"Cynically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... turned over to the wall and wept salt Freshman tears, and the awe-struck boy gently closed the door. And Cupid, with his wings folded over his little arms, sat upon the bureau and laughed long and cynically. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... you mean, but a few extras don't make much difference when one is so liberally supplied already," he said cynically. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... was feeling hurt and bewildered. He could not understand her mood. He had come up expecting to be soothed and comforted and she was like a petulant iceberg. Cynically, he recalled some lines of poetry which he had had to write out a hundred times on one occasion at school as a punishment for having introduced a white mouse ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and scorner of shams which describes the poet very humanly as "one of the finest-looking men in the world, with a great shock of rough, dusky, dark hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive, aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous. I do not meet in these late decades ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... struck the broader path to the house, the cackling laugh of a goat chained to a roadside log followed her cynically. Where had she heard this bleat before? Ah, yes, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... down on that kind of love seven years ago," he thought, cynically. But he didn't say so; no matter what his thoughts were, he was always kind to Eleanor. Lily, over in Medfield; Lily, in the small, secret house; Lily, with the good-looking little boy—blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, blond-haired!—the squalid memory of Lily, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... splendid standing army, the best-drilled and most powerful in Europe. With this he promptly overran Silesia, a borderland composed of many little duchies and accounted one of the most valuable provinces of the Austrian crown. Frederick openly and cynically announced the maxim which seems in secret to have guided many monarchs, that personal honesty had no part in the business of being a king. His rash and conscienceless seizure of Silesia was successful, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... failed to hold him herself," said Alan cynically. "Stop, Tony. I want to say something to you before we go in. I am not a proper person. I told you that myself. There have been other women in my life—a good many of them. I told you that, too. But that has absolutely nothing to do with you and ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... somehow have been brought together. The menaces of death had brought them together. Mrs. Lob was laid out in the bedroom which he had once entered. Mrs. Lob had been dying while he dined richly with Miss Wheeler and Laurencine, and while he talked cynically with Everard Lucas. And while he had been resenting Marguerite's neglect Marguerite was watching by the dying bed. Oh! The despicable superficialities of restaurants and clubs! He was ashamed. The mere receding shadow of ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... morality (as stated by their writer, Thomas Mann), and that the right of German might is above everything. Then, in the second place, when they discovered that in the world outside them there was something known as a "moral conscience," not understood by them, but still to be reckoned with, they cynically denied the charges. Finally, when they were driven from this second trench, when simple negation became impossible, they had perforce ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... Shoreham. The cafe looked cheerful, as it always does. We ordered an extensive supper. It was good. There were pretty women in the room, but we looked at them with the austere eyes of disillusioned men, and talked cynically of life. I cannot recall any of the things we said, though I remember thinking at the time that both of us were being rather brilliant, in an icy way. I suppose it was mainly about women. That was to be expected. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... your honor," sneered Pine cynically. "It is a selfish quality in this case, which can only be gratified by preserving silence. If Agnes knew that I was a true Romany tramp, she might run away with Lambert, and as you want him to be your husband, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... on earth should I go back the moment I've got home? Oh, I see!" He smiled cynically. "You mean town won't be very pleasant for a bit? Well, I daresay it won't, but thank God no one will dare to say much to me!" His jaw squared itself rather aggressively. "But I don't intend to quit. On the contrary, my firm intention ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... She could not bear it. She had made Osborn burst into a big, harsh laugh one day when she had hinted to him that there were occult things to be done which might prevent ill luck. He had laughed first and scowled afterwards, cynically saying that she might as ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... warmest friendship prevented jealousy between men," Stephen Strong said, a little cynically—he had suffered a good deal in ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... to the fireplace and poked the fire into a blaze. Then, throwing my hat on the table and lighting a cigarette, I regarded Julian cynically. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... The word died with a prolonged echo at the end of the hall, the faces regarding him, hopefully, cynically, wearily, were alike arrested, engrossed. Six hundred eyes were turned slightly upward. With an even graceless flow that reminded Anthony of the rolling of bowling balls he launched himself ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... man ought, who makes his dependance on gleams of sunshine," said Mr. Thorn rather cynically. "I cannot say I was thinking of brightness ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... quoted Adam, cynically. "I wonder what they will call us, Robin, and who will lecture on my mistakes in seven or eight thousand years, and show how it never could have happened. Do you suppose there is any one else on earth? Did the Atlantis people leave any ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... straightforward with people like his father and himself and that girl Maggie alone somewhere with nothing to interfere? Life was never just as you wanted it, always a little askew, a little twisted, cynically cocking its eye at you before it vanished round the corner? He didn't seem to be able to manage it. Anyway, he wasn't going to have that fellow Thurston ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... edifice of his faith was in ruins. If Certina itself, if the tutelary genius of the House of Surtaine, were indeed but a monstrous quackery cynically accepted as such by those in the secret, what shred of defense remained to him who had so prospered by it? Through the wreckage of his pride, his loyalty, his affection, Hal saw, in place of the glowing and benign face of Dr. Surtaine, the simulacrum of Fraud, sleek and crafty, bloated fat ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to congratulate the Hon. W.M. TWEED upon his inestimable boon to the public—the Free Baths. With regard to a certain class—and a very large class—of the public of New York City, it has sometimes been cynically asked, "Will it wash?" Since the establishment of Free Baths under the Department of Public Works, that question has been satisfactorily replied to in the affirmative. Hardworked mechanics at once recognized the chance for a wash, and went at it with a rush. It was Coney Island come ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... a devil of a laugh, mostly made of chuckles that seem to bubble off a Bell-brew of disillusionment, and you get the impression that he is laughing at himself—cynically laying bare the vanity and fallibility of his own mental processes—and ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... delegates, and that the thousands of workers who will watch its work, should understand why the resolutions arrived at by the Paris, Brussels, and Zurich International Congresses with regard to the Anarchists should be enforced. The Anarchists who cynically declare Workers' Congresses "absurd, motiveless, and senseless" must be taught once and for all, that they cannot be allowed to make the Congresses of the Revolutionary Socialists of the whole world a playground for reaction ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... performance of what no doubt seemed to him sacred duties, Caius at once set to work to build up his new constitution. It is commonly represented that in order to gain over the people to his side he cynically bribed them by his Lex Frumentaria. Now if this were true, and Caius were as clear-sighted as the same writers who insist on the badness of the law describe him to have been, it is hard to see how they can in the same breath eulogise his ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... not stop," he said, and Creede laughed silently as he reined Bat Wings into the trail. But just as they started to go one of the men by the scales hailed them, motioning with his hand and, still laughing cynically, the foreman of the Dos S turned ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... for six people), on "most-bolajie" (bread made with sweet new wine instead of with water), and other local delicacies, including "mabos," or alternate slices of dry salted peaches and dry sweetened apricots. This condiment is cynically known as married life. In the voorhuis of Boschendaal lay nineteen fine leopard skins, and Mr. Louw, the courtly mannered old farmer, who would be described by his countrymen as an "oprechter Burger," explained to me in slow and laborious English that he had killed ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... reduce it. To those of us who for many years regarded the tariff as the dividing line between the parties, his stand was most disappointing. And when the head of one of the chief Trusts in America cynically blurted out, "The Tariff is the mother of Trusts," we hoped that Roosevelt, who had then begun his stupendous battle with the Trusts, would deal them a staggering blow by shattering the tariff. But, greatly to our chagrin, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... kill me, James, to make you king," the late king is said to have cynically remarked to his brother; and, indeed, the accession of the Duke of York was accepted by the nation in general, as well as by the City of London in particular, with considerable foreboding. The new king for a short while was content to ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... that Claire could do to keep from exclaiming aloud, as it burst upon her astonished senses that this poor, huddled creature was none other than the grande dame of the railway carriage, the haughtily indifferent, cynically amused personage who had seemed so supremely superior to the agitations of the common ruck! Strange what changes a few hours' conflict with the forces of Nature could ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... later, there is no entry in Burchard's diary relating to the prince, nor anything that can in any way help the inquirer to a conclusion; whilst, on the subject of the strangling, not another word does the Master of Ceremonies add to what has above been quoted. That he should so coldly—almost cynically—state that Alfonso was strangled, without so much as suggesting by whom, is singular in one who, however grimly laconic, is seldom reticent—notwithstanding that he may have been so accounted by those who despaired of finding ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... most of her admirers would have held that she was more reserved with the Dictator than with others of her friends. Soame Rivers saw that there was a difference in her bearing towards the Dictator and towards the courtiers of her little court, and he smiled cynically and pretended ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... going to telephone every little while. Then she will be sure to keep on the job," cynically ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... said, cynically, that Christian Scien- tists set themselves on pedestals, as so many petty deities; but there is no fairness or propriety ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... victors belong the spoils,' I am sorry to say has been pretty extensively reduced to practice on my side of the Atlantic; but it was first formulated, not by Jackson, but by Danton. Louis Blanc tells us that this brutal Boanerges of the Jacobins startled even his allies one day, by cynically declaring that 'the revolution was a battle, and, like all battles, ought to end by the division of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... apostrophised the missing Brian Luttrell. "One would think that she was glad of what I told her." He was thoroughly put out by this reflection, and munched his breakfast in sulky silence, listening cynically to his step-mother's idle utterances and Kitty's vivacious replies. He was conscious of some disinclination to meet Elizabeth's tranquil glance, of which he bitterly resented the tranquillity. And she scarcely spoke, except ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... are out of the wood, Dandy Mrs. Kit has jilted two men, and may a third, so you'd better not brag of your wisdom too soon, for she may make a fool of you yet," said Charlie, cynically, his views of life being very ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... and the pilot was unrecognisable; a bullet had entered the base of his skull from behind. But the observer was not much damaged outwardly. He lay—arms outstretched—looking up at the sky, on the ground that the farmer had just ploughed. He seemed to smile cynically at the hoarse cheering now spreading from field to field, from camp to camp. Perhaps even then he had realised the futility of it all ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... motive, becoming intermixed with baser and coarser ingredients, often clogs, obstructs, jars, and deranges the free and noble action of social life. But he is neither grateful nor wise, who looks cynically on all this, and loses the fine sense of social good in its perversions. That I can be a friend, that I can have a friend, though it were but one in the world; that fact, that wondrous good fortune, we may set against all the sufferings of our social nature. That there is such a place on ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... mountain, and not a soul comes near us. I spend as much time as I can with her, however, during the day, and make up for it by working at night after she has gone to sleep; and when I question her, she only laughs, and answers that she loves to have me all to herself. (Here you will smile cynically, I know, and say, 'Humph, I wonder will she say the same when they have been married six years instead of six months.') At the rate I am working now I shall have finished my first volume by the spring, and then, ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... called not unjustly, "a cynically candid document." The "unity of the Party," and "pledges to constituents" are the only considerations alluded to in favour of the recall of a man to whose worth almost the whole of South Africa had witnessed, in spite of divided opinions concerning the Zulu War, for which he was only ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... grinned cynically, and we meanwhile mounted to our seats, Hawkesbury and Whipcord being in front, and I, much to my disgust, being placed beside Masham on ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... talk or in writing. 'Is there—can there be—such a thing as a natural born lady?' that's your question, hey?" The Collector peeled his walnut and smiled to himself. In other company—Batty Langton's, for example—he would have answered cynically that to him the phenomenon of a natural born lady would first of all suggest a doubt of her mother's virtue. "Well, no," he answered after a while; "if you met such a person, and could trace back her family history, ten to one you'd discover good blood somewhere ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... pen between his teeth, raised himself slowly on his legs, and shading his eyes with his hand from the severe perspective of six feet, gazed admiringly down upon his work. Rupert, with his hands in his pockets and his back to the window, cynically assisted at ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... of acquaintance which they had formed during dinner, rendered him unwilling to be directly uncivil towards a person of gentleman-like manners, he had also to consider that he might very possibly be mistaken in this man's character and purpose; in which case, the cynically refusing the society of a sound Protestant, would afford as pregnant matter of suspicion, as travelling in company with a ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Thus cynically writes Schmidt of the woman who for a score of years occupied Haydn's affections. And all of the biographers are inclined to heap upon her more or less contempt; but as you shall see a little later, the genial master himself was not above reproach, and Loisa's anxiety was not unfounded, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... children of this world would have weighed many things one against the other. They would have taken into account sentimentally, morally, pharisaically, or cynically, according to their various attitudes towards life, the relations between Emmy and Mordaunt Prince which had led to this tragic situation. But for Septimus her sin scarcely existed. When a man is touched by an angel's feather he takes an angel's ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... said Helene cynically, "she will warn you to beware. She will hunt up all my offences against ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... grinning cynically, "and all in five-thousand-dollar sacks! Did it ever occur to you that it will take some time to carry the gold down to the drain's mouth? It's close by three-quarters of a ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... morning, there sure enough are the blue hills, only now they have changed places with him, and smile across to him, distant as ever, from the old home whence he has come. Such a story might have been very cynically treated; but it is not so done, the whole tone is kindly and consolatory, and the disenchanted man submissively takes the lesson, and understands that things far away are to be loved for their own sake, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so they will be making us rich—whenever the time comes to manufacture," the young man said cynically. ...
— Toy Shop • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... paying compliments, Miss Mortimer," he said cynically. "Twelve years in prison have rusted ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... of the picture, the side which friendly Chinese are painting for us. Yet when you glance at the eleven Legations, placidly living their own little lives, you will see them cynically listening to these old women's tales, while at heart they secretly wonder what political capital each of them can separately make out of the whole business, so that their governments may know that Peking has clever diplomats. Clever ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... much mirth, over these concessions at the Lord Mayor's banquet, joking somewhat cynically at his own policy in disposing of territories over which he had no rights. One country, amongst others, given to France, has provided my good English friends with an ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... disappointed," quoth Francesca cynically. "Poets see everything by the light that never was on sea or land; still I won't deny that they help the blind, and I should rather like to know if there are still any Nora Creinas and Sweet Peggies and ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... massacre are the remedies he would apply to Irish discontent. He would be a fine text—which might be enforced by modern examples—for a discourse on the evil effects of immersion in the government of a subject race upon men of letters. No man of action can be so consistently and cynically an advocate of brutalism as your man of letters, Spenser, of course, had his excuses; the problem of Ireland was new and it was something remote and difficult; in all but the mere distance for travel, Dublin was as far from London as Bombay is to-day. But to him and ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... you that," said Chip, cynically. "There's just two bunches to choose from. There's the Sweet Young Things, that faint away at sight of a six-shooter, and squawk and catch at your arm if they see a garter snake, and blush if you happen to catch their eye suddenly, ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... Farrow. She had a way of being right about worldly matters—the triumph of experience over hope, as she had once observed cynically. But this time he ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... was approached with respectful petitions praying for redress of the most glaring causes of discontent; but those were invariably either disdainfully rejected or ignored, or, if some matter was relieved, other more exasperating enactments were defiantly substituted. They were cynically told that they had come to their (the Boer's) country unasked, and were at liberty, and in fact invited, to leave it if the laws did not please them. This was said, well knowing that to leave would involve too great sacrifices of homes and investments. The Uitlanders could ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... he murmured cynically; 'I won't say it is your fault: it is my ill-luck, I suppose. I had no real right to question you—everybody would say it was presuming. But when we have misunderstood, we feel injured by the subject of our misunderstanding. You never said you had had nobody else here making love ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... time France was once more all in flames: the English and Burgundians had entered and then abandoned Paris—Duke Philip cynically leaving that city, which he had promised to give up to Charles, to its own protection, in order to look after his more pressing personal concerns: while Bedford spread fire and flame about the adjacent country, retaking with much slaughter many of the towns which had opened their gates ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... lines on a poor industrious man like you!" said the new-comer cynically. "You're not smart enough to ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... it was promised for a typewriter? Harlan had parted with his managing editor on terms of great dignity, announcing that he had forsworn journalism and would hereafter devote himself to literature. The editor had remarked, somewhat cynically, that it was a better day for journalism than for literature, the fine, inner meaning of the retort not having been fully evident to Harlan until he was some three ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... snatched from his client had procured for him the most adroit of counsel, the most exhaustive of trials. He knew that nothing had been left undone to enable him to evade the consequences of his crime, and he was cynically content. ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... ugliness of rudimentary animals, or of abortions, of everything hurried untimely into existence: machines, sheds, bridges, trams, motor-cars: not one line corrected, not one angle smoothed, for the sake of the eye, of the nerves of the spectator. And all of it, both decorative futility and cynically hideous practicality (let alone the various exotic raree shows from distant countries or more distant centuries) expect to be enjoyed after a jostle at the doors and a scurry along the crowded corridors, and to the accompaniment of every rattling and shrieking and jarring sound. For mankind in ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... see and hear nothing. Had they been newly imported from the moon they could scarcely have less acquaintance with terrestrial conditions; but afterwards, when ruthlessly, with the grinning assistance of the onlookers, the facts of the social scheme were cynically revealed, and the role imperiously allotted—with much admonition and moving appeals to conscience and religion, and all the other aides-de-camp at command—after all that, how in the name of heaven could they continue to "babble of green fields"? Was it conceivable that among the thousands ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Frenchman insisted on lending her his, tucking it round her knees and under her feet. Then she was comfortable, and even more grateful to him than he had been to her for translating him to the porter. He was dark and thin, cynically intelligent looking, of a type new to Mary; and she thanked him for being disappointed that she could not stop in Paris. He inquired if, by chance, she were going to Monte Carlo. When she said no, she was passing on much farther, he was again disappointed, because, being an artist, he often ran down ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... accompanied her to choir meeting, and when they had a dance out in the country, she invariably went with Fred. "Well, I don't know what Fred Badger has got over Steve Mullane, or Jack Winters, or even Joel Jackman," said another voice, rather cynically, as though the speaker did not wholly subscribe to Mollie's view that Fred stood out as a shining mark above the rest of the ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... Fate or the Order of the day contrived that Miss Cursiter should always be there to witness her confusion. Nothing escaped Miss Cursiter; if her face grew tender for the young girls and the eight-year-olds, at the sight of Miss Quincey it stiffened into tolerance, cynically braced to bear. Miss Cursiter had an eye for magnificence of effect, and the unseemly impact of Miss Quincey was apt to throw the lines into disorder, demoralising the younger units and ruining the spectacle as a whole. To-day ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... confiscation we owe the presence in English history of the great Oliver; for Oliver, as will be presently seen, and all his tribe were fed upon no other food than the possessions of the Church. Cromwell, in his business of suppressing the great houses, embezzled quite cynically—if we can fairly call that "embezzlement" which was probably countenanced by the King, to whom account was due. Indeed, it is plainly evident from the whole story of that vast economic catastrophe which so completely separates the England we know from the England of a thousand years—the England ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... terrible results at all hazards. So when the gaoler came with my breakfast he found me in high spirits—assumed for the occasion I may say. When he pushed in the basin of skilly I picked it up and set it beside the others. Pointing to the row of untouched food I turned to him cynically and remarked, "Don't you think you're making too ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... continues Grumkow, "the Queen's Husband said, aside, to Nosti's Friend, 'I see he is glancing at Reichenbach; but he won't make much of that (cynically speaking, ne fera que de leau claire).' Hotham is by no means a man of brilliant mind, and his manners are rough: but Ginkel," the Dutchman, "is cleverer (PLUS SOUPLE), and much better liked by ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... way, then," said Mick, cynically; "it's nothin' to me if you've a mind to thry a taste ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... the House of Lords, proclaiming a redistribution of property, and declaring England a republic. "You would never have burned your capital," he said to O'Meara at St. Helena; "you are too rich and fond of money." The London mob, he believed, would have joined him, for, as he cynically argued, "the canaille of ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... the real exceptions to the otherwise fair record of the farming class in this respect is the tax on oleomargarine and the special favor accorded to farmers' associations in the Clayton Act. It might be cynically said that the farmer has not been "sharp" enough to get his share of the "good" things" that the business classes were passing around in protective legislation. But farmers have, as has every economic group, interests ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... the law of duty seem to me all one. I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think "Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... same everywhere," he said cynically. "They all want a cinch, easy money, big money. Looks like the more you have, the more you can grab. Folly Bay made barrels of coin while the war was on. Why can't they give us fellers a show to make a little now? But they don't give a damn, so long as they get theirs. And ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... thought Symeon. Women like this are bound to get in. Everyone there knew her. She had a bad reputation in the city. Symeon felt humiliated to have such a person in his house. This Nazarene certainly knows all the worst people, reflected the young Pharisee cynically. ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... consciousness. It was not so much Brownwell's words, as his air of patronage and possession; it was cheerful enough, quite gay in fact, but Hendricks asked himself a hundred times why the man didn't whistle for her, and clamp a steel collar about her neck. He wondered cynically if at the bottom of Brownwell's heart, he would not rather have the check for twelve thousand dollars which Hendricks had left for Colonel Culpepper, to pay off the Brownwell note, than to have his wife. For seven years the colonel had been cheerfully ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... royally, reconfirming lands and title to John, the most distinguished of all the Caradocs, who had unfortunately neglected to be born in wedlock, by one of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies of most old families. Yes, it was there, almost cynically hung in a corner; for this incident, though no doubt a burning question in the fifteenth century, was now but staple for an ironical little tale, in view of the fact that descendants of John's 'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly to be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his road a person who is evidently suffering and has need of aid, if he does not recognize in him, or her, one of his own tribe he will pass on with indifference and grumble out cynically: "All the worse for them". But if the same person were to make an appeal to his charity on the threshold of his rude home, he or she would receive hospitality without being known, and in the event of an accident or any other ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... in once when I was being scrapped to death. He jumped right in, when he looked like gettin' killed for it. And," he laughed cynically, "he gave me a few more years of the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... children fagged and fell behind. At nightfall, thirty of the haughty Iroquois lost patience, and throwing down their bundles made off for Quebec with the avowed purpose of raiding the Algonquins. On the way, they paused to scalp three Frenchmen at Montreal, cynically explaining that if the French persisted in taking Algonquins into their arms, the white men need not be surprised if the blow aimed at an Algonquin sometimes struck a Frenchman. That act opened the eyes of the French to the ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... pronouncing on Solomon's final condition, But he stands on the page of this history, a sad, enigmatical figure, a warning to all young people to take heed that the attrition of the world does not rub off the bloom of early religion, or make them cynically ashamed of the unselfishness of their early desires. There is no sadder sight than an old man whose youthful enthusiasm for goodness and belief in the super-excellency of wisdom have withered, leaving him a hard worldling ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Bulletin it was a gleeful occasion. Nonchalant reporters sat down with that amazing front page spread out before them, studied the brutal face of Stone and chuckled cynically. Lean Doc Miller, "assistant city editor," or rather head copy reader, lit one cigarette from the stub of another and observed, to nobody in particular but to ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... middle, and so is the beginning, as well as the end," returned Laronde cynically; "why, then, are you so perplexed and anxious about these if the end is, as you seem to think, so sure? Why don't you trust ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... analyse man's love for woman, to explain it, or explain it away, belittle it, nay, even resent and befoul it, it remains an unaccountable phenomenon, a "mystery we make darker with a name." Biology, cynically pointing at certain of its processes, makes the miracle rather more miraculous than otherwise. Musical instruments are no explanation of music. "Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... without a word more. He returned to his chest, and cynically composed himself to slumber. The casting of the lots went on rapidly among the officers and men. In another half-hour chance had decided the question of "Go" or "Stay" for all alike. The men left the hut. The officers entered the inner apartment for a last conference with the bed-ridden ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... able to pull myself back to an old shadow of my former vigour and energy. I saw that I would never be good for the Front again, but I minded that the less now in that the events of the summer of 1915 had left me without heart or desire, the merest spectator of life, passive and, I cynically believed, indifferent. I was nothing to any one, nor was any one anything to me. The desire of my heart had slipped like a laughing ghost away from my ken—men of my slow warmth and cautious suspicion do not easily admit ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... of Great Britain and Germany, when Count von Buelow, with the ink hardly dry on the Anglo- German treaty of October, 1900, which was supposed to be intended to protect China against further Russian advances on the north, cynically went out of his way to make a statement in the German Parliament that the treaty did not apply to Manchuria. The reply of the British Government was the Anglo-Japanese treaty of February 11th, 1902. [Footnote: Reventlow (German Foreign Policy, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... is good," cynically observed Ed Rogers, after calling Lowell's attention to the article. "If those cattlemen ever get the reservation opened, they'll keep the nesters out for the next forty years, if they have to kill a homesteader for every hundred and sixty acres. So far as Bill Talpers's killing ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... his hall-office in great spirits and showed the letter to Callahan, the general superintendent, for congratulations. "That is right," commented Callahan cynically. "You saved them a hundred thousand dollars last month—they are going to blow ten a week on you. By the way, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... wrong," he answered cynically. "The punishment is, that political virtue goes unrewarded, and in due course crime is the only refuge to most. Yet in politics the temptation to be ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... creeds or no-creeds, in British India would in the long run shake our power more deeply than even financial or military disaster. I believe that the real foundation upon which the British Empire in this country rests is neither military force alone, as some persons cynically assert' (though such power is no doubt an indispensable condition of our rule), 'nor even that affectionate sympathy with the native population, on which, according to a more amiable, though not, I think, a truer view of the matter, some think our rule ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... inexpedient; that if it be wrong to do certain things, it is also, on the whole, right not to talk of them; that even certain things which are right and blessed and holy lose their sanctity by being dragged cynically to the light of day, instead of being left in the mystery in which God has wisely shrouded them. On the whole, one is inclined to suspect the defence of coarseness as insincere. Certainly, in our day, it will not hold. If any one wishes to hear coarse language in 'good society' ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... But you may cynically remind me that nothing will come of the Determinists' protest against the evil social conditions. Perhaps not. Let us waive that question for a moment, and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... Valley way,' she replied, still scrutinizing him. She marked the look of relief in his eyes and laughed cynically and withal a trifle bitterly. 'On the Red Hill trail. Going ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... remember his multiplication table, and forget his fragments of the Athanasian Creed. Let the wheat and tares be planted together, and trust to the superior vitality of the more valuable plant. The sentiment might be expressed sentimentally as easily as cynically. We may urge, like many sceptics of the last century, that Christianity should be kept "for the use of the poor," and renounced in the esoteric creed of the educated. Or we may urge the literary and aesthetic beauty of the old training, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... is not the same thing as asserting his own powers to realize it. With regard to these he speaks very modestly of himself as a beginner, a pioneer only. In fact the question of his own particular genius is, he says, irrelevant, and has nothing to do with the other one, adding rather cynically that genius is often ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... He put it cynically, scowling critically at Jarvo and Akko. "All in the way av fair fight, that'll be about Mor-rocco, if I've the full av my wits about me, an' music to my eyes, by the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... protecting American shipping; on the other hand, the South desired to continue the slave-trade. Pinckney declared that "South Carolina can never receive the plan if it prohibits the slave-trade;" and Sherman of Connecticut cynically remarked, "The slave-trade is iniquitous; but inasmuch as the point of representation was settled, he should not object." On August 24 a third compromise left to Congress the power of passing Navigation Acts, but forbade it to prohibit the ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... he could get her address from Cazzi for ten soldi as soon as her back was turned," said Elmore cynically. "What then?" ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... said?" Chia Lien interposed cynically. "But to acknowledge him as a son is no easy question to settle!" and with these words, he walked in; whereupon Pao-y smilingly said: "To-morrow when you have nothing to do, just come and look me up; but don't go and play any devilish pranks ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... hoping that Lady Dawn would return. Now that she was gone, he was invaded with his old loneliness. The dead lords eyed him cynically from their canvases. Through leaded panes the moonlight fell. It seemed the sorcery of her spirit. The perfume of the rose-garden was her breath. How pale she had made his dream of Terry! How trivial she made all women ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... impunity she became aware of new matter for surprise, or at least for speculation. Her idea would rather have been that Mrs. Stringham would have looked at her hard—her sketch of the grounds of her long, independent excursion showing, she could feel, as almost cynically superficial. Yet the dear woman so failed, in the event, to avail herself of any right of criticism that it was sensibly tempting, for an hour, to wonder if Kate Croy had been playing perfectly fair. Hadn't she possibly, from motives of the highest benevolence, promptings ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... conferred upon society and humanity by a large proportion of our population," he would have cynically observed to any caviller, "is by dying ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... no use April protesting against the cruelty of condemning a girl for ever because of one indiscretion. Her listeners only looked at her suspiciously. One old Englishwoman, who had lived many years in South Africa, put the case more cynically ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... are a credulous lot of people. Old Bismarck himself once cynically remarked that there was a special Providence that watched out for plumb fools and Americans. More recently, Von Papen, whom our Government asked to have withdrawn from his post as German military attache at Washington, referred to us affectionately ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... Bradley smiled cynically as he looked down toward the tent. He could not, of course, distinguish the figures as plainly as Jimmie could with the glass, but he knew from the excited manner of the boys that something unusual was ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... suffered more severely, and rarely, if ever, have the monuments of piety and of learning and those sentiments of religion and national association, of which they are the permanent embodiment, even in the worst times of the most ruthless warriors, been so shamefully and cynically desecrated; and behind the actual theatre of conflict with its smoke and its carnage there are the sufferings of those who are left behind, the waste of wealth, the economic dislocation, the heritage, the long heritage of enmities and misunderstanding which war brings in its train. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... the only thing left for you to do," he replied cynically; "but you'll not do it. ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... young man, cynically. "You have the pleasure, then, which your dear friend Joanna there never enjoyed, of seeing your own prophecy accomplished; and I, for my part, have three hundred pounds to solace myself with for what has certainly ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... chosen a wife. He had acted with the greatest caution in no weak or superficial, or haphazard, or fitful way. Nevertheless, the outlook was dismal. This first step in decline from his ideal caused him much pain and restlessness, and led him to think cynically of many doctrines to which, in serene moments, he had unconditionally subscribed. He compared his own case with Robert's. Robert, in his headstrong passion, had certainly rattled up sleeping lions, heedless of ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... miserable story, always feeling it keenly, and even fearing that he might be carried away by emotion or morbid sentiment in telling it to another. But, to his astonishment, he found himself telling it practically, calmly, almost cynically, to his old playmate, repressing the half devotion and even tenderness that had governed him, from the time that his wife, disguised as the mulatto woman, had secretly watched him at his office, to the hour that he had passed through the lines. He withheld ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... words, translated by the interpreter to Caesar, the Roman laughed cynically, while his officers partook of the gaiety of their general. Caesar continued to empty cup after cup, fixing his eyes more and more ardently on Albinik's wife. He said a few words to the interpreter, who commenced to question the two prisoners, conveying as he proceeded, their answers ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... virtual repeal. But here is a case of a law enforced with militant energy where it suits the officers of the Government to enforce it, systematically ignored in millions of cases by the same officers because it suits them to do that, and cynically violated by the direct orders of the Government itself when this course seems recommended by a cold-blooded calculation of policy ! If the laws against larceny, or arson, or burglary, or murder, were executed in this fashion, what standing would the ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... real thing on the stage, is really a clamor for the most mechanical and superficial sort of logic. The dramatic reason for making the clergyman what Mrs Warren calls "an old stick-in-the-mud," whose son, in spite of much capacity and charm, is a cynically worthless member of society, is to set up a mordant contrast between him and the woman of infamous profession, with her well brought-up, straightforward, hardworking daughter. The critics who have missed the contrast have doubtless observed often enough that many clergymen are in the Church through ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... He smiled cynically as he shouldered his way through the slowly moving crowd—that kaleidoscope of the humanities which congregate but do not blend; which coagulate wherever the trial of science, speed, and stamina serves as an excuse for putting ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... biography, completely frank up to this point, now grows reticent, except to release the wife of all blame. So you must satisfy your curiosity by imagining some abnormal state of mind, which you will regard cynically or pityingly, as your manner of ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... property, and who set the example of arrests of this sort, is named Eynard. He is a general. On December 18, he placed under sequestration the property of a number of citizens of Moulins, "because," as he cynically observed, "the beginning of the insurrection leaves no doubt as to the part they took in the insurrection, and in the pillaging in the ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... to the possibility of ever being righteous at all. And there are men listening to me now in every one of these three conditions—not caring to be righteous, not understanding what it is to be righteous, and cynically disbelieving that it is possible to be so. My brother, here comes the message to you—first, Thou art sinful; second, God's righteousness lies at thy side to take and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... to check in on time," he rationalized cynically to the operator. He rubbed his long nose and hoped the operator would agree ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... to tea, while a vivid note of colour was added to the scene by the picturesque uniforms of a couple of officers of an Algerian regiment who were consuming unlimited cigarettes and Turkish coffee, and commenting cynically in fluent French on the paucity of pretty women to be observed in the streets of ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... pit for others and falling into it yourself," Millar remarked cynically. "However," he went on, "things are not so bad. I have reliable information that the later ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... of course, that the tangled skein was unravelled by the transcendent genius of Mr. Cadbury Taylor," said the girl cynically. ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... cynically, "always been so straight that you don't know what temptation means? Have you never wanted anything ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates |
