"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leer. "That won't do," said he. "He's put you up to telling me that, and I'm going to Cornwall, Connecticut. I know what's good for me, ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... replied with a knowing leer, "Aint ye Dicky Falkner what used ter live cross the river from ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... Singer's learned and interesting paper on this word (No. 19. p. 292.), I hope I shall not be thought presumptuous in remarking that there must have been some other root in the Teutonic language for the two following nouns, leer (Dutch) and lear (Flemish), which both signify leather (lorum, Lat.), and their diminutives or derivatives leer-ig and lear-ig, both used in the sense ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... Working earnestly, thinking of nothing but the human life that hung in the balance, I failed to observe the presence of the most disagreeable of the female nurses, who was standing, with "arms akimbo," looking on, until, with an insulting leer, she remarked, "It seems to me ye're taking great liberties for an honest woman." Paralyzed with surprise and indignation, I knew not how to act. Just then the surgeon in charge of the ward, who had ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... full around and gave a leer which, if possible, made her face more hideous than ever. Without thinking Harvey caught her by the arm and shook ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... to look at it, my Lord," said the man, with a leer, half servile, half cunning. "There came two young gentlemen of fashion yesterday morning, and almost lost their wits at sight of it. Either would have bought it, but both had had ill luck at basset for a week and ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... cordial among the Southerners, while the intruder pressed hard upon Mr. Reybold. He was a singular object; tall, grim, half-comical, with a leer of low familiarity in his eyes, but his waxed mustache of military proportions, his patch of goatee just above the chin, his elaborately oiled hair and flaming necktie, set off his faded face with an odd gear of finery and impressiveness. His skin was that of an old roue's, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... hand and then at Mr Cripps's face. There was the same ugly leer about the latter, into which a spark of anger was infused as the boy still held back ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... enemy to Napoleon, a fanatic partisan of the Bourbons; he is one of our men. I looked, at him. At every fresh epithet of the Minister the Abbe bowed his head down to his plate with a smile of cheerfulness and self-complacency, and with a sort of leer. I never saw a more ignoble countenance. Fouche explained to me, on leaving the breakfast table, in what manner all these valets of literature were men of his, and while I acknowledged to myself that the system might be necessary, I scarcely knew who were really more despicable—the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Round his neck he wore an iron collar: its import, whether in the shape of punishment or decoration, is at this time doubtful. A visage of more than ordinary size projected from between a pair of shoulders that nearly overlooked the lower rim of his cap. A sort of dubious leer was its predominant expression, heightened ever and anon by a broad laugh, the eldritch shout of which first announced itself to the ear of the pilgrim. Matted and shaggy, the twisted locks hung wildly about his brow, whilst a short and frizzled ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... wondered whether Mr. Zitterel could have been referring to herself when he observed, "There's too much license in high places in this town, though, and the wages of sin is death—or anyway, bein' fired." The holy leer with which the priest said it ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... I'm no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute - and I do - But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can, Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! And I ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... until the individual stood revealed. He was a stoutly-built sea-faring man, dressed in a pea jacket and blue trousers and holding his tarpaulin hat in his hand. With a rough scrape and a most unpleasant leer he advanced towards the merchant, a tattoed and hairy hand outstretched ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... informed of your whereabouts at present," said Boris, shortly. "Because," he continued, with a villainous leer, "I am only cruel to be kind. I want to have all the details of our marriage settled as soon as possible. A night of waiting will soften your dear brother's heart, and he will probably listen ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... they parted, weak and wan: And he left the shore; His ship diminished, was low, was gone; And she heard in the waves as the daytide wore, And read in the leer of the sun that shone, That ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... old girls," said Quintal, with a leer. "Lay hold of the oars and we'll shove you through the first o' the surf. Lend a hand, McCoy. ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... whets his bill upon his own blue-ringed legs, steadied by claws in the fleece, yet not so fiercely inserted as to get entangled and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and turned a little first to one side and then to another, all the while a self-congratulatory leer in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then folds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubious how to begin to gratify his lust of blood; and frequently, when just on the brink of consummation, jumps off side, back, or throat, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... whose feet might not go free, Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things, Most terrible to see. Around, around, they waltzed and wound; Some wheeled in smirking pairs: With the mincing step of demirep Some sidled up the stairs: And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer, Each helped us at ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... of information, and with his leer an inch from my chin, I answered slowly and calmly that it certainly was. I might add that he spoke Spanish by preference (according to Mexique very bad Spanish); for The Fighting Sheeney had made his home for a number of years in Rio, and his opinion thereof may be loosely translated by the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... leer, ni tan siquiera[78-9] en castellano, que (p79) es lalengua mas clara del mundo; pero el diablo me lleve si esta escritura ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... Piraeus sped the seer, His honour'd host, a welcome inmate there. O'er the protracted feast the suitors sit, And aim to wound the prince with pointless wit: Cries one, with scornful leer and mimic voice, "Thy charity we praise, but not thy choice; Why such profusion of indulgence shown To this poor, timorous, toil-detesting drone? That others feeds on planetary schemes, And pays his host with hideous noon-day ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... he is obsessed by character; this is the key-note of his art. How finely he expresses envy, jealousy, hatred, covetousness, and the vampire that sometimes lurks in the soul of woman. An etching, Hypocrisy, with its faint leer on the lips of a woman, is a little masterpiece. His sick people are pitiful, that is, when they are not grotesque; the entire tragedy of blasted childhood is in his ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... "Mancebo virtuoso, i de grande Animo, i bien ensenado: i especialmente se havia exercitado mucho en cavalgar a Caballo, de ambas sillas, lo qual hacia con mucha gracia, i destreca, i tambien en escrevir, i leer, lo qual hacia mas liberalmente, i mejor de lo que requeria su Profesion. De este tenia cargo, como Aio, Juan de Herrada." Zarate, Conq. del Peru, lib. 4, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... Oulagon with a cunning leer, 'ere departing you must visit the caliph in my company, that you may relate to the King of the Franks how the King of Kings punishes men who are the enemies ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... large reception-room a mob was struggling at a window, beneath a blaze of electric light. A soldier was standing there like a statue, his face fixed with a leer of horror. In his hands was a rifle, with a blood-stained bayonet, dripping upon the hardwood floor at the edge of the rug. Upon the rug itself a stream of blood was spouting out of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... up between us. There's my fist on it. See you soon," and, with a lurching step and a leer over his shoulder, he ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... Botticelli. Now, Botticelli builded on Giorgione, while Burne-Jones builded on Botticelli. Aubrey Beardsley, dead at the age at which Keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where Burne-Jones placed faith and abiding trust. Aubrey Beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in Botticelli's "Spring," I need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes about the face of one ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... reasonable conversation; a most respectable room; an intelligent girl. Only Madame herself seeing Jacob out had about her that leer, that lewdness, that quake of the surface (visible in the eyes chiefly), which threatens to spill the whole bag of ordure, with difficulty held together, over the pavement. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... that he contributed no otherwise towards this display than by a few touches of chalk. Among the heads of distinguished personages, finding those of the King of Prussia and the Empress of Hungary, he changed the cast of their eyes, so as to make them leer significantly at each other. Note.—These (which in the catalogue are called an original portrait of the present Emperor of Prussia and ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its antagonist) were two old signs of the "Saracen's Head" and Queen Anne. Under the first ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sank upon the floor in assumed exhaustion, a Chinaman with a perfectly impassive face, and a Burman, whose pock-marked, evil countenance was set in an apparently habitual leer, came running into ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... With a leer Hunch entered and deposited a tray upon the table. Carl poured himself some whiskey and pushed the decanter toward his guest with a significant glance. Jokai of Vienna poured and drank with a shudder ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... tried to smile his appreciation, but the effort resulted in a leer so repulsive that the girl looked dismayed. "You ought to have ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... Wie leer sind deine Blaetter. Wie Achiles in dem Zelte. Wo zweie sich zanken Erfreut ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... going already with the pauper's crawl, his feet in their big boots scarcely lifted. Ursula watched him in his crawling, slinking progress down the room. He was one of her boys! When he got to the desk, he looked round, half furtively, with a sort of cunning grin and a pathetic leer at the big boys in Standard VII. Then, pitiable, pale, in his dejected garments, he lounged under the menace of the headmaster's desk, with one thin leg crooked at the knee and the foot struck out sideways his hands in the low-hanging pockets of his ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... safe with thy confessor. Diamine! I am not a man to gad about among the water-sellers, with a secret at the top of my voice; but thou didst leer aside when I winked at thee dancing among the masquers on the quay. Is ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Saturday's night-caps, my lads," said she, sitting down opposite to us. "Let us drink to sweethearts and wives, and lovers and friends; a bloody war, and plenty of prize-money!" And with a leer out of her evil eye, she gulped down half the contents of the ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... alone; the rector remained below in the library. She found her father well propped up with pillows, and his skull-cap, with the long white tassel, was drawn down over one eye, giving him a curious leer. The rakish angle of the cap, with the piercing eyes beneath, the hawk-like beak, and the shriveled old mouth, puckered into a sardonic smile, made him an almost comic figure. Trimmer stood at attention by the head of the bed like a sentinel. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... he chuckled with a drunken leer, "if you're not as crazy over the beggarly scribbler as my young gallant is over the Fenton girl who lives in the Old Bailey—at a coffee house, forsooth! Why, to see the pother you're in one would think the hussy ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... his friends, as well as to his creditors. Lord Guildford met him one day. 'Well, Sherry, so you've taken a new house, I hear.'—'Yes, and you'll see now that everything will go on like clockwork.'—'Ay,' said my lord, with a knowing leer, 'tick, tick.' Even his son Tom used to laugh at him for it. 'Tom, if you marry that girl, I'll cut you off with a shilling,'—'Then you must borrow it,' replied the ingenuous youth.[8] Tom sometimes disconcerted his ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... these are the sort we have in India," he answered with an unpleasant leer. "The English people are more fortunate, ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... 'as I was walking under a hedge (full of sorrow and guilt, God knows), suddenly this sentence rushed in upon me, "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." At this I made a stand in my spirit and began to conceive peace in my soul, and methought I saw as if the tempter did leer and steal away from me, as being ashamed of what he had done. At the same time also I had my sin and the blood of Christ thus represented to me: that my sin, when compared to the blood of Christ, was no more to it than this little clod or stone is to the vast and wide field that here I ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... Gunn, with a leer toward the door. "Why, you don't think I'm afraid, Captain? You should ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... forward, and there was a leer on his bearded face seen by the dull swinging oil-lamp, as, half covering his mouth, he ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... It at first exhibited itself in restlessness, and an inability to remain quiet, and afterwards in half-suppressed groans and sighs. If he opened his eyes and looked at the reader, he saw a devilish figure, with a malignant leer glaring at him; if he shut them to exclude the disagreeable image it was converted into a thousand smaller figures, dancing up and down like motes in a distempered vision, all wearing that intolerable grin, while the whole time a hissing sound, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... interrupted the other, "you will permit me to have my own ideas on that subject. They probably differ from yours at the present moment," he added with a leer, "but time will show which of ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... scurrile, scurrilous; abusive; foul- spoken, foul-tongued, foul-mouthed; slanderous; calumnious, calumniatory^; sarcastic, sardonic; sarcastic, satirical, cynical. critical &c 932. Phr. damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer; and without sneering, teach the rest to sneer [Pope]; another lie nailed to the counter; cut men's throats with whisperings [B. Jonson]; foul whisperings are abroad [Macbeth]; soft-buzzing slander [Thomson]; virtue itself 'scapes not ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... with faint praise, assent with evil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer. Pope, Prologue to the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... reason; and this request was reinforced by lady Bullford, who did not fail to read the baronet a lecture upon his indiscretion, which lecture he received with submission on one side of his face, and a leer upon the other. ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... in the paper," said Mr. Russell, with a diabolical leer in the direction of the unfortunate Mr. Vickers. "The paper what your father found in your box. Didn't ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... words were needed to convince him of the gravity of the case. I had never loathed the man more than I did at that instant when, with a cigar stuffed in his fat face, he came out of the card-room, dressed in his white waistcoat and pearl studs, and with a half-drunken leer asked what I wanted. ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... bold-looking, and handsome; but when she came nearer, the moist pallor of her skin, the slackness of her lower lip and jaw, and an eager and worn expression in her fine eyes, gave her a thirsty, reckless leer that filled Marian with loathing. Her aspect conveyed the same painful suggestion as her voice had done before, but more definitely; for it struck Marian, with a shock, that Conolly, in the grotesque metamorphosis of a nightmare, might appear in some such likeness. The ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... wat er is. Mijn hoop is Christus en zyn bloed. Door deze leer ik en hoop door die het eenwig goed. Ons leven is maar eenen dag, vol ziekten en vol naar geklag. Vol rampen dampen (!) en vendriet. Een schim Eien droom ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... a dream so odd and funny, I cannot resist recording it here.— Methought that the Genius of Matrimony Before me stood with a joyous leer, Leading a husband in each hand, And both for me, which lookt rather queer;— One I could perfectly understand, But why there were two wasn't quite so clear. T'was meant however, I soon could see, To afford me a choice—a most excellent ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... eyes did not see the printed page. Suddenly she threw the book down on the table. It was impossible to read; Sam's talk had disturbed her to the point of sharp discomfort. What did old Mr. Wright mean by "knowing cakes and ale"? And his leer yesterday had been an offence! Why had he looked at her like that? Did he—? Was it possible—! She wished she had spoken to Lloyd about it. But no; it couldn't be; it was only his queer way; he was half crazy, she believed. And it would do no good to speak to Lloyd. The one thing she must not ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... From cloud to cloud along her beat, Leering her battered and inveterate leer, She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, Her horrible old man, Mumbling old oaths and warming His villainous old bones with villainous talk— The secrets of their grisly housekeeping Since they went out upon the pad In the first twilight of self-conscious Time: ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... the face of the drowned man, upon whose eyelids she was placing penny-pieces, to keep them from opening; and her one eye was fixed on her work, its sightless companion showing white in its socket, with an ugly leer. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... their eyes upon Victoria, and ogled her with an impudent leer. Victoria sat erect and immovable, and even her eye- lashes did not move; she apparently did not see the glances fixed upon her; nor even heard what Bonnier had said about her, for her countenance remained calm and ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... they don't understand Thoorko better nor the English understand Scotch, it's little speed I'll come wi' them," said Dan with a leer. "Howsomediver, I'll give 'em a trial. I say, Mr Red-beard, hubba doorum bobble moti squorum howko joski tearum thaddi whak? Come, now, avic, let's hear what ye've got to say to that. An' mind what ye spake, 'cause we ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... distracted mein The object of their strife is seen; His eyes with wild confusion roll, Mixt passions, with alternate sway, In his ambiguous features play, And speak as yet the undetermined soul; But that half-assenting leer, Obliquely on the little wheedler thrown, Portends, though checkt with aukward fear, That soon the apostate will be all her ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... of set purpose, had crept up behind us so softly that we should not suspect his approach, or else so engrossed were we that our ears had been deafened for the time. He stood there now in his untidy gown of black, and there was a leer of mockery on his long, white face. Slowly he put a lean arm between us, and took the sheet in his ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... slender, imperious judge in the council-chamber with a defiant leer on his face. If he went down into the depths he would drag with him the fairest treasure he had coveted in all his ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of a red fox," said Lincoln Lang long after, "for, besides having a marked carroty complexion, there was a cunning leer in his face which seemed, as it were, to show indistinctly through the transparency of the manufactured grin with which he sought to cover it. When he got mad over something or other and swept the grin aside, I do not think that an uglier countenance ever existed ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... find me employing, again solely for decorative purposes, the prints of Japan, the landscapes of the modern impressionists, the rugs of the East, or the blankets of the Arizona desert. Free me, then, from the reproach implied in that covert leer at my Early Sienese." Yes, we must, I think, exclude from the ranks of the true zealots all who in any plausible fashion utilise the objects of art they buy. Excess, the craving to possess what he apparently does not need, is the mark of your true collector. Now these visionaries—at ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... of it, lad, in London," quoth he, a leer upon his sallow face—"the story of how a fire-eater named Galliard befriended you, trussed a parson and a trooper, and dragged you out of jail a short ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... hero of late. His name is Gerald Van Alstyne, and he is tall, with curly golden hair, piercing blue eyes and a cleft chin; in short, a veritable Adonis and different, so different, from the traveling salesmen who leer at her across the counter and the loutish youths of San Pasqual who, despairing of her favor, call her by her first name because they know it annoys her. Donna has not the slightest doubt but that this young fellow will come rushing in to the eating-house some day, discover ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... beautiful thing, or the ugliness of an ugly one; but it takes a clever beast like Crawley to show you beauty in anything so absolutely repulsive as that woman's face. Look at it! He's got hold of something. He's caught the lurking fascination, the—the leer of life." ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... He's goin' to be a rancher. Yes, don't y' see?" he asked, with a pitiful attempt at a knowing leer. ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... 11 a.m. (six), "Leer ons alzoo onze dagen tellen" ("So teach us to number our days"); afternoon, 4 p.m. (six), "En de dooden werden geoordeeld uit hetgeen in de boeken geschreven was, naar hunne werken" ("And the dead were judged out of those things ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... lukontrakto. Leash ligilo. Least malplej. Least, at almenaux. Leather ledo. Leave lasi. Leave (bequeath) testamenti. Leave (depart) deiri. Leave off cxesi. Leaven fermentilo. Leavings (food) mangxrestajxo. Lecture parolado. Leech hirudo. Leer flanken rigardi. Lees fecxo. Left, on the maldekstre. Leg (limb) kruro. Leg (of a fowl, etc.) femuro. Leg of mutton sxaffemuro. Legacy heredajxo. Legal legxa. Legation (place) senditejo. Legation senditaro. Legend ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... with a shrewd leer of recognition, and smoking an imaginary pipe, with his head very much on one side and his eyes very much out ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... careful aim, his hands trembling one moment, but firm the next, as the kangaroo, bending downward with the side of its head to him and nearly on a level with the water, which rose in violent ebullitions consequent upon Shanter's struggles, seemed to have a peculiar triumphant leer in its eyes, as if it were saying: "Wait a bit; it ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... for my place, but how about my principles, my conscience?" said Europe, cocking her crafty little nose and giving the Baron a serio-comic leer. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... him; "they are plotting mischief; their looks and tones are full of ugliness; and I am convinced that if they intend no trouble to-night, they know that some hidden danger threatens us. See how that chief's eye glares. Observe the murderous leer of the one beside him. Notice how they mock and insult us to our very faces. Now, how awfully jubilant their tones, as if they had us at their mercy. Do you suppose they are secretly armed?" and, rising, he went calmly ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a led ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... but stand by and see Josiah fussing and accompanying her to the stairs and on to her room. She hardly said the word good-night to him, and her very lips were white. Wensleydown's face, as he stood with Mildred, drove him mad with its mocking leer, and if he had heard their conversation there ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... lurking cynicism there is in some of his interiors! Voila l'animale! he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayaderes and ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... was the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or perhaps a present from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... hesitation. But after I had crossed I continued to hate that gap. I hated it as I drove back to the hotel, that afternoon, as I ate dinner that night, as I went to bed, and in my dreams I continued to cross it, and to see the river waiting for me, seeming to look up and leer and beckon. I woke up hating the gap in the bridge as much as ever; I hated it down into the State of Mississippi, and over into Georgia; and wherever I have gone since, I have continued to hate it. Of course there isn't any gap there now. It ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... more delicate sisters. George hates the fierce foes that Jack the Giant-Killer meets, and dreams of the time when he can overpower and slay his own ogres. Alice listens tremblingly, and when she goes to her little bed at night lies in fear and trembling, while hideous faces leer at her from out the shadowed recesses. George never wearies of our oldest poem, Beowulf, while Alice wants only Cinderella, or at most Bluebeard. It is nothing less than cruelty to fill the imaginations of sensitive children with deeds of violence and tales of sadness and woe. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth. It was a good speculation—a very safe one. The old man stowed his pocket-book carefully in the breast of his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of triumph. That will had made him ten years younger at the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... one, resolved to reign alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, View him with jealous yet with scornful eyes, Hate him for arts that caused himself to rise, Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Alike unused to blame or to commend, A timorous foe and a suspicious friend, Fearing e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne'er obliged; Willing to wound, and yet ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the operative, with a knowing leer. "Anything from planting divorce evidence to shoving the queer. I've been working for a pal of Pad's in St. Louis for three or four years—that's why I'm strange around here. Pad's up in the air about something, and wants this Charley-boy right away, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... Gunch delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of the women, "Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks aren't looking? Got something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful important to ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... away and obeyed the order, passing the American skipper, who was leaning on the bulwark looking sick, and as the sailor came up he turned to him with an ugly leer. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... with light and loud with the raucity of phonographs and the stamping of feet. Everything was "wide open," and there was not even the thinnest veneer of respectability. Drinking and gambling and dancing go on all night long. Drunken men reel out upon the snow; painted faces leer over muslin curtains as one passes by. Without any government, without any pretence of municipal organisation, there is no co-operation for public enterprise. There are no streets, there are no sidewalks save such as a man may choose to lay in front ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... fell back a step, and scowled at Stonor as if he suspected him of a desire to make fun of him. Then his eyes went involuntarily to Hooliam. Stonor, following his glance, was struck by the odd, self-conscious leer on Hooliam's comely face. Suddenly it flashed on him that this was his man. His face went blank with astonishment. The supposed Hooliam ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... appearance on deck without making use of some execration or another. It was Mr Berecroft's custom to call down the seamen into his cabin every evening, and read to them a short prayer; and, although this unusual ceremony often caused a leer in some of the newly-entered men, and was not only unattended but ridiculed by Jackson, still the whole conduct of Berecroft was so completely in unison, that even the most idle and thoughtless acknowledged that he was a good man, and quitted the ship with regret. Such was Mr Berecroft; and ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... know that any will wish to interrupt you," returned the soldier, with a waggish leer of his eye; "but, should they be so disposed, I have no power to stop them, if they be of the prisoner's friends. I have my orders, and must mind them, whether the Englishman ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the world like a pepper-box afore he's gone half a mile. Those be yours in the far stalls, and since they were turned round I've won a bob of a gemman who I bet I'd show him two 'osses with their heads vere their tails should be.[11] I always says," added he with a leer, "that you rides the best 'osses of any gemman vot comes to our governor's." This flattered Jorrocks, and sidling up, he slipped a shilling into his hand, saying, "Well—bring them out, and let's see how they look this morning." The stall reins are slipped, and out they ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... a skeleton, that I rushed from the car, with the intention, I believe, of seeking stones to stone it: but no stones were there: and I had to stand impotently enduring that rape of my eyes, its victoriously-dogged iteration, its taunting leer, its Drink Roboral—D, R, I, N, K R, O, B, O, R, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... will the United States consent to go without its share of the swag. It is delicious. The biggest and proudest government on earth turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and robbing the infant all alone by itself! Dear sir, this is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thirty, who, turning in his seat so that nearly the whole house was in his circle of vision, stroked his golden moustache, and ran his eyes over the thousands of faces with a smile of pride and satisfaction which in a less handsome man would have been almost a leer. His name was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to do so quite independently of him. But Peace would listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the picture. At times he had threatened her with a revolver. On one occasion ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... owner there"—he laughed at his own astuteness in not being taken in—"you know the monikers, don't you? South Kentwood, 'Stinktown'; North Kentwood, 'Swilltown'?" He grinned, pulled at his hip pocket and, extracting a flat glass flask, took a prolonged swig and replaced the bottle with a leer. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... of us on fire: I have known it myself, and I own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of Countess Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness. He has just the same benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are to make a choice, the beggar's breech for decency, I say: I like it vastly in preference to a Nymney, who leads you up to the curtain and agitates it, and bids you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... face that had been Gaddon turned to Trent. There was a twisted leer to it, and Fred sensed that there was a struggle going on ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... clansmen with muttered groans, sobs, and curses falling back as he advanced. He still wore his full Captain's uniform, its heavy epaulets flashing their gold in the unearthly light, his beastly jaws half covering the gold braid on the collar. His thick lips were drawn upward in an ugly leer and his sinister bead eyes gleamed like a gorilla's. A single fierce leap and the black claws clutched the air slowly as if sinking ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... everybody and everything, especially the eider-down quilt, which rises in slow billows in front of my eyes and threatens to engulf me. When in a paroxysm of fury I suddenly cast it on the floor, it lies there still billowing, and seems to leer at me. There is something fat and sinister and German about that eiderdown. I never noticed it before. Two Hundred ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... looked up at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with a ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... much to blot out all that had gone before. And yet sometimes the memory of that past unhappiness, of its disagreements and quarrels and petty unkindnesses would raise its ugly head and look at her with a sort of leer as if daring her to ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... see—let me see:—Before George, I have it, and it comes as pat too! Go me to the very judge that sate upon him; it is an amorous, impotent old magistrate, and keeps admirably. I saw him leer upon you from the bench: He will tell you what is sweeter than strawberries ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... of the men, with an ugly leer, "we didn't hardly expec' ter run inter such luck ez this. Foun' suthin' vallerable, hev yer? Reckin' it must hev bin dropped by that auto that jes' went round the corner beyond. We'll hev ter trouble ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... on the shoulder. It was one of the men who had boarded the ship. An evil leer passed over Thurman's ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... he sat aloft on his boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion. Some coarse town humorist would leer upon him from the doorway—a leer of furtive, devilish cunning—and whisper hoarsely, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... is better not to have thought at all, than to have thought such things as must go through a girl's mind whose life is passed in jilting and being jilted; whose eyes, as soon as they are opened, are turned to the main chance, and are taught to leer at earl, to languish at a marquis, and to grow blind before a commoner. I don't know much about fashionable life. Heaven help us (you young Brummell! I see the reproach in your face!) Why, sir, it absolutely appears to me as if this ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the woodland way Strange creatures leer at me with uncouth love, And from the grass reach upward to my breast, And to my mouth lean ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer. 1369 POPE: Prologue to the Satires, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... bass drum with the white of one clown. Then mix with a prologue and roll very thin. Fill with a circus just coming to town. One leer, one scowl and one tragical grin. Bake in a sob of Carusian size. Result: the most ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... lantern, I seemed to see the face of this embodied curse with an ever-changing mockery of expression; at one moment wearing the features of my father; at another those of Tom Wynne; at another the leer of the old woman I ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... there is that in the expression of his countenance from which none can fail to draw an unfavourable opinion of his real character. The haggard, care-worn face, browned to the darkest tropical tints; the ceaseless leer of that small, piercing eye, anxiety and agitation pervading the tout ensemble of the man, will not be dissembled. Nay; those acute promontories of the face, narrow and sharp, and that low, reclining forehead, and head covered with bristly ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... work on it at night, my dear Prince," put in Doola, with a leer. "The clattering of the shields ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... a parson"; housekeepers in search of stolen goods; the "widow who bounced" from one end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a description in ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... will have it in for you,—if they ever get their hands on you," said Sid Jeffers, with a wicked leer. ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... married, eh?" said Mr. Wurley, with another leer and oath. "You're right; that's a deal safer kind of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... sayth she, with an unpleasant leer, "that hath given that at first. In time he gets his hand in; and I've had a plenty o' practice—thanks ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... with rage, and he clenched his hand with an oath, but hearing some of the boarders coming in to breakfast in the next room, he only hissed, with a terrible leer: ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... Leer, where on the platform a drunken German soldier lurched against us, and, seeing us tied together, offered to lend us his knife to cut the cord, but the guard quickly frustrated ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each other and jest ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber |
