"Sardonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... input or otherwise mistreated in some way. Also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data. 2. 'Garbage In, Gospel Out': this more recent expansion is a sardonic comment on the tendency human beings have to put excessive ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... ago (before I got it) I thought so much of, I give you my word I do not care a pin for. I am sick of it and ashamed of having thought so much of it, and the congratulations I get give me a sort of internal sardonic grin. I think this has come about partly because I did not get the official confirmation of what I had heard for some days, and with my habit of facing the ill side of things I came to the conclusion that Weld had made a mistake, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... With a sardonic smile Willie shook his head and took another cigarette; and just then Christina had to go ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... him had not changed. She was still attracted to him and she still admired him. But the admiration she had felt for his sharp, sardonic handling of his opponents in a court of law seemed a little shallow and a little immature in comparison to the sudden onrush of ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Sardinia, or to some author who sends him a book, or to a minister who has found fault with his diplomacy, there is in all alike the same constant and remarkable play of a bright and penetrating intellectual light, coloured by a humour that is now and then a little sardonic, but more often is genial and lambent. There is a certain semi-latent quality of hardness lying at the bottom of De Maistre's style, both in his letters and in his more elaborate compositions. His writings seem to recall the flavour and bouquet ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge." He quietly took his seat for Middlesex in 1782, and eight years afterwards the resolutions against him were erased from the Journals of the House. He died in 1797, at his house in Grosvenor Square. Wilkes' sallow face, sardonic squint, and projecting jaw, are familiar to us from Hogarth's terrible caricature. He generally wore the dress of a colonel of the militia—scarlet and buff, with a cocked hat and rosette, bag wig, and military boots, and O'Keefe describes seeing him walking in from ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Briony Lodge was open, and an elderly woman stood upon the steps. She watched us with a sardonic eye as we ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... and come away, while you receive Lou's cheery "See you again," and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems, somehow, to miss you and go fluttering like a white moth up over the housetops ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... a table, tall, sardonic, and as I approached he put out his hand and said: "You have grown a bit, Henry, my boy, since I saw you last. How did you leave ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... for dinner. Since he was to sit at the family table, he must fit his dress and manners to the hour. He did not resist the sardonic smile as he put on his fresh patent leathers and his new dinner coat. He recalled Fitzgerald's half-concealed glances of pity the last ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... laid down his rod on the grassy bank and felt for his snuff-box. As he helped himself to a pinch he slyly regarded the faces of his companions; and his own, contracting its muscles to take the dose, seemed to twist itself in a sardonic smile. ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Jarvie's "Friends o' mine, Stanchells—friends o' mine," silenced all disposition to inquiries. We now descended into the lower vestibule, and hallooed more than once for Dougal, to which summons no answer was returned; when Campbell observed with a sardonic smile, "That if Dougal was the lad he kent him, he would scarce wait to get thanks for his ain share of the night's wark, but was in all probability on the full trot ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... friend's statement, from the declamatory inscription on the tomb, but nothing warned him of her presence. He remained indifferent, looking curiously at the adjoining graves, filled with a monstrous desire to laugh, seeing in death only his sardonic buffoon's mask. ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... seized with equal surprise and curiosity: for some extraordinary communication had certainly passed between them. Riccabocca was evidently much agitated, and with emotions not familiar to him. The tears stood in his eyes at the same time that a smile, the reverse of cynical or sardonic, curved his lips; while his wife was leaning her head on his shoulder, her hand clasped in his, and, by the expression of her face, you might guess that he had paid her some very gratifying compliment, of a nature more genuine and sincere than those which characterized his habitual hollow and ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... deadly accuracy among the strenuous emotions in the young man's mind. "Harris—you are an officer of promise. Don't cut that promise short." With a flick of his ashes to one side he turned away. The cigar went back into the corner of his sardonic mouth. ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... into the enclosed passenger pit of the monoplane—a Mayther—his ears seemed literally to be ringing with the drumming, mighty voice of Moyen. But now that voice, instead of merely speaking, rang with sardonic laughter. He had never heard the laughter of Moyen, but he could guess ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... literary portent of all time. Here the Black Country is painted in all its inspissated gloom by a master-hand—sardonic, salubrious, superb.... We approach this work on all-fours. Any other attitude on the part of a reviewer would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... teach me Latin made me detest it. His hair was coarse, black and greasy, his face like those formed in gingerbread, he had the voice of a buffalo, the countenance of an owl, and the bristles of a boar in lieu of a beard; his smile was sardonic, and his limbs played like those of a puppet moved by wires. I have forgotten his odious name, but the remembrance of his frightful precise countenance remains with me, though hardly can I recollect it without trembling; especially when I call to mind our meeting in the gallery, when ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... still I am rather inclined to doubt whether beetles know how to behave at all. I may be prejudiced by my own experiences, but they certainly have been unfortunate. They began early—at my private school, to be precise. I shall never forget the conversation I had, when a new boy, with a sardonic senior who, after putting me through the usual catechism, asked me what I was going to be. I replied that I had not yet decided, whereupon my tormentor, after looking at my feet, which I have never succeeded in growing up to, observed, "Well, if I were you, I think I should emigrate to Colorado ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... books, he cares little for what he hears. There was always present to him a feeling of black care seated behind the horseman,—and would have been equally so had there been no real care present to him. A sardonic melancholy was the characteristic most common to him,—which, however, was relieved by an always present capacity for instant frolic. It was these attributes combined which made him of all satirists the most humorous, and of all humorists the most satirical. It was ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... Emile began, with a sardonic laugh, "the stonemason will carve 'Passer-by, accord a tear, in memory of one that's here!' Oh," he continued, "I would cheerfully pay a hundred sous to any mathematician who would prove the existence of hell to me by ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... smoked cigarettes, yet he took the one offered, fumbling painfully with thick fingers, blushing to the roots of his hair. Then he looked with his warm blue eyes at the almost sardonic, lidded eyes of the foreigner. The latter sat down beside him, and they began to ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Austro-Hungarian Government—playing the role of the wicked partner of the combination—"in full appreciation of our mediatory activity," (so says the German "White Paper" with sardonic humor,) replied to this proposition that, coming as it did after the opening of hostilities, "it ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... beckoning, always challenging, yet always repulsing. Guarding their secrets well. Their rock walls and mighty precipices frowning displeasure at the presumptuous meddling of the intruder, and their valleys gaping in sardonic grins at the puny attempts to wrest their secret from them. Always, the mountains mock, even as they stimulate to greater effort with their wonderful air, and soothe bitter disappointment with the soft caress of twilight's after-glow. I love it—and ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... consider the cost. He credited her with an honest scorn for sentimentality; she would make no effort to glorify him for an act that was so obviously a part of their unsentimental compact. There would be no gushing over this sardonic tribute to her avarice. She would have herself too well in hand ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... very reason," said Danglars with a smile, which he tried to make sardonic, "I prefer M. Andrea Cavalcanti to M. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... soundless laugh of his, but I felt too much touched by the feeling in Ernest's little face to join in the miser's sardonic amusement. When Ernest saw that we moved towards the door, he planted himself in front of it, crying out, 'Mamma, here are some gentlemen in black who ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... sardonic Quick, after taking note of these demonstrations, "Heavens! what a hero I feel myself to be. And to think that when I got back from the war with them Boers, after being left for dead on Spion Kop with a bullet through my lung and mentioned ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... shadows diapered the snow; the air was strangely mild; The valley's girth was dumb with mirth, the laughter of the wild; The still, sardonic laughter of ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... and his uncle were being closely watched? Anxiously she studied his face for some intimation of his thoughts. He was standing there smiling at her, and to her agitated brain it seemed that in his smile there was something sardonic, ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... his reflections, he took from his pocket writing materials, wrote a letter, and inclosed it in an envelope, which he sealed with a bit of moistened bread, and this done, he burst into a sardonic laugh. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... me a very extraordinary question—that is from you—but it appears," here the voice was a little sardonic, "that you had more confidence in me than you admitted. Now you ask about the future. I tell you that I never had more faith in the final outcome of affairs than I have at this moment. There have been difficulties of which the public knew nothing—and ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... see, though his eyes, bright and piercing, contrasted strangely with the deadly pallor of his cheeks. A straggling grey moustache and beard partly concealed his mouth, which was set in a smile half mirthful and half sardonic. I put him down as the cure of a neighbouring hamlet, as he gave us the benediction, and invited us to join him, saying ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... orchard had given her an "upset," and other direct questions; but when she could, she kept silent. She was glad Pete didn't talk to her much. Yet, now and then, she caught his eyes upon her in a look of sardonic enquiry, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... be pretty much the same to me, if you could,' replies the sardonic Pipchin. 'At any rate I'm going. I can't stop here. I should be dead in a week. I had to cook my own pork chop yesterday, and I'm not used to it. My constitution will be giving way next. Besides, I had a very fair connexion at Brighton when I came here—little ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... quick sardonic eye For all the mockeries of life, Beware, in this dark masque of things that seem, Lest even that tragic irony, Which you discern in this our mortal strife, Trick you and trap you, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... pen we wield! What could that have been out of the sardonic Dean? what other child of that age would have used "beloved" as she does? This power of affection, this faculty of beloving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She periled her all upon ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... connected with those of the Comedie, save in one or two remote instances. They must have been included in order to make one more room in the gigantic mansion which the author had planned. His seventh sense of subdivision saw here fresh material to classify. And so these grim, almost sardonic essays were placed where ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... with a sardonic sleekness, "that Lieutenant Keith wants to speak to you. We have ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... accepting but for the fact of their not being purchaseable anywhere.[39] A few copies were sent out to us lately. Half I draw back my hand as I give you this little pamphlet, because I seem to hear dear Mr. Martin's sardonic laughter at my phrase about the Czar. 'If she wink, &c.' Well, I don't generally sympathise with the boasting mania of my countrymen, but it's so much in the blood that, even with me, it exceeds now and then, you observe. Ask him to be as gentle ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... few quick words to them in their own language and they ranged themselves on either side of the cab door. Then the doctor threw it open, and released the detective's wrist. "Get out, if you please, Mr. Brooks," he said, with a sardonic smile. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... in the slow, disdainful fashion she had inherited from her Southern ancestors and without a word pushed the sheet of stamps through the window. That voice, with its hint of sardonic amusement, was like a ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... in person suddenly appeared upon the scene. He stood before the amazed pair with his brown coat thrown over his shoulders, as usual, and his broad-brimmed gray hat pulled down over his ears, gazing at them with his deep, ugly eyes and a sardonic laugh escaping ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... short sardonic laugh and said in an explanatory way to Mr. Cobb, "She's been to Wareham and stayed over night; that isn't much to ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a sardonic smile, plucking a pink wad from the lid of a box of sweetmeats beside her. In her looks and smiles, Frederick felt her cold, wicked enjoyment. And since he was a man and knew he was impotent in the face of such fiendish mockery, a wave of physical fury ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Sally, catching Courtland's eye, showed the whites of her own in a backward glance of mischievous significance to indicate the following Reeds. When they approached, Courtland joined them, and finding himself beside Miss Octavia entered into conversation. Apparently the suppressed passion and sardonic melancholy of that dark-eyed young lady spurred him to a lighter, gayer humor even in proportion as Miss Sally's good-natured levity and sunny practicality always made him serious. They presently fell to the rear with other couples, and were soon ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... A sardonic old man, about two hundred years old, sat on a stepladder, painting a mural he did not like. Back in the days when people aged visibly, his age would have been guessed at thirty-five or so. Aging had touched him that much before the ...
— 2 B R 0 2 B • Kurt Vonnegut
... would have been sardonic, were it not for a few lines around the corners of his eyes which belied any sinister suspicion, spread grimly across the big man's face as he stood looking down on Harry King in the dusk of the unlighted shed. The younger man rose quickly from the ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... and put him to the torture. I will soon see whether he still refuses to speak when I command! Bind that other one, and let him see all that happens; for it will be his turn next, and he may as well know what is in store for him. Ha! ha!" and he laughed again with sardonic fury. ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... below him, standing on the cabin stairs. Her eyes which were very close to his (he was in a crouching posture on the top step) seemed to burn darkly in the vanishing light. On deck the captain's voice was heard sudden and unexpectedly sardonic: "You had better look sharp, if you want ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... locality of half a dozen reefs in the back-blocks; then my friends stowed away their maps and diagrams, and shook hands with me so affectionately—so Germanly, in fact—that I called up a certain sardonic expression of face, as the best safeguard against possible kissing. Finally, when they were seated side by side under the tilt of the spring-cart, Swammerbrunck said, whilst his blue ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Nero shall marry the girl. When she is led out, and Vindex discovers that Epicharis is her mother, he no longer espouses her cause. Then follows the music of the mock marriage, interspersed with dance strains and sardonic choruses by the courtesans and their associates, at last rising to a wild bacchanalian frenzy, in the midst of which Vindex breaks out in a spirited song, with harp accompaniment, and finally hurls invectives at Nero, ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... had the effect of being bathed in moonlight, although much more brilliant than even the light of the full moon. It seemed to him, indeed, almost as if a faint wavering light played around it, giving the stern face of the old Roman a sardonic and evil expression. ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... By chance he was opposite a huge image from the Orient, a hideous, twisted thing with a countenance of sardonic sagacity. As he looked he began to see perverse, insidious resemblances to the physician himself. When Schulze reappeared and busied himself writing, he looked from the stone face to the face of flesh ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... no question as to what she had done, I told myself, bitterly: she had added another link to the chain of evidence about her lover. I could see the same thought in the sardonic gaze which Goldberger turned upon me; but before either of us could say a word, the doctor, with a peremptory gesture, had driven ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... on the dark sardonic face, as the red gleams lighted it, made her start convulsively, as if she would go to him; then controlling herself, she stood silent. He had not seen the movement,—or, if he saw, did not heed it. He did not care to tame her now. The firelight flashed and darkened, the crackling wood ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... over the ills of life, such undoubted kingliness, that every one succumbed and rested gladly on so firm a precedent. Mr. St. George in this brief time had accepted much hospitality, had won a thousand friends, and by Christmas had made himself, through his genial strength to-day and his sardonic sarcasm to-morrow, as thoroughly the autocrat of all the region as ever Mr. Erne had been. For all that men want is a master; give them somebody that will lead, and glad enough are they to follow. But Mr. Erne's supremacy had merely been a matter of birth and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... a convulsive movement crossed the brow of the Constable, and Guarine, when he beheld a sardonic smile begin to curl Vidal's lip, could keep silence no longer. "Vidal," he said, "thou ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... up from the city, slightly more fagged and sardonic than usual, and as he stretched himself out in the big porch-chair he was even more caustic than was his wont about the bareness and emotional sterility of the lives ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... over it in a masterly way, he leaned back in his chair and bestowed upon me an explosion of sardonic, superior, collegiate laughter. ...
— Options • O. Henry
... glimpse of Mr. Livingston's countenance; a more sardonic smile I have never seen—a smile which said as plainly as words, "You are lying." ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... a short season ago was utterly unaware that such a man as Simon MacTaggart existed, or that a woman named Olivia bloomed, a very flower, among the wilds! At whatever angle he viewed the congregated disasters of the past few weeks, he saw Count Victor in their background—a sardonic, smiling, light-hearted Nemesis; and if he detested him previously as a merely possible danger, he hated him now with every fibre of his being as the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... only sixteen—clean-limbed and perfect—but for one thing"—He stopped. He met her quick look of interrogation, however, with a lowering silence that, nevertheless, changed again as he surveyed her erect figure by the faint light of the window with a sardonic smile. "He favors you, I think, and in all but one ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... of it. Great pleasure to have you for a nurse. I'm certainly in luck." Curly did not understand the bitterness in the sardonic face ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... Blount, and the face-wrinkling which was meant to be a sardonic smile turned itself into a painful grin. "Shot to death by a dog! Blenkinsop or some of the others ought to have run that for a head-line." Then, with a twist of the hot eyeballs: "This isn't my ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... yet realized the full significance of the Inspector's first formal words; for the moment Derrick's mind was engrossed by the sardonic irony of Fate. Here it was again! There was something really monotonous in the way in which this peculiar phase of misfortune dogged him. Was he really going to be again charged with an offence he had not committed? He opened his lips ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... silence behind it. The truth that all knew when spoken by her was a kind of shock. The ruffians gaped in breathless attention. Kells looked on with a sardonic grin, but he had grown pale. And upon the face of Cleve shone an ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... circumstances fell in with her inclinations, though she could not help noticing his new habits and peculiarities, she made no protest and very little comment. He saw her rarely, and in time carried himself with a sardonic good humor as surprising to him as inexplicable to her. She seemed as far from him as if she had suddenly turned Eskimo. Once or twice a sense of loathing invaded him, a flame of hatred blazed up, soon suppressed. He was complete master of himself, and his ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... end of the incident, which, since she came of a sporting family, seemed to her slightly ridiculous. Sure enough the little man came pounding behind with his breeches dusty; looked thoroughly annoyed; and was being helped to mount by a policeman when Julia Eliot, with a sardonic smile, turned towards the Marble Arch on her errand of mercy. It was only to visit a sick old lady who had known her mother and perhaps the Duke of Wellington; for Julia shared the love of her sex for the distressed; liked to visit death-beds; threw slippers at weddings; received confidences ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... breeze freshens much," replied Rogers, with sardonic humor, "they'll be giving US a fine ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... transparent sand-fly. She had nothing that you could call a mind or a character, even of the most rudimentary sort. She knew nothing, except how to dance, and she knew that exactly as a kitten knows how to play with a ball of string; she dreamed of diamonds and wonderful restaurants and a sardonic hero nine feet tall with a straight nose and a long chin, who would clutch her passionately in his arms (there was no more real passion in her than there is in a soap-bubble) and murmur vows of eternal adoration in ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... he will. So saying, he from a basket near at hand Heav'd an ox-foot, and with a vig'rous arm 360 Hurl'd it. Ulysses gently bow'd his head, Shunning the blow, but gratified his just Resentment with a broad sardonic smile[94] Of dread significance. He smote the wall. Then thus Telemachus rebuked the deed. Ctesippus, thou art fortunate; the bone Struck not the stranger, for he shunn'd the blow; Else, I had surely thrust my glitt'ring lance Right through thee; then, no hymenaeal rites Of thine ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... emotion natural enough under the circumstances. At last, however, he mastered his irritation to some degree, and spoke his command briefly. "Well, Smithson, apologize to her. It can't be helped." Then his face lighted with a sardonic amusement. "And, Smithson," he went on with a sort of elephantine playfulness, "I shall take it as a personal favor if you will tactfully advise the lady that the goods at Altman and Stern's are really ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... defend myself from the infuriated Westerner with the usual argument, which I shall carry about loaded in all its chambers in my right-hand pocket. I am also aware that less infuriated Easterners, choosing their own more familiar weapon, will inundate my leisure with sardonic inquiries whether I don't consider Oliver Wendell Holmes or Charles Eliot Norton (thus named in full) the equal in culture of the average American woman. Well, I frankly admit these cases and thousands like them; indeed I have had the good fortune to number among ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... of the fray, but now she saw Fra Diavolo's Contra Guerrillas skulking away and the sardonic captain himself fuming in ignoble soreness on his back. "Indeed," with fine scorn she demanded of Ney, "and ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... are up in the lonely mountains," he concluded at length, smiling his queer sardonic smile, "and keep yourself in hand. Put on the brakes when possible. Your experience will thus ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... venture to return to Rome. Whether Catherine's surmise that the letter was a forgery proceeding from the papal court was justified we do not know; the episode is of interest to us now chiefly because it called forth a reply which shows how sardonic the meek of the earth can be. Catherine's trenchant exposure of the weakness of the anonymous correspondent shows her in a new aspect. Terrible is the scorn of the gentle. "He who wrote it does not seem to me to understand his trade very well; he ought to put himself to school," writes ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... the effect of the return to the normal in his step-nephew's tone, or it may have been merely Mr. Hurd's business method, which expelled his next remark from sardonic lips. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... they have all ridden as well as he knows it. But now, among the crowd, when men are turning their horses' heads to the wind, and loud questions are being asked, and false answers are being given, and the ambitious men are congratulating themselves on their deeds, he sits by listening in sardonic silence. "Twelve miles of ground !" he says to himself, repeating the words of some valiant youngster; "if it's eight, I'll eat it." And then when he hears, for he is all ear as well as all eye, when he hears a slight boast from one of his late unfortunate companions, a first small blast of ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... down at her with sardonic contempt, a cowed, self-conscious look on his thick, pale face. The blood began to flow from ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... looked older and care-worn. For the first time she began to wonder about her father. What was he, really, under that calm, fastidiously dressed, handsome exterior? Did he mind the little man with the sardonic smile and the swift unpleasant humor, whose glance reduced the men who served into terrified menials? Her big, blond father, with his rather slow speech, his honest eyes, his slight hesitation before he ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and Judy if I'm near it," said Telford. "I enjoy the sardonic humor with which Punch hustles off his victims. His light-heartedness when doing bloody deeds is ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... drive an abstract right to excess is to commit injustice.... Extreme anarchy and extreme despotism lead to one another. Pride comes before a fall. Too much wit outwits itself. Joy brings tears, melancholy a sardonic smile.'[5] To which one well might add that most human institutions, by the purely technical and professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by becoming obstacles to the very purposes which ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Arabs and the French. I will give, however, a few specimens which I have not been able to find in modern collections, and which are probably of native invention. It will be noticed that they are all more remarkable for force and for a peculiar grim, sardonic humor than for delicacy of wit or grace of expression. Instead of neatly running a subject through with the keen flashing rapier of a witty analogy, as a Spaniard would do, the Caucasian mountaineer roughly knocks it down with the first proverbial club which comes to hand; and the knottier and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... a while, made no reply. The assurance and delight of Berselius as these fancied memories came to him shocked the heart. There was a horrible and sardonic humour in the whole business, a bathos ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... speech. In the pause after the words the King himself hesitated, as if he poised between a heavy rage and a sardonic humour. He deemed, however, that the humour could the more terrify the Archbishop—and, indeed, he was so much upon the joyous side in those summer days that he had ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... jewel in his pocket, and when I returned the lens to him he acknowledged it with a grave inclination of the head. As I looked into his sunken eyes, in which I thought lay a sort of sardonic merriment, the fantastic idea flashed through my mind that I had fallen into the clutches of an expert hypnotist who was amusing himself at my expense, that the miniature rose was a mere hallucination produced by the same means as the notorious ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... reproduction in plaster of one of the most sardonic of Notre Dame's gargoyles seemed to preside over everything—a terrible figure in such ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Cloister. The situations are widely different, but the root of each is identical. In both is developed the mood of passive or active hate, arising from mere instinctive dislike. But while in the earlier poem the theme is treated with boisterous sardonic humour, it is here embodied in the grave figure of a stern, single-minded, relentless hater, a tyrant in both senses of the term. Another poem, representing an act of will, though here it is love, not hate, that impels, is Mesmerism. The intense absorption, the breathless eagerness ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... troops under Sherman. Nor, with the exception of one period of a few hours' duration, did it ever again come under Confederate control. That was when Forrest made his famous raid in 1864, an event which exhibited not only the dash and hardihood of that intrepid leader, but also his strategy and his sardonic humor. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... it means," she responded wearily. "It means that if I continue to hold my head up or dare to look my neighbour in the face I shall be called brazen as well as corrupt," she went on after a moment, a sardonic little twist at the corner of her mouth. "Well, so be it. I have thought of all that. Have no fear for me, my friend. I have never been afraid of the dark,—so why ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... St. Bernard a legitimate pet in the proper sense of the word? As to the bull-dog, I say little. He at least is a good water-dog, and, when he is taught, he will retrieve birds through the heaviest sea as long as his master cares to shoot. But his appearance is sardonic, to say the least of it; he puts me in mind of a prize-fighter coming up for the tenth round when he has got matters all his own way. Happily he is not often kept as a pet; he is usually taken out by fast young men in riverside places, for his company is believed ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... by Herresford!" cried Swinton, hotly. "This is some sardonic jest, in keeping with his donation of a thousand dollars to the Mission Hall, given with one hand and taken away with the other. It nearly landed ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... for you," said Mrs. Clayton, as she arranged pen, ink, and paper, before me, with her usual precision, while a grim, sardonic smile lingered about her features; "several have called, but none ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... intend her to hear him, but, below his breath, he burst into a sardonic, little laugh and an aside to his ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... was popular amongst his friends, Ford's sardonic reference to manslaughter and bounty being repeated often enough in Bill's presence to keep that peace-loving gentleman in a state of trepidation which he sought ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... the shout of demoniacal laughter which arose from some of the fighting men, noting a ferociously sardonic grin upon not a few faces, Laurence felt his former misgivings all return. Accustomed as he was to perilous situations, to horrifying sights, the strain upon his nerves was becoming painfully intense. Fortunate, indeed, for him that those nerves were now hardened to the cold consistency of cast ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... word as to me, he may do as much for you, or more. Copies are at Cambridge; among the Oxonians too; I have with stingy discretion distributed all my copies but two. Old Rogers, a grim old Dilettante, full of sardonic sense, was heard saying, "It is German Poetry given out in American Prose." Friend Emerson ought to be content;—and has now above all things, as I said, to be in no haste. Slow fire does make sweet ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for that!"—and Lysia smiled darkly, while the great eye on her breast flashed forth a sardonic lustre— "Strong as ye all are, and young, ye lack the bravery of the weak old man who, mad as he may be, has at least the courage of his opinions! Who is there here that believes in the Sun as a god, or in Nagaya as a mediator? Not one, . . but ye are cultured ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... he said with a sardonic smile, while I felt his grasp tighten on my shoulder, "the villains have been balked of their prey, have they? We shall see, we shall see. Now, you whelp, look yonder." As he spoke, the pirate uttered a shrill whistle. In ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne |
