"Cynicism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... theatre, and if she ever went at night to the coffee-house with her husband. And Therese was beginning to think he was more interesting than the others, with his apparent ignorance of her world and his superb cynicism. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... it. He had respected her, and had shown his respect in the most chivalrous way at his command, and she had never really loved him. Evidently women were not what he had thought they were. Mrs. Clarke knew what they were and a thousand things that he did not know. He grasped at her cynicism, and he often applied it, translated through his personality, to herself. He even went farther in cynicism than she had ever gone, behaving like a convert to a religion which had the charm of novelty. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... talked long with him, but when Mr. Craven, on his way to bed, heard the low, quiet tones of the mother's voice through the shut door, he knew it was not to Hughie she was speaking, and the smile upon his face lost a little of its cynicism. ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... mental excitement than with any idea of obtaining consolation. To him, filled as he was with the lofty thoughts inspired by the mission thrust upon him, there was something horrible in the woman's frivolity—or cynicism. To him the Cross meant the Passion of Christ, the shedding of God's blood, the Redemption of mankind. To her it was a badge, an ornament, the excuse for a luxurious pilgrimage of fair women living delicately ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... spoke he leaned back in the corner of the seat and looked into the far distance, while his face lost its changing expressions of cynicism, severity, gracious courtesy and keen scrutiny, and showed a nobility which Jean had never seen before. She noticed how it invested his somewhat effeminate beauty ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... to argue with him; I only felt that if the illness of genius had at any time affected ME, it was pretty well certain I should now suffer no more from its delicious pangs and honey-sweet fever. I was cured! The probing-knife of the world's cynicism had found its way to the musically throbbing centre of divine disquietude in my brain, and had there cut down the growth of fair imaginations for ever. I thrust aside the bright illusions that had once been my gladness; I forced myself to look with unflinching eyes ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... least, been reft from his grasp, he turned naturally to all other lands that could be forced to yield their secrets to the inquirer, or their comforts to the benefactors of mankind. Only a dull cynicism can deny this motive to the man who first unlocked the doors of Egyptian civilization; and it would be equally futile to deny to him the same beneficent aims with regard to the settlement of the plains of the Mississippi, and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the growth of the human interest story is the curse of cynicism which newspaper work imprints upon so many of its followers. Every editor knows that no ordinary reporter can work a police court or hospital run day after day for any length of time without losing his sensibilities and becoming hardened to the ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... of this fallacious Caledonian Morris would revile daily, as he sat in the private office opening his mail, with old Joseph at another table, sullenly awaiting orders, or savagely affixing signatures to he knew not what. And when the man of the heather pushed cynicism so far as to send him the announcement of his second marriage (to Davida, eldest daughter of the Rev. Alexander McCraw), it was really supposed that Morris would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have derided it for its "seven deadly sins," as there have been others who have praised its "Christian graces." The parodist who wrote the following newspaper quatrain was no enemy of the automobile in spite of his cynicism. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... piece of cynicism whereby Rousseau (Contrat Social, iv. 2), after promising you that, if you join his commonwealth, you shall obey none but yourself, then goes on to tell you that you obey yourself in obeying the will of the majority, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... with an impulse to ask his uncle to send him to college, but not only did pride strike at the words, but he reflected with some cynicism that the affection he inspired invariably expressed itself in blatant selfishness, and that he might better appeal to the enemies he had made to send him from the Island. He ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... have been a God. I should have had my way with people then. I could have created a world whose horrors would have remained a consoling flattery to my cynicism." ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... loose. The fault was not his, but he would never escape the reproach. He had no taste for taking revenge on the young woman. It would not salve his pride to visit on her pretty head the thwarted punishments due Sir Joseph and his consort in guilt. Besides, in spite of his cynicism, he had been touched by Marie Louise's sincerities. She proved them by the very contradictions of her testimony, with its history of keen intelligence alternating with curious blindness. He knew how people get themselves all tangled up in conflicting duties, how they let evils ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... But he did evil in his life, and then the heart lost its faith, and hope utterly perished. The more he loved pleasure and pursued self, the more cynical and bitter he became. Pessimism set a cold, hard stamp upon his face, and marred his beauty. Cynicism lies like a black mark across his pages. At last, in his bitterness, the philosopher tells us the whole universe is a mirage, and that yonder summer-making sun is a bubble that repeats its iridescent tints in the colors of the rainbow. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... city life. Alone, with no one to talk to, he thought much, and deeply, and simply. He was appalled by the wastage of his city years, by the cheapness, now, of the philosophies of the schools and books, of the clever cynicism of the studio and editorial room, of the cant of the business men in their clubs. They knew neither food, nor sleep, nor health; nor could they ever possibly know the sting of real appetite, the goodly ache of fatigue, nor the rush of ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... they have yielded to the only enemy that matters—the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go. They have sinned against Eros and against Pallas Athene, and not by any heavenly intervention, but by the ordinary course of nature, those ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... he had looked upon the creation and saw that it was good. There is "neither haste, nor hate, nor anger," but the deliberate recital of the facts warmed and illumined by the geniality of a soul to whom age and experience had brought, not a sour cynicism, but the mellowing influence of a ripened philosophy. He was such an old man as may fondly be imagined walking through the streets of Paranaque in stately benignity amid the fear and respect of the brown people over whom ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... for the cold-blooded cynicism of this piece of writing, but these censurers have entirely misunderstood both his motive and his meaning. We wonder how any one could take seriously a proposal for breeding children for food purposes, and our wonder grows in reflecting ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... the ancient balustrade of the window (surely young Gerard Dou must have caught an inspiration from her as he passed by). What happy symposia at her father's house, when the classic world was opening for the first time to the gaze of the clogged Talmud-student, and the brilliant cynicism of the old doctor combined with the larger outlook of his Christian fellow-pupils to complete his emancipation from his native environment. After the dead controversies of Hillel and Shammai in old Jerusalem, how freshening these live discussions ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... faith, godless and yet boastful,—an Epicureanism such as Socrates attacked and Paul rebuked. It found its greatest exponent in Voltaire, the oracle and idol of intellectual Europe. In short, it was an age when general cynicism and reckless abandonment to pleasure marked the upper-classes; an age which produced Chesterfield, as godless a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... force stripped stark naked,—nothing but a filament to cover its nudity,—and yet showing its might in efforts that would task the working-beam of a ponderous steam-engine. I am thankful that in an age of cynicism I have not lost my reverence. Perhaps you would wonder to see how some very common sights impress me. I always take off my hat if I stop to speak to a stone-cutter at his work. "Why?" do you ask me? Because I know that his is the only labor that is likely ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... paradox which had often puzzled her in the past. Rodney was twice as fond of her as he was of Harriet, just as she was twice as fond of him as Harriet was. And yet, again and again, where her own love and sympathy had failed dismally to effect anything, Harriet's dry astringent cynicism would come along and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... old man, turning his face aside, for the touch of feeling towards himself, contrasting the cynicism with which Jasper spoke of other ties not less sacred, took the father ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... can," I said with a touch of cynicism in my voice. "You can count on me until the ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... half-reckless cynicism. "Oh, you don't know. There are two souls in the cocainist—one tortured by the pain of not having the stuff, the other laughing and mocking at the dangers of it. It stimulates. It makes your mind work—without effort, by itself. And it gives such visions of success, makes you feel able to ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... curious to sound the obscurer depths of what she had been when this jeering cynicism expressed her mood, she began to read from her score and words, ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... lips, and could not, despite the seeming fairness of the words. He sensed a pulsing undercurrent of cruelty and cynicism. ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... he said, putting his hand on Leigh's shoulder, much as if he were admonishing a student, "I beg you not to allow this experience to colour your views with cynicism, for cynicism hurts only the cynic, and fails to take account of all the facts of life. As you have intimated, even-handed justice, inasmuch as it implies omniscience, is an attribute of God alone, but we have not been consciously ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... again to refer to the charge of cynicism that is levelled against Thackeray. The mistake is, as our critic points out, 'taking a vague word and applying it precisely.' It all depends upon what cynicism really means. 'If it means a war on comfort, then Thackeray was, to his eternal credit, a cynic'; 'if it means a war on ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... West and had probably seldom been out of it before. He breathed American and was as pure a type as you could find. Nothing of the cynicism of Europe about him, for he was that old-fashioned and extra-lovable product, the God-fearing man. He was kind to every one, and had the natural religion of being kind. His door-keeper and sub-clerk ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... are mingled in his pages. Thackeray is a satirist, with a keen eye to detect the weaknesses of humanity, but with a deep well of sympathy, veiled, however, and sedulously guarded from sentimentalism, by a tone of banter and a semblance of cynicism. Measured by their popularity with the cultivated class, the novels of Mrs. Lewes (George Eliot) stand next in rank to the productions last referred to. In some of her tales, the artistic motive and spirit are qualified by the didactic aim, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Brennan, after they had walked half a block without speaking. "I'd give anything in the world to have your faith in mankind. Try and keep it as long as you can. That's the trouble with most reporters. They see so much of the other side of life that they drop into cynicism and that ruins them. You are ready to believe, I am ready to disbelieve. Keep on believing, Gallant. If you're deceived once, twice, any number of times, keep ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... church, upheld by Montanists and Novatians, attracted kindred spirits at opposite ends of the Empire, among the Moors of the Atlas and the Gauls of Asia. Such a people will have sins and scandals like its neighbours, but very little indifference or cynicism. It will be more inclined to make of Christian liberty an excuse for strife and debate. The zeal which carries the gospel to the loneliest mountain villages will also fill them with the jealousies of endless quarrelling sects; and the Gaul of Asia clung ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... its part, but wit never. Strauss is at his best in these lower rooms, but his comedy reminds us more of the physical fun of Lever rather than "comedy in the Meredithian sense" as Mason suggests. Meredith is a little too deep or too subtle for Strauss—unless it be granted that cynicism is more a part of comedy than a part of refined-insult. Let us also remember that Mr. Disston, not Mr. Strauss, put the funny notes in the bassoon. A symphony written only to amuse and entertain is likely ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... no ring of conviction to his words. His voice seemed unable to assume its old cynicism, and his face had lost its former placidity. It had suddenly become old and careworn. Pain and regret, sharp and poignant, were reflected there. His eyes seemed strained and tired, the corners of his mouth had ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... not become better acquainted, we two, who meet in this far place, where travellers are few and worth the knowing?" There was no cynicism in his smile now, and without waiting for a reply he continued: "My name you already know. I have only to add that I am an adventurer in the wilds—explorer of hinterlands, free-trader, freighter, sometime prospector—casual cavalier." ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... was coming home from India on leave, and was a man, though worthy in every way, of a commonplace mind, who would not understand a young man's frequent visits. Hayward felt that life was full of ugliness, his soul revolted from the thought of affronting again the cynicism of examiners, and he saw something rather splendid in kicking away the ball which lay at his feet. He was also a good deal in debt: it was difficult to live in London like a gentleman on three hundred a year; and his heart yearned for the Venice and Florence ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... who live and die with the undisputed reputation of being good fellows—your friends and mine—who, if put to the test, would fail miserably. Fortunate is that man to whom it is not given to test all of his friends. This is not cynicism; it is only human nature; and I love human nature, being myself possessed of so much of it. I admire it when it stands firmly upon its legs, and I love it when it wabbles. But when it gains power with increasing odds, grows big with obstacles, ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... Oh, don't be a fool, Jack. Do you suppose this eternal shallow cynicism of yours has any real bearing on a nature ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... old musician and the maiden of nineteen, who married in spite of the opposition of both families and in spite of the poverty that awaited them. There are many accounts of the domestic career of these two, written in a tone of patronage or cynicism. But this tone is gratuitous on the part of those who assume it. As thorough a study of the facts and documents as I can make, shows no ground whatsoever for refusing to accept this love-match as an ideal wedding of ideal congeniality, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... which wished to use the sidewalk for its private advantage paid the policeman on that beat, and he looked the other way. As there was an ordinance against almost every conceivable thing, so the Police had a price for making every ordinance a dead letter. Was this a cosmic joke, a nightmare of cynicism, a delusion? No, New York was classed in the reference books as a Christian city, and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... This cynicism was something quite new to my mind. Not only my stomach, but my whole soul turned sick. How could I measure the bitterness of the idea that Lorand was paying court to a married woman? Such a thing was not to be seen in the circle in which we had been brought ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... with affectionate cynicism that the arm had been broken by the cudgel of a Polish peasant while Castro was trying to filch a pig from a stable.... "I cut his throat out, though," Castro would grumble darkly; "so, like that, and it matters very little—it is even an improvement. See, I put on my blade. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... all of them I chatted easily a moment or two, expressing the hope that they would be well pleased with their entertainment. I noted while thus engaged that Belknap-Jackson eyed me with frank and superior cynicism, but this affected me quite not at all and I took pains to point my indifference, chatting with increased urbanity with the two cow-persons, Hank and Buck, who had entered rather uncertainly, not in evening dress, to be sure, but in decent black as befitted their ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... "No one has more respect for the Christian religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intruding it into private life——" What was pure paganism in the politics of Melbourne became a sort of mystical cynicism in the politics of Disraeli; and is well mirrored in his novels—for he was a man who felt at home in mirrors. With every allowance for aliens and eccentrics and all the accidents that must always eat the edges of any systematic circumference, it may still be said that ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... and impassioned, sincere and firm, profoundly moving. For you, too, there was the cardinal exception. For you there was the "Faust Symphony." The work is romantic music, the music of the Byronic school par excellence. Here, too, is the brooding and revolt, the satanic cynicism, the expert's language. But here the miracle has taken place, and your music, generally so loose and shallow and theatrical, has the point, the intensity, the significance that it seems everywhere else to lack. Here, for ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... loathed her. Among other things, he suspected her of being in league with Marcia to protect the Christians. To him she represented the idealism that his cynicism bitterly rejected. The mere fact of her unshakable fidelity to Pertinax was an offense in his eyes; she presented what he considered an impudent pose of morality, more impudent because it was sustained. He might have liked her well enough if she had ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... says Bernhardi. "We may, at most, use them to delay the necessary and inevitable war until we may fairly imagine we have some prospect of success." A more shameless sentence was never penned, and one stands marveling which is the more grotesque—the cynicism of the sentiment or the folly which gave such a warning to the victim. For be it remembered that Bernhardi's words are to be taken very seriously, for they are not the ravings of some Pan-German monomaniac, but the considered views of the foremost ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... published which I thought suitable to her voice, and played the accompaniment for her. Over these songs we were like two innocent children with new toys. She had never been anything but innocent; but my innocence was a transformation wrought by my love for her, love which melted away my cynicism and whitened my sullied soul and gave me back the wholesome ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... we were sincere in our youthful cynicism, Don. You may add the note to your very accurate recollections of Sir Jacques that on the publication of Delilah he instructed his butler to say that he was abroad whenever I ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... in the words she had recited a clause in her creed of life. Had she not been taught by bitter experience? Love brings suffering, yes; but that was no reason for shrinking from Love. The greater the value of anything, the greater the price which must be paid. This was not cynicism, but common sense; and it was only a coward who did not welcome the suffering as an intrinsic part of the wonderful whole, only a miser who would ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... are native-born New Yorkers, and scarcely any of them go around with their noses in the air in an "upstage Eastern manner." Most of them are graduates of the newspaper school, and remnants of newspaper cynicism occasionally appear in their outspoken philosophy. But be not deceived by this, for even in the newspaper office the half-baked cub who is getting his first glimpses of woman's frailties and man's weak will is the only cynic who means all he says. All reporters who are worth their salt ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... hard cynicism conceals a deal of suffering. But the suffering is past; we have only to wait patiently for ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... know quite what to make of Millard's cynicism. Was he trying to be witty at Manton's expense? I noticed that he did not smile himself. Although he was talking to us, his attention was not really on us. He was still ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... urged that it matters not to us how much we may be alive in others, if we are to know nothing about it, I reply that the common instinct of all who are worth considering gives the lie to such cynicism. I see here present some who have achieved, and others who no doubt will achieve, success in literature. Will one of them hesitate to admit that it is a lively pleasure to her to feel that on the other side of the world ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... the consequences. Conrad would echo Sartor's noble cry for Truth—'Truth! though the Heavens crush me for following her;—no Falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of Apostasy!' This determination is fierce enough to be taken for cynicism, but Conrad is far too tender ever to be a cynic. So also does his pitifulness prevent him from ever falling into the errors of a Nietzsche, but none the less he has all Nietzsche's ardour for heroism. That to ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... this man, converting wisdom into cunning, invention into trickery, and wit into cynicism. Engaged in no honourable cause, he however showed a mind resolved; making plain the crooked and involved path he trod. Sustine et abstine, to bear and forbear, was the great principle of Epictetus, and our ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Mr. Flint is ashamed of having played the humanitarian this morning, so he is trying to atone by double cynicism this evening; but don't let him interrupt my story again, under pain of being sent back to the tavern, instead of taken care of in Mrs. White's best bed-room, under the charge of the best doctor (though I do say ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... find anything in the sayings of Confucius that can be called cynical, such as we find in some of the Proverbs of Solomon, even in reference to women, where women were, as in most Oriental countries, despised. The most that approaches cynicism is in such a remark as this: "I have not yet seen one who could perceive his faults and inwardly accuse himself." His definition of perfect virtue is above that of Paley: "The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... reflected. "Is it?" he said. "Perhaps you may be right again. I think it's only indifference, myself. Curiously enough my brother looks at it from your point of view—he even used the same word that you used just now. I suppose he found my cynicism beyond the reach of reform. At any rate, he left off coming here. I got rid of him on easy terms. What do you say? That inhuman way of talking is unworthy of me? Really I don't think so. I'm not a downright ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... rationalism, and it found the antidote to its vicious court life in the crystal springs of Castaly. What the pietism of Perugino's saints is to the feuds of the Baglioni, such is the Arcadian dream to the intellectual cynicism of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... now. He was not a little boy any longer. She could not sweep him away in her arms to save him from danger. Also she knew more of the easy, fashionably accepted views of the morals of pretty Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, still lightly known with some cynicism as "Feather." She knew what Donal did not. His relationship to the Head of the House of Coombe made it unlikely that gossip should choose him as the exact young man to whom could be related stories of his distinguished relative, Mrs. Gareth-Lawless ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... outside world except a passionate lament from Mathilde Maier, and a most pleasant surprise in the shape of royalties (seventy-five francs), which Truinet sent from Paris. This led to a conversation with Mme. Wille, half in anger and half with condemned-cell cynicism, as to what I could do to obtain complete release from my wretched situation. Among other things we touched upon the necessity of obtaining a divorce from my wife in order to contract a rich marriage. As everything seemed right and nothing inexpedient in my eyes, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... of peevish, and cendree instead of sandy, passed the tedious moments of waiting in a running commentary upon the idiosyncrasies and oddities of the people and refreshments of the past hours, with a verve which she fondly believed to be a combination of sarcasm and cynicism, but which, in reality, was the kernel of the nut of spitefulness, hanging from the withering bough of ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... art, literature, and nature. He must be refined and cultured and have been about the world. He must have simplicity in behavior, dress, and manner, and, above all, be clean-bodied as clean-minded. Cynicism I cannot stand. (Here I may state I once owned a St. Bernard dog which reminded me much of my ideal. He was always sedate, always loving, and faithful; generally quiet. He only got excited when out in the elements.) I have not been able to get on with people who have no sense ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the arms of her chair tightly with both hands. She was looking at Norris with a new expression, a kind of breathless fear. She knew him for a man who could not be swerved from the thing he wanted. For all his easy cynicism, he had the reputation of being a bloodhound on the trail. Moreover, she knew that he was no friend to Jack Flatray. Why had she left that running iron as evidence to convict its owner? What folly not to have removed it from the immediate ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... smiled; a singular, ironical smile it was, yet without a particle of bitterness or of cynicism. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... their unrestrained indulgence of bodily appetites. In his magnificent scorn he probably exaggerated the evils of his day, yet we have seen enough in previous chapters to suggest that he was not a mere pessimist; there is no trace in his poem of cynicism, or of a soured temperament. We may be certain that he was absolutely convinced of the truth ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... comforts had been the thought that however bitter his own disappointment was, Elinor at least was happy. But in this new-old field of talk a change came over her and he was no longer sure she was entirely happy. She was saying things with a flavor akin to cynicism ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... could talk well about music and pictures and novels and plays, and she not only let him talk freely, but was inclined to put a favorable interpretation upon things he said which she did not altogether like, trying to see only humor where another might have found heartlessness or cynicism. For Vavasor, being in his own eyes the model of an honorable and well-behaved gentleman, had of course only the world's way of regarding and judging things. Had he been a man of fortune he would have given to charities with some freedom; but, his salary being very moderate, and his aunt just a ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... cynicism, is a kind-hearted man. It gave him a great deal of pleasure to see a girl and a boy in a condition of almost delirious happiness. But he felt that they ought not to be entirely selfish. They intended, apparently, to go off after luncheon, to ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... enemies they make. Better even an occasional nose dented by a fist, a broken bone, a rapier-scarred face, or even sometimes the sacrifice of the life of one of our best academic youth than stagnation, general cynicism and censoriousness, bodily and psychic cowardice, and moral corruption, if this indeed be, as it ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Kostia, this is not your secret!" I was tempted to answer. "It is not your nerves which torment you. I would wager that in despite of your cynicism and skepticism, you have once believed in something, or in some one who has broken faith with you," but I was careful not to let him suspect my conjectures. I believe he would have devoured me. The anger of this man is terrible, and he does not always spare me the sight of it. Yesterday ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... in words like these has often begotten in great rulers a cynical contempt of men and the judgments of men. But cynicism found no echo in the large and sympathetic temper of Alfred. He not only longed for the love of his subjects, but for the remembrance of "generations" to come. Nor did his inner gloom or anxiety check for an instant ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... often from Livingstone during my absence. His letters were very amusing, containing all sorts of news, and remarks on men and manners. They would have pleased me more if they had not indicated a vein of sarcasm deepening into cynicism. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... restless day, and a sufficiently unpleasant one, for Mr. Hampton. For a number of years he had been diligently training himself in the school of cynicism, endeavoring to persuade himself that he did not in the least care what others thought, nor how his own career ended; impelling himself to constant recklessness in life and thought. He had thus successfully built up a wall between the present and that past which ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... satire in the Manx character, and next to no cynicism at all. The true Manxman is white-hot. I have heard of one, John Gale, called the Manx Burns, who lampooned the upstarts about him, and also of one, Tom the Dipper, an itinerant Manx bard, who sang at ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... Dryden retains its magnificent resonance; "the ring," says Saintsbury, "as of a great bronze coin thrown down on marble." The malignant couplets of an Alexander Pope still gleam like malevolent jewels through the dust of two hundred years. The cynicism, the misanthropy, the mere adolescent badness of Byron are powerless to clip the wings of the wide-ranging, far-darting wit and humor and irony of Don Juan. The homely Yankee dialect, the provinciality, the "gnarly" flavor of the Biglow Papers do not prevent our finding in that ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... structures. Childbearing, lack of vigorous exercise, the corset, and the hustle and bustle of the early morning hours so that regular habits are not formed, bring about a sluggish bowel. Indeed it is a cynicism amongst physicians that the proper definition of woman ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... unconsciously, merging into a wider grouping. Theological liberality affords a case in point. In the earlier days of sectarian struggle tolerance was a danger both to group loyalty and to the militant spirit. Cynicism for other reasons is also a menace. It means loss of faith in the collective ego, in the traditions, shibboleths, symbols, and destiny of the group. Fighting groups cannot be tolerant; nor can they harbor ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... gives us a new definition of Great Men. According to Mallock, the great man is the man who makes money. This has long been the working theory of bourgeois society, but Mallock is the first of them who has had the cynicism or the stupidity to confess it. But mark you, by this confession he admits the truth of the fundamental premise of modern scientific socialism, our Socialism, viz., that the economic factor is the dominant or determining factor in the life of society. Thus you see the ablest champion ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... aluminata major of English poesy and drama and public life, and is now found in junk stores and in the back line on book shelves and whom nobody reads now. Willis had his languid affectations, his superficial cynicism and added to them ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... of the death of a beloved writer in his early prime. The work of a romancer and poet, of a man of insight and feeling, which may be said to have begun but fifteen years ago, has ended, through fortune's sternest cynicism, just as it seemed entering upon even more splendid achievement. A star surely rising, as we thought, has suddenly gone out. A radiant invention shines no more; the voice is hushed of a creative mind, expressing its fine imagining in this, our peerless English tongue. His expression was so ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... I forswore it all in a moment of bitter cynicism. But, mon ami, I am a man—a very irregularly balanced man, too, I often think—and there rises from my soul an exceeding bitter cry sometimes. You see here my life—barmaid society, ship's tittle-tattle, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Thayne, though, for all that. He and Leslie and Cousin Delight,—the Josselyns and the Inglesides,—dear Miss Craydocke, hurrying up to congratulate,—Marmaduke Wharne looking on without a shade of cynicism in the gladness of his face, and Sin Saxon and Frank Scherman flitting up in the pauses of dance and promenade,—well, after all, these were the central group that night. The pivot of the little solar system was changed; but the chief planets made but slight account of that; they just felt that ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... fancy; he would not give a thousand farthings to ease the sufferings of his fellows. Yet there were few found to criticize him. He was called original, a crank; there were even some who professed to see merit in his attitude. To both criticism and praise he was alike indifferent. With a cynicism with seemed only to become more bitter he pursued his undeviating ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... precisian, they say, disapproved of Danton's lax and heedless courses. Danton said to him one day:—'What do I care? Public opinion is a strumpet, and posterity a piece of nonsense.' How should the puritanical lawyer endure such cynicism as this? And Danton delighted in inflicting these coarse shocks. Again, Danton had given various gross names of contempt to Saint Just. Was Robespierre not to feel insults offered to the ablest and most devoted of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... the armour of "faith and love." The opposite to faith is uncertainty, and the opposite to love is cynicism, and who does not know that uncertainty and cynicism are the very hotbeds for the machinations of the evil one? When faith is enthroned the soul is open to the reception of grace, and when love shares the throne the sovereignty ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... printed piece in circulation far exceeds at last the number of performances. But as with the printed piece our own public, infatuated as it may be with the theatre, refuses all commerce—though indeed this can't but be, without cynicism, very much through the infirmity the piece, IF printed, would reveal—so the same horror seems to attach to any typographic hint of the proscribed playbook or any insidious plea for it. The immense oddity resides in the almost exclusively typographic order of the offence. An English, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... to the gendarme, who at once confronted the abominable malefactor with the obvious proofs of a horrible crime. But the depraved wretch stood by, Sir, perfectly calm and with a cynicism in his whole bearing which I had never before ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... for him?" asked the melancholy mime, who had in his nature somewhat of the cynicism of Jaques, without his grand imaginings of soul. "There are many off the stage, my lord, in better practice." "True, most true," acquiesced Buckingham; "I could ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... need not proofs. Bulgaria, therefore, could not more wantonly accuse Servia than by saying that we allied ourselves with the enemies of Slavdom. The cynicism of these accusations is proved by the following ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... and the two, with anxiety not unmixed with cynicism, watched Battersleigh as he made several ineffectual attempts to penetrate ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... as the besetting disease of middle-class Englishmen; and so we find Lyndon remarking, by the way, that Mr. Hunt, Lord Bullingdon's governor, 'being a college tutor and an Englishman, was ready to go on his knees to any one who resembled a man of fashion.' And the kindly cynicism which discoloured Thackeray's ideas about women, notwithstanding his tender admiration and love for the best of them, comes out pointedly in old Sir Charles Lyndon's advice to Barry on the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... levity of its contempt for mankind. The boy-author appears to have already rubbed all the bloom off his heart; and, in the midst of his dazzling genius, one trembles to think that a stripling of years so tender should have attained the cool cynicism of a Candide. How different is the effect of that Eastern tale of our own days, which Lord Byron ought not to have forgotten when he was criticising his favourite romance. How perfectly does Thalaba realize the ideal demanded ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the altar or else begins it immediately after the ceremony. Thence the enthralled reader is conducted through rapture, doubt, misunderstanding, indifference, complications, recrimination, and estrangement to the logical end in cynicism and the ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... up to the calling we share. Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. And this commitment, if we keep it, is a way ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... not meant as insults—no, certainly not—merely the happy laughing cynicism of the common-sense view that would be taken of us by hundreds of cartoonists; but I must say they went through me as hardly anything else I witnessed, for they showed in such a terrible light the contrast between the dream that had inspired these men and ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... the garden, and he too grew thoughtful, and he too raised his eyes toward the heavens. But in his beautiful dark eyes, nothing was reflected but the light of the stars. He was not born an idealist, and his fastidiously dry and sensuous soul, with its French tinge of cynicism was not ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... and took it back. "Don't be vexed. Or if you must be, pout as you used to. You mustn't grow hard, my child. Your type of beauty doesn't improve with cynicism. You must think sweet thoughts or simply be petulant when you're angry. Don't grow hard! If nothing else will move you let me appeal to your pride. You are traveling with a hard crowd, a cruel pack, Miss Bettany's pack, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... good spirits, she awakened Bobby to a new interest in life. The philosophy with which she regarded tumultuous events, the easy cynicism with which she dismissed a discussion which bordered upon the serious, seemed to deprive him of any means of enlightening himself as to ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... would almost be at pains to make it appear by the completeness with which he affects to have put her from his mind when he discovered her worthlessness, I do not believe; nor, as I have said, do his actions encourage that belief. Then, again, his callous cynicism in hoping that he had killed Binet is also an affectation. Knowing that such things as Binet are better out of the world, he can have suffered no compunction; he had, you must remember, that rarely level vision which sees things ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... think of that. She often said: "She is my comrade, she is my friend.".... And she thought so. To lean upon her in that critical moment was only natural to her. In the tempest of indignation which shook Gorka, the sudden appeal to innocent Alba appeared to him the last degree of cynicism. During the short space of time which elapsed between the departure of the footman and the arrival of the young girl, he only uttered these words, repeating them as he paced the floor, while his former mistress defied him ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... but his disbelief has not yet reconciled him to making the best of this life, or laid ghosts of the beliefs he has outworn. Clear air and sun, but not so much as to paralyse action, have made in France clearer eyes, clearer brains, and touched souls with a sane cynicism. The French do not despise and neglect the means to ends. They face sexual realities. They know that to live well they must eat well, to eat well must cook well, to cook well must cleanly and cleverly cultivate their ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... sanctioned. She felt sorry for such women, but secretly she despised them. They alone were to blame. Had they not married knowing well that there was no real affection in their hearts for the men to whom they gave themselves? The cynicism and effrontery of young girls regarding marriage particularly revolted her. Eager for wealth and social position, they offered themselves with brazen effrontery in the matrimonial market, immodestly displaying their charms to the ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... cynicism in these mute comments which demands an explanation; the more so as they are not in accord either with the view—somewhat superficial perhaps—that we have hitherto enjoyed of Madame Merle's character or with the literal facts of Mrs. Touchett's history; the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the man and the ape, are struggling for the mastery. In Socrates, the true man conquers, and comes forth high and pure; in Rabelais, alas! the victor is the ape, while the man himself sinks down in cynicism, sensuality, practical jokes, foul talk. He returns to Paris, to live an idle, luxurious life; to die—says the legend—saying, "I go to seek a great perhaps," and to leave behind him little save a school of Pantagruelists—careless young gentlemen, whose ideal was to laugh ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the stranger because he was so wholly untouched by cynicism; but here we light upon a curious paradox—the fact that the more "worldly" the writer, the better can he (as a general rule and other things being equal) display this type. It may be that such a writer can regard it analytically, can see what are the elements ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... manly boldness indeed, but with due artistic reticence also; each knew how to be vivid without being vicious, to be realistic without being revolting; and despite the sometimes offensive caricature in which the one indulged, despite the seeming cynicism of the other their influence must be pronounced healthy. Thackeray did not, like Dickens, use his pen against particular glaring abuses of the time, nor insist on the special virtues that bloom amid the poor and lowly; but he attacked valiantly the crying sins of society in all time—the mammon-worship ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... fellow, Wingate," Phipps said, with a touch of his old cynicism, "if you weren't always sheering off towards the melodramatic. The girl wanted to see life, she attracted me, and I showed it to her. I'd have done the right thing by her if she hadn't ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... only one degree better than cynicism. Cynicism is generally the refuge of the disappointed and indolent, but there is, after all, a nobler kind of cynicism, which even religion must strive to develop, the cynicism which realises the essential worthlessness and pettiness of ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... conceit in Eleanor's voice or manner as she speaks, but a spirit of cynicism which is ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... I scarcely see how I could have acted otherwise: I could not leave her side until Brutus had exhausted the pleasures of cynicism with his grey friend, and the time had to be filled up somehow. But, oh, the torture of seeing Diana at a distance, and knowing that only a miserable misunderstanding between our respective steeds kept us apart, feeling constrained even ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... strength to put out her arm and push him away; and, with a cynicism in which all his abominable nature stood revealed, Daubrecq, mingling words of cruelty and words ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... I ought to enjoy the joke of what's going on here," I wrote, "but somehow it doesn't amuse me. Pessimism on the contrary possesses me and cynicism deeply engages. I positively feel my own flesh sore from the brass nails in Neil Paraday's social harness. The house is full of people who like him, as they mention, awfully, and with whom his talent for talking ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... sensual impulse: the heroic, the ideal, nay the deliberately made up, the artificial, had a charm for her. Be this as it may, the Countess and Alfieri continued, in the opinion of all contemporaries, and according to the assurance of Alfieri himself, whose cynicism and truthfulness are equal, on the ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... from a second letter to the same person deserves to be quoted, as an instance of how a good man may be unable to read aright his own nature, and a wise man to forecast his own future. "I feel a growing tendency to cynicism and suspicion. My intellect remains; and is likely, I sometimes think, to absorb the whole man. I still retain, (not only undiminished, but strengthened by the very events which have deprived me of everything else,) my thirst for knowledge; my passion for holding converse with the ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... of debt, which was no secret to you. She is wealthy, I am penniless. Many a time have I exclaimed, in one of my fits of idleness, "Oh for some great heiress to cast her eye on me!" And now, in presence of this reality, the boy's careless jest, the unscrupulous cynicism of the outcast, have alike vanished, leaving in their place only a bitter sense of humiliation, which not the most considerate tenderness on her part, nor my own assurance of her noble nature, can remove. Nay, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Under such cynicism Gideon would turn about and walk off as though nothing had been said to him. Palmer took an especial delight in teasing Gideon as to his mission labors. Gideon never deigned to notice the ridicule of Palmer, at least ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Writer of His Century—Tender Pathos Under an Affectation of Cynicism and Great Art in ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... child he's adopted," said the old gentleman. "The poor fellow's got something to love. All men need that—and even a few women," he chuckled. Mr. Bowdoin was addicted to portentous cynicism against the sex, which ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... about to come over Ireland. The Fenian conspiracy had been the death-knell of the triumphant cynicism and corruption that had reigned over the country in the years succeeding the treason of Crowe. The name of Mr. Butt, as the leader of a new movement, was beginning to be spoken of. An agitation had been started which demanded a radical settlement of the land question. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... admitted solely for the beneficent purpose of keeping the more egotistic members in a permanent and pleasing glow of superiority. He was very rich, but otherwise quite harmless. In an access of unappreciated cynicism, Average Jones had once suggested to him, as a device for his newly acquired coat-of-arms, "Rocks et ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the sensation while it lasts," he said, with good-natured cynicism, "for expenses have a way of sizing you up—cleaning out your pockets—and going you one better! If you are still snapping your fingers when you come back from New York, then, indeed, you ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Coast on Broadway in the neighborhood of Forty-second Street with Peter blinking comfortably up at the electric signs and marveling at everything. The more Coast drank the deeper was his cynicism but Peter grew mellow. This was a wonderful new world he was exploring and with two thousand dollars safely tucked on the inside of his waistcoat, he was ready to defy the ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... least to this generation. In these Letters all sympathetic readers will find the man they have long known from his writings—the man with a heart so tender that the world often drove him back into a bitterness of opposition, into an assumed hardness and defensive cynicism. There are readers so unluckily constituted that they can see nothing in Thackeray but this bitterness, this cruel sense of meanness and power of analysing shabby emotions, sneaking vanities, contemptible ambitions. All of us must often feel ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... a noble vein of imagination, profound in its sincerity, affecting in its pathos, and pictorial in its treatment. In the earlier scenes his mood and his demeanour had been suffused with a cool, gay, mockery of elegant cynicism. He killed King Henry with a smile, in a scene of gloomy mystery that might have come from the pencil of Gustave Dore. He looked upon the mourning Lady Anne with cheerful irony and he wooed her with all the fervour that passion and pathos can engender in the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Eugene had rendered of the same subject. She remarked a singular composure of countenance, voice, and even position, which seemed idiosyncratic, and was directly opposed to the stern rigidity and cynicism of her guardian. She shrank from the calm, steadfast gaze of his eyes, which looked into hers with a deep yet gentle scrutiny, and resolved ere the close of the evening to sound him concerning some of the philosophic phases of the age. Had he ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... led to the concealment of his feelings. Though his voluminous correspondence, published after his death, reveals a sensitive nature, his habitual attitude towards the emotions ultimately became one of indifference and even cynicism. ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen
... nonconformist withal. He says: 'To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive.' Independence and optimism are vital parts of his unformulated creed. He hated cynicism and sourness. He believed in praise of one's own good estate. He thought it was an inspiriting thing to hear a man boast, 'so long as he boasts of what he really has.' If people but knew this they would boast 'more freely and with a ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... The awful cynicism of this made an uncomfortable impression, and most of them began to look rather doubtful. After all, their faces said, were they not noodles to want ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... her face, lighted up by amorous fever, her fiery lecherous look, fastening on him with all the wild fury of her forty-five years, with the cynicism of the sham saint who has thrown away her mask, and who, after long fasting, continence and privation, finds at length the means of glutting herself, and wallows more than any other in the ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... know the hidden sources of human joy and have neither grown old in cynicism nor gray in utilitarianism, Miss Gale's charming love stories, full of fresh feeling and grace of style, will be a draught from ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... and rightly held, to be a man of intellect, less by virtue of rapid perception and flexible thought, than by virtue of a coolly observant vision of the world, incapable of being confused—a certain healthy cynicism which, though it never lost an element of good nature, might yet abash and even chill ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... formed itself in his memory, he saw the deed itself. He saw the white, stricken face suddenly ablaze with that last effort of passionate life; he saw the outstretched arm, the line of fire, and the sudden change in the countenance of the man who stood at the foot of the bed. He saw the cool cynicism replaced by a spasm of ghastly fear, and he heard the low, gurgling cry dying away into a faint moan of terror, as the murdered man sank on to the floor, a crumpled heap. And, last of all, he saw that little brown girl, with ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... haven't found it. It's only just lately that I've realized why. I read a book called The Valley of Dry Bones. Do you know it? But of course you do. It is by Dene Strange. I hate the man—if it is a man. And I hate his work—the bitter cynicism of it, the merciless exposure of humanity at its lowest and meanest. I don't know what his ideals are—if he has any. I think he is probably very wicked, but detestably—oh, damnably—clever. I burnt the book I hated ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... His gentle cynicism left me unmoved. I had almost forgotten his presence. I was standing over by the window, looking out across a wilderness of housetops. My own thoughts for the moment were sufficient. I spoke, it is true, but I spoke ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... But Laeg's cynicism was not so deep as to keep his glance from lingering upon the bevy of graceful maidens and stately matrons. Their soft laughter reached his ear through the still evening air; and watching their animated gestures he idly speculated ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... any of the sublime religious truths. They find they cannot pray. Nothing seems to matter. The memory of earlier days when life seemed bright and religious faith was confident seems only to mock them. Many are beset by definite intellectual difficulties and so are tempted to a general cynicism. Envy of others will suggest itself, and though it be sternly repressed, it still adds to the general strain, while good advice from others will seem just the last ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... religions bear the test? Stoicism was perhaps the noblest of the Greek philosophies, but it rapidly developed into utter cynicism, and culminated in the asserted impossibility of attaining to virtue. Epicureanism started out fairly well, but its founder was not dead before it earned for itself the opprobrious epithet that it was a doctrine worthy only of swine. Look at Buddhism, with its filthy ceremonies and ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... its turmoil of storm and stress, but between forty and sixty. When the enthusiasms of youth have cooled, and its rosy glamour has faded into the light of common day, there is apt to be a letting down of ideals, a hardening of heart, when cynicism takes the place of idealism. If the judgments of the young are austere and need to be softened by charity, the middle years of life need still more the reenforcement of spiritual influence and the inspiration of a holy atmosphere. Also, Albert Pike used to urge upon old men ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... my friend could never have mocked the sufferings of an individual. But with regard to the state of affairs, the pitiful millions, as an abstract proposition, indifference was the rule, a tone of light cynicism was customary, and "the poor we have always with us," quoted with a deprecatory shrug, was an accepted conversational refuge, even among such people as the clergy and ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... families robbed and in misery; villages burned and plundered for the benefit of a chief or a General; you will see fresh and living signs yet of those horrible crimes perpetrated with the greatest cynicism by those who call themselves your liberators! Liberators because they wear red pants, or a red shirt, or carry on their hats a piece of red cloth or a ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... Socialist, and embraced the belief that all property—especially edible property—should be shared. Appetites, she argued, were meant to be appeased, and the preservation of game—or anything else—in the larder was an offence against the community. Now, at the age of five or so, she affected cynicism, pretended temporarily that life had left a bitter taste in her ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... be pitiless when a person's guilt is positively established. Thus, although he assumed an air of insolent security, the "viscount" anxiously watched the effect of his words upon Madame d'Argeles. Fortunately for himself, he saw that she was abashed by his cynicism; and so he resumed: "Besides, as our friend, the baron, would say, we are wasting precious time in discussing improbable, and even impossible, suppositions. I was sufficiently well acquainted with your heart and your intelligence, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... head or pity him profoundly as we see him ill and helpless in Zola's Debacle, most of us, if we are candid, will confess that the Second Empire, especially the Paris of Morny and Hausmann, of cynicism and splendour, of frivolity and chicane, of servile obsequiousness and haughty pretension, the France and the Paris that drew to themselves the eyes of all Europe and particularly the eyes of the watchful Bismarck, have for us a fascination almost ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... gaily; "I like you so much—and it would be horrid to have you mope, you know. And besides, even if I cared for you, there are reasons, you know—reasons for any girl to marry the man I am going to marry. Does my cynicism shock you? What am I to do?" with a shrug. "Such marriages are reasonable, and far likelier to be agreeable than when fancy is the sole motive—certainly far more agreeable than an ill-considered yielding to abstract emotion with nothing concrete in view. ... So, you see, I could ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... for despising him. He forgot nothing and forgave her nothing; he wrote her down a cruel enemy. But he did not pay her back with equal hate; he dismissed all the warfare and the wounds with a shrug of sagacious cynicism. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... if you were a clever man, and even if you were above the suspicion of jealousy, I should not think that my friend's noble discourse was puerile because you thought it so. It is not when the warm feelings of earlier days are dried up into a cold, time-worn cynicism, that I think a man has become the best judge of the products of the human brain and heart. It is a noble thing when a man grows old retaining something of youthful freshness and fervor. It is a fine thing to ripen without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... with brutal cynicism, "but I like teaching it. I hope to live long enough—nay! I mean to live long enough—to establish a marriage market in Rome, where the lords of the earth can buy what women they want openly, for so many sesterces, as they can their ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... manner changed. All the haughty reserve was gone; all the cynicism, the distrust, and suspicion. She became as gentle and tender as an anxious mother, begging me to go to sleep at once. She would see that no one disturbed me. It was cruel ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and he made a show of that marvelous facility of the Triestines in languages, by taking me down French books, Spanish books, German books, and reading from them all with the properest accent. Yet with this boyish pride and self-satisfaction there was mixed a tone of bitter and worldly cynicism, a belief in fortune as the sole providence. As nearly as I could make out, he was a Johnson man in American politics; upon the Mexican question he was independent, disdaining French and Mexicans alike. He was with the former from the first, and had continued in the service of Maximilian ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... certainly. Dr. Van Horn's face was impassive as to the play of his features, except that he smiled, from time to time,—a smile which bore out Ellen's previous feeling concerning its possibilities for cynicism rather than sympathy. His eyes, however, steely blue and cold in their expression, told more than his face of antagonism to the man with whom he spoke. But his command of manner, to the outward observer, who could not hear ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... eyes which in vain have sought the light which streams from eternity, thou hast come to work anew the old, old story, even though thy coming rends my heart-strings. Down, selfish, stubborn fumes of senile cynicism! I bow to the law of life. Come to my embrace, O sons-in-law; I love you, I bid you welcome to my hearth, even though you regard me as one for whom the grave is yawning! Listen how bravely I call Jim—Jim—Jim, a thousand times Jim. And you, the other one, whose name I do ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... gayety was at its height, her pallor, the handkerchief she crushed against her lips, the cough she smothered under the laughter while Gaston kept playing the piano lightly—it all wrung my heart. But not so much as her cynicism in the long dialogue with her lover which followed. How far was I from questioning her unbelief! While the charmingly sincere young man pleaded with her—accompanied by the orchestra in the old "Traviata" duet, "misterioso, misterioso!"—she maintained her bitter skepticism, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... not a morose or unhappy man. On the contrary, he seems to have been a very happy one, full of generous and kindly feelings, and finding only a strange pleasure where others would have found bitterness and cynicism. Like the melancholy Jacques, he might have said of his pensive shyness, "It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects; ... which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... surrendered at once before the terror in her eyes; but in those twelve long months of effort, of hope, of balked ambition, of bitter questioning, and of tragic disillusionment, a new quality had developed in his character, and the generous sympathy of youth had hardened at thirty-four to the cautious cynicism of middle-age. It is doubtful if even he himself realized how transient such a state must be to a nature whose hidden springs were moved so easily by the mere action of change—by the effect of any alteration in the objects that surrounded ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... want the real human Fielding you will find him not in the novels, where his real kindliness is too often veiled by a mock cynicism, but in his "Diary of his Voyage to Lisbon." He knew that his health was irretrievably ruined and that his years were numbered. Those are the days when one sees a man as he is, when he has no longer a motive for affectation or pretence in the immediate presence of the most tremendous ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... way to his office. Few words passed between them. Indeed, the young dalesman was civil, and no more. He gave scant courtesy, but then he also gave something that was more substantial, and the severity of the lawyer's cynicism relaxed. Paul handed Mr. Bonnithorne, without comment, the deed drawn up in London. Mr. Bonnithorne glanced at it, pocketed it, and smiled. His sense of Paul's importance as a dangerous man sunk to nothing at that moment. They parted ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... But this sham equality is the enemy of the true, for it does not fit man's burden to his strength, it creates overburdened, misused natures, driving the one to scamped work and hypocrisy, and the other to cynicism. Every accidental and inherited advantage must indeed be done away with. But if there is any one who, among men equal in external conditions, in duties and in claims, demands that they should also be equal in mind, in will and in ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... outbreak of temporary spleen. Nobody loved his old books and old opinions better. Hazlitt is speaking in the character of Timon, which indeed fits him rather too easily. But elsewhere the same strain of cynicism comes out in more natural and less extravagant form. Take, for example, the Essay on the 'Conduct of Life.' It is a piece of bona fide advice addressed to his boy at school, and gives in a sufficiently edifying form the commonplaces which elders are accustomed to address to their juniors. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... "At least, you forget how things affect your mind. The eyes see and the ears hear, but those are perceptions which do not result in impressions one could co-ordinate. They do not even affect your sentiments. But it is not cynicism, for all that; merely the lack of appreciation of what takes place. My Captain, a most lovable fellow, whom I did not alone respect as an officer, but of whom I also thought a great deal personally, was leading his company into fire when three bullets hit him in the ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... not afraid of the truth," cried Phyllis, without giving the cynicism of her father the tribute of a smile. "Mr. Courtland would, I know, be incapable of ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... to be extremely guarded in our description of the interesting objects which this expedition opened to our view. There can be no harm, however, in stating that we were received by the commander of the fortress with a kind of acid good-nature, or mild cynicism, that indicated him to be a humorist, characterized by certain rather pungent peculiarities, yet of no unamiable cast. He is a small, thin, old gentleman, set off by a large pair of brilliant epaulets,—the only pair, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... What cynicism he had was mellowed by a fanciful humor. Whether with steel or with words, he was a master of fence; and if at times some one got under his guard, that some one knew it not. To let your enemy see that he has hit you ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath |
