with less lyricism but with more cynicism. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... constitutional self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious—bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold, repellant cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility; and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that, desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... precarious to act a part; and this cynicism was rather able than wise: Alfred looked up and watched him keenly as he read the monetary article with tranquil interest; and then, for the first time in his life, it flashed into the young man's mind that his father was not a father. "I never knew him till now," thought he. "This man ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... sentimental philanthropist of the all but most genuine kind, tainted indeed with the vanity and self-centredness which had reached their acme in Rousseau, but very much more certainly sincere, and of a temperament as different as possible from what is commonly called cynicism. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... you be delivered from the temptation to cynicism and the timidities of orthodoxy. Pray that the workers in this your glorious new art be delivered from the mere lust of the flesh and pride of life. Let your spirits ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... new direction was given to Elsie's thoughts by the somewhat scowling aspect of Christobal's face. He was looking at Courtenay in a manner which betokened a certain displeasure. The Spaniard's cultivated cynicism was subjugated by a more powerful sentiment. It seemed to Elsie that he envied Courtenay his youth and high spirits, for, in very truth, the mere exchange of those harmless pleasantries had tuned the younger man's soul to the transcendental pitch of the knight errant. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... unconventional indeed—that was a part of their high bravery and privilege; but what it also appeared to attest in this wondrous manner was that they could communicate to their chosen in three minutes, by the mere light of their eyes, the same shining cynicism. He was to wonder of course, tinglingly enough, whether he had really made an ass of himself, and there was this amount of evidence for it that there certainly had been a series of moments each one of which glowed with the ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... easy cynicism about women's availability and about the body's insistently animal functions predominates, there is enough variety in The Merry-Thought to provide something of a picture of eighteenth-century society were any future anthropologist ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... views anent the place occupied in the world by the British aristocracy. His own hot youth was crowded with episodes that Medenham might regard with disdain, yet he would be shocked out of his well-fed cynicism by the notion that his son was gallivanting round the country as the chauffeur of an unconventional American girl and a ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... their robust independence. How could he help admiring Byron and falling into more or less unconscious imitation of his moods if not of his special affectations? Passion showing itself off against a dark foil of cynicism; sentiment, ashamed of its own self-betrayal, and sneering at itself from time to time for fear of the laugh of the world at its sincerity,—how many young men were spoiled and how many more injured ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... opportunity of usefulness or enjoyment. A serious and commendable change would seem to be denoted by the words, "I have tried each way singly: now for both!" (page 121); and again at page 126, where a new-born softness asserts itself. His language has, however, a vein of bitterness, sometimes even of cynicism, which belies the idea of any sustained impulse to good. He is worn in body, weary in mind, fitful and wayward in mood, and just in the condition in which men half impose on others, and half on themselves. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... by generations of culture. Even his spectacles could not obscure the friendly and benevolent expression of his large blue eyes. It was evident that he looked at the world, as mirrored before him in the daily journal, with neither cynicism nor mere curiosity, but with a heart in sympathy with all the influences ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... Her sudden illness, when the gayety was at its height, her pallor, the handkerchief she crushed against her lips, the cough she smothered under the laughter while Gaston kept playing the piano lightly—it all wrung my heart. But not so much as her cynicism in the long dialogue with her lover which followed. How far was I from questioning her unbelief! While the charmingly sincere young man pleaded with her—accompanied by the orchestra in the old "Traviata" duet, "misterioso, misterioso!"—she maintained ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... scowled, he broke into vociferous laughter; and he muttered "Ecod!" an innumerable number of times, voicing, thereby, the gamut of human emotions and the degrees thereof, from lowest melancholy to a crafty sort of cynicism and thence to the height of smug elation. And, presently, when he had peered down the path to the stage, where the twins were forking the fish, he approached, stepping mysteriously, his gigantic forefinger raised in ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... to you for your hopeful view of my future. You evidently imagine that I have gone in for the fashionable creed of the young man of the present day. I am not young enough to take pleasure in high collars and cheap cynicism, Miss Deyncourt. Cynical people are never disappointed in others, as I so often am, because they expect the worst. In theory I respect and admire my fellow-creatures, but they continually exasperate me because they won't ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... its aftermath had brought their paths together for a space, and now they were diverging again. But that short space had been enough to make him feel ashamed and proud. Ashamed of himself for his cynicism and irritability; proud of the woman who, with her faith clear and steadfast, could face the future without faltering. Her man's job had been laid upon her; she would never fail him till the time came for her to join him. . . . And by then she would have earned her reward—rest. . . . She will deserve ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... about Saltash's face; a smile in which cynicism and some vagrant, half-stifled emotion ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... of no known parentage, hardly of any known breed, but he suited Mr. Carter. What, the millionaire reflected with a proud cynicism, were his own antecedents, if it came to that? But now Skiddles ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... necessary again to refer to the charge of cynicism that is levelled against Thackeray. The mistake is, as our critic points out, 'taking a vague word and applying it precisely.' It all depends upon what cynicism really means. 'If it means a war on comfort, then Thackeray was, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... her romantic idyll into something of reality. This feeling was merely the physical one of an amorously minded man,—he knew, or thought he knew, women well enough to hold them at no higher estimate than that of sex-attraction,—yet, with all the cynicism he had attained through long experience of the world and its ways, he recognised a charm in this fair little creature that was strange and new and singularly fascinating, while the exquisite modulations of her voice ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... in Eleanor's voice or manner as she speaks, but a spirit of cynicism which is new ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... cynicism,' cried Dick. 'You use an imaginary helplessness with the brutality of a buccaneer, and your ingenuousness is a pistol you put to one's head, crying: your money or ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... to the calling we share. Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. And this commitment, if we keep it, is a ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... pies were abominable; her jam far inferior to that made by his Aunt Sally of Doemville. Only an unexpected incident kept him equally from the extreme of listless Sybaritic indulgence, or of morbid cynicism. Indeed, at the age of twelve, he already ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... him, studying him with a quiet and meditative eye. "I believe your Gershom is one of the few good men in the world," she afterward acknowledged to me. And I've been wondering why one so young should be saturated with cynicism. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... hard cynicism conceals a deal of suffering. But the suffering is past; we have only to wait patiently ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... by the trying experiences we had been through. Perhaps that is why my answer savored so strongly of cynicism. ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... which it faced a problem belonging to intimate life and barring public discussion, yet closely connected with the economic conditions of society: the problem of sex. The curious revival of pagan eroticism in lyric poetry and the growing tendency toward a scientific cynicism in fiction were supplemented by attempts to handle sex from the standpoint of modern psychology and social ethics in drama. With works of that class has the name of Frank Wedekind become inseparably associated. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... received an impression of the essential manliness of his nature,—of his honesty, his proud, almost defiant candor, his ever-present, yet shrinking tenderness, and that sadness of the moral sentiment which the world persisted in regarding as cynicism. This impression deepened with my further acquaintance, and was never modified. Although he belonged to the sensitive, irritable genus, his only manifestations of impatience which I remember were when that which he had written with a sigh was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... money, and Tom is as jolly as anything, and everybody loves him, though he is a hopeless cripple, and can't even look decent, as you will be able to in a year or two. There is no use in having this sentiment about war heroes that would make one put up with their tempers, and their cynicism! Everybody is in the same boat, women and men, we chance being maimed by bombs, and we are losing our looks with rough work—for goodness sake ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn |
