"Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him in a vision world; but across the clearness of the vision now somehow obtruded the quiet cynicism, the genial scoff of the Senator's arguments, leaving fierce physical unrest and confused cross-currents of desire. A mist seemed to blurr all life. The hemlocks no longer chanted riotous gladness. There was a dirge to-night of futility, monotonous age-old eons of useless effort, the useless fall ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... people always grow splenetic— Why, goodness knows—at everything pathetic, And scoff it down. We all know how, of late, An unfledged, upstart undergraduate Presumed, with brazen insolence, to declare That "William ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... on it their serious ideas of international instruction. It was said that the Englishman takes his pleasures sadly; and the pleasure of despising foreigners is one which he takes most sadly of all. He comes to scoff and does not remain to pray, but rather to excommunicate. Hence in international relations there is far too little laughing, and far too much sneering. But I believe that there is a better way which largely consists of laughter; a form of friendship between nations which is actually ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... then, as the little Bible fell into her room. She took it up, noticed the red lines, and some precious promises they was scored under, and by degrees she found peace.—Eh, but William must know nothing of this; how he would scoff if he found his wife reading the Bible!—But what's this? William finds his missus quite a changed woman; she's twice the wife to him she was, and his home ain't like the same place. What's the ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... am waiting. What it is Leroy would never do?" The voice carried a scoff with it, the implication that his very presence had stricken ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... year, in many families, shoes were not worn. Boots, a fur hat and a coat, with buttons on each side, attracted the gaze of the beholder and sometimes received censure or rebuke. A stranger from the old States chose to doff his ruffles, his broad-cloth and his cue rather than endure the scoff ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... scoff at what was, and some shrink from what may be Or is; but they all must be pleased with a place Where even what was looks enchanting in Raby, And where even what is is redeemed ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... reptile fool, is he who fawns on men Before their faces, while his heart is black With malice, and, when they be gone, his tongue Backbites them. Openly Polydamas Flung back upon the prince his taunt and scoff: "O thou of living men most mischievous! Thy valour—quotha!—brings us misery! Thine heart endures, and will endure, that strife Should have no limit, save in utter ruin Of fatherland and people for thy sake! Ne'er may such wantwit valour craze my soul! Be mine to cherish wise discretion aye, ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... choosing to hear any news from without of death or sick folk. Others, inclining to the contrary opinion, maintained that to carouse and make merry and go about singing and frolicking and satisfy the appetite in everything possible and laugh and scoff at whatsoever befell was a very certain remedy for such an ill. That which they said they put in practice as best they might, going about day and night, now to this tavern, now to that, drinking without stint or measure; and on this wise they did yet more freely in other folk's ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... may open your eyes and stare! But it's so. You and I may not see the day, but they'll see it. Mind I tell you; they'll see it. Nancy, you've heard of steamboats, and maybe you believed in them—of course you did. You've heard these cattle here scoff at them and call them lies and humbugs,—but they're not lies and humbugs, they're a reality and they're going to be a more wonderful thing some day than they are now. They're going to make a revolution in this world's affairs that will make men dizzy to contemplate. I've been watching—I've been ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... degeneracy. Its trend is downward; its centuries of history tell just this one story. The actual stage of to-day..is a moral abomination. In Chicago, at least, it is trampling on the Sabbath with defiant scoff. It is defiling our youth. It is making crowds familiar with the play of criminal passions. It is exhibiting women with such approaches to nakedness as can have no other design than to breed lust behind the onlooking eyes. It is furnishing candidates for the brothel. ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... Father said. And he was so careless a man, was M. Baldwin. And then with tears in his eyes the priest told Brice how, from the olden times when Baldwin, pretending to scoff at the efforts of the missionaries, had yet ever been their best and ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... Dreams of things that are to be. Vengeance is the poet's trade, Come, iambus, to my aid 'Gainst the fools who scoff at me. All the world will laugh with glee When they mark my verses free Grasp thee like a pillory, And thy scorn with scorn repaid, Neobule. E'en in death thou canst not flee From the doom the Fates decree. When my satire's keenest blade Cuts thee to ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... the impost is the smallest evil. They smite the tax-gatherer, but fall prostrate at the feet of the contemptible prince for whom the tax-gatherer plies his craft; they will even revile the troublesome and importunate monk, or sometimes they will scoff at the sleek and arrogant priest, while such is their infatuation that they would risk their lives in defense of that cruel Church which has inflicted on them hideous calamities, but to which they still cling, as it it were the dearest ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... speech many of the band shook their heads, and said to themselves, "Now the Sheriff will think that we are cowards, and folk will scoff throughout the countryside, saying that we fear to meet these men." But they said nothing aloud, swallowing their words and doing as Robin ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... yer wages; she 's dreadful close," chuckled Captain Pharo, as we tucked the bag of meal away on the carriage floor. "See when ye'll scoff in my sails, and block up the ship's channel ag'in! Now then; touch and go is a good pilot," and we struck off on a divergent road at ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... scoff on, while I hereby proclaim, That flight may be courage, and fear but a name; That boasting is good, when 'tis good for the cause, But, in sight of cold steel, we should honour the laws; That powder and shot make men swallow their bile— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... gatherings. For Mr. Pericles said: "If that they will go 'so,' I will be amused." He presented a top-like triangular appearance for one staggering second. The Tinleys did not go 'so' at all, and consequently they lost the satirical man, and were called 'the ballet-dancers' by Adela which thorny scoff her sisters permitted to pass about for a single day, and no more. The Tinleys were their match at epithets, and any low contention of this kind obscured for them the social summit they hoped to attain; the dream ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Grand Jury Berry was indicted. His trial followed soon, and the town turned out to see it. Some came to laugh and scoff, but these, his enemies, were silenced by the spectacle of his grief. In vain the lawyer whom he had secured showed that the evidence against him proved nothing. In vain he produced proof of the slow ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... To Tisipherne the damsel turning right, "And what say you, my noble lord ?" quoth she. He taunting said, "I that am slow to fight Will follow far behind, the worth to see Of this your terrible and puissant knight," In scornful words this bitter scoff gave he. "Good reason," quoth the king, "thou come behind, Nor e'er compare thee ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... be somewhat advantageous. It is always uncertain whether the individual spectator who has witnessed an amateur performance of a piece will be anxious to see how it really acts or determine never to suffer from it again. Perhaps it is rather cheap to scoff at the amateur performances, some of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... malice vent her rage aloud, Let bold blasphemers scoff; The Lord our God shall judge the proud, And cut the ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... before I take up my tale, I want to anticipate the doubting Thomases of psychology, who are prone to scoff, and who would otherwise surely say that the coherence of my dreams is due to overstudy and the subconscious projection of my knowledge of evolution into my dreams. In the first place, I have never been a zealous student. I graduated last of my class. I cared more for athletics, and—there ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... concave mirror, showing nothing behind, and in looking into which they see only their own distorted images, like the reflection of a face in a spoon. Hence it needs not surprise that they are not very devout worshippers; it is a great wonder they do not openly scoff. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... brothers, half aside And fingering at the hair about his lip, To prick us on to combat 'Like to like! The woman's garment hid the woman's heart.' A taunt that clenched his purpose like a blow! For fiery-short was Cyril's counter-scoff, And sharp I answered, touched upon the point Where idle boys are cowards to their shame, 'Decide it here: why not? we are three ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... her nobility: which is all the more reason why I shouldn't take advantage of it. We may scoff at the social inequalities as much as we please, but we can't laugh them out of court. As between a young woman who is an heiress in her own right, and a briefless lawyer, there are differences which a decent man is bound to efface. And I haven't ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... worship, mother mine. A great curiosity drew me—I desired to see with my own eyes, and hear with mine own ears, this adoration of the Christ, at which my teachers scoff. But I was caught up in a mighty wave of organ-music that surged from this low earth heavenwards to break against the footstool of God in the crystal firmament. And suddenly I knew what my soul was pining ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... scoff at my words," murmured the old man, in soft, steady tones, "and yet there was no one to tell me on my way here that a son and heir had been born to the house of Kingsland within ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... of the race will scoff and say they never heard of such a thing as a singing and religious red man. Those who know him well will say, "Yes, but you have given to your eastern Indian songs and ceremonies which belong to the western ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... large, with which you twit me, I hereby renounce. She will back me up in any honest work—she says so. I've confessed the way I wasted the last three years. She said she is glad she did not know me then. Oh my, William, it is all very well for you to scoff. I'm not ashamed to tell you what it is that has brought me to my senses. Don't scoff, but help a lame dog over a stile. My object in life is to have an object in life at present. Give me your counsel, and deserve the benediction of someone besides ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... crest, Minerva's helmet, fierce and bold, Or all of emblem gay that dress'd Capricious goddesses of old? "Thee higher honours yet await:- Haste, then, thy triumphs quick prepare, Thy trophies spread in haughty state, Sweep o'ei the earth, and scoff ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Prophet's versus. The sinner was a scrupulous follower in the presence of the faithful; but when their backs were turned, I know few who relished a porker more lusciously, or avoided water with more scrupulous care. Yet why should I scoff at poor Ali? Joseph and I had done ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... respect, esteem, and affection, as a divine and Christian gentleman, and cherish his past relations to me, yet I have in these letters written to him, and of him, just as I would have done had he lived in France or Germany, a stranger to me, and given to the world the refined scoff of the one, or the muddy transcendentalism of ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... Jane passed to anger against herself. This was soon followed by a mood of self-denunciation, by astonishment at the follies of which she had been guilty, by shame for them. She could not scoff or scorn herself out of the infatuation. But at least she could control herself against yielding to it. Recalling and reviewing all he had said, she—that is, her vanity—decided that the most important remark, the only really important remark, was his declaration ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... "Do not scoff at Robak," he said; "I know him; he is a clever priest. That little worm130 has gnawed a larger nut than you; I have seen him but once, but as soon as I set eyes on him I noticed what sort of bird he was; the Monk turned away his eyes, fearing that ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... tongue; he does nothing but scoff at their credulity, and when they reach the house the first thing he does is to go straight to the dining-room and tell the whole ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... philosophy? Hast thou not said, 'Be virtuous, be good, be just, for the sake of mankind: but there is no life after this life'? Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous and misshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou done to me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this world, the hopes of another! Is there no other life? Well, then, I want thy gold, that at least I may hasten to make the best ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... us are asking, "What is the way out?" As for myself, I confess to being only a student. I have no word of sneer or scoff for any mail's honest thinking, who is sincerely trying to uplift his brothers and sisters; and yet I must say that, as yet, I have not been able to become a disciple of any of the new systems that have been presented. I feel something like the ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... where a portion of our citizens, though not all, are commissioned with the rest, Heaven blesses, and Fortune aids the struggle: but where you send out a general and an empty decree and hopes from the hustings, nothing that you desire is done; your enemies scoff, and your allies die for fear of such an armament. For it is impossible—ay, impossible, for one man to execute all your wishes: to promise, [Footnote: Chares is particularly alluded to. The "promises of Chares" passed into a proverb.] and assert, and accuse this or that person, is possible; ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... are described in the Book of Wisdom who say: "Let unrighteousness be our law," 2, 11. Also in Psalms, 12, 4: "Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?" Again in Psalm 73. "They scoff, and in wickedness utter oppression: they speak loftily," etc. Such were the giants who withstood the Holy Spirit to his face, who, through the mouth of Lamech, Noah and the sons of Noah, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... savage delight in gazing on this sad pilgrimage. At the foot of the glacier, which stood out sheer and steep before me, I felt so depressed, and my nerves were so overwrought, that I said I wished to turn back. I was thereupon met by the coarse sarcasm of my guide, who seemed to scoff at my weakness. My consequent anger braced up my nerves, and I prepared myself at once to climb the steep walls of ice as quickly as possible, so that this time it was he who found difficulty in keeping up with me. We accomplished the walk over the back of the glacier, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done?—the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Krech simply. "Just the sort of blasted fool I would be in your place, or that nine out of ten men would be. Because the threat is directed at you, you scoff at ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... man scoff; lest he drives away the means of real information.—And let all men watch, for the increase ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... can tell how hard it is to climb The steep, where Fame's proud temple shines afar! Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime Has felt the influence of malignant star, And waged with Fortune an eternal war! Checked by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown, And Poverty's unconquerable bar, In life's low vale remote has pined alone, Then dropt into the grave, unpitied ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... Bernard paying no attention to the expression in Godefroid's eyes, "even I, a child of the eighteenth century, fed on Voltaire, Diderot, Helvetius,—I, a son of the Revolution, who scoff at all that antiquity and the middle-ages tell us of demoniacal possession,—well, monsieur, I affirm that nothing but such possession can explain the condition of my child. As a somnambulist she has never been able to tell ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... the raised throne of his council chamber. All the Lords of his Council were there and all in black. There was Norfolk with his yellow face who feigned to laugh and scoff, now that he had proved himself no lover of the Queen's. There was Gardiner of Winchester, sitting forward with his cruel and eager eyes upon the table. Next him was the Lord Mayor, Michael Dormer, and the Lord Chancellor. And so round the horse-shoe table against ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... fight, men who had never turned a card in their lives, and who doubted the rumors current in the sporting world until actually in the room and listening to the faro-dealer's cold and impassive account of the men and the battle. And more often than not these curious souls, who came to scoff, remained to play. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... were first outlaws, then ye proved thieves, And now all carelessly ye scoff at death. Both of your fathers were good, honest men; Your mother lives, their widow, in good fame; But you are scapethrifts, unthrifts, villains, knaves, And as ye lived by ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... its way, but he sings its praises till we turn against it as we used to do in the Fourth Reader Class, when we all with one accord turned against "Teacher's Pet." Teacher's Pet might be dowered with all the virtues, but we of the commonality would have none of them. We chose to scoff at ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Nothing moves you; You scoff even at your own calamity— And such calamity! how wert thou fallen 20 Son of the Morning! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... scoff unto Joseph Carnaby, thus accosting him, whom his shirt, being made stiffer than usual for the occasion, rubbed ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... what am I? The victim of infidelity and you, the bearer of a cursed existence, the scoff and scorn of the world, the monument of a broken vow and a guilty life, a being scourged by the scorpion lash of conscience, blasted by periodical insanity, pelted by the winter's storm, scorched by the summer's heat, withered by starvation, hated by man, and touched into my inmost spirit ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... presently. When the three came back, like furious creatures, flushed with the rage which the work they had been about put them into, they came up to the Spaniards, and told them what they had done, by way of scoff and bravado; and one of them stepping up to one of the Spaniards, as if they had been a couple of boys at play, takes hold of his hat, as it was upon his head, and giving it a twirl about, jeering in his face, says he to him, "And you, Seignior Jack Spaniard, shall have the same ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... sticking point only a half hour before, was the result of considerable deliberation. He had argued with himself and had made up his mind to find out for himself just what these people did. He was finding out, certainly. His motives were good and he had come with no desire to scoff, but, for the life of him, he could not help feeling like a criminal. Incidentally, it provoked him ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... outward Infallibility, concerning which, however, the differences were scarcely less or fewer than those which it was to heal; an Infallibility which taken literally and unqualified, became the source of perplexity to the well-disposed, of unbelief to the wavering, and of scoff and triumph to the common enemy, and which was, therefore, to be qualified and limited, and then it meant so munch and so little that to men of plain understandings and single hearts it meant nothing at all. It resided here. No! there. ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... inner history, as it is known to God, minutely revealed to your own mind, and to the assembled jury of the universe? Will your thinking, or saying, that the whole is a fiction, make it so? Will your scoff at God's revelation of the future prevent the dead from rising, or the Judge from appearing? Will a foolish jest, or a proud callousness, or a subtle argument, or a brave indifference to what others fear, enable you, on the resurrection morning, to shut your ears against the sound of the ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... permitted to establish themselves in the island, nor to go upon voyages of discovery. Such were some of the restrictions upon trade which Spain imposed upon her colonies, and which were followed up by others equally illiberal. Her commercial policy has been the scoff of modern times; but may not the present restrictions on trade, imposed by the most intelligent nations, be equally the wonder and ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... looked for, since this was their first real hike. After one experience every fellow might be expected to know better, and scoff at the idea of a true scout going hungry as long as camp stores abounded, and a fire could ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... reigns of the Ptolemies, when high feeling was sadly wanting in all classes of society, when literature and art were alike in a very low state, that we may place the rise of caricature in Egypt. We find drawings made on papyrus to scoff at what the nation used to hold sacred. The sculptures on the walls of the temples are copied in little; and cats, dogs, and monkeys are there placed in the attitudes of the gods and kings of old. In one picture we have the mice attacking a castle defended by the cats, copied from a battle-scene ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... way," observed the wily step-father, beating a retreat so hastily that Eddie missed the opportunity to scoff. But the contemplative smile remained just ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... purified? And if it should be answered, through and under Christianity, the fool in his heart would scoff and say: 'What woman thinks of religion in her youthful courtship?' No; but it is not what she thinks of, but what thinks of her; not what she contemplates in consciousness, but what contemplates her, and reaches ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... magistrates of the Gentiles, and among their mighty men; and it shall come to pass that Darsie Latimer shall be delivered, even if it were at the expense of half my substance." And I said, "Nay, my brother, go not, for they will but scoff at and revile thee; but hire with thy silver one of the scribes, who are eager as hunters in pursuing their prey, and he shall free Darsie Latimer from the men of violence by his cunning, and thy soul shall be guiltless of evil towards the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... said anything so idiotic as these guessers put forth in the name of science, scientists would have a great time ridiculing the sacred pages, but men who scoff at the recorded interpretation of dreams by Joseph and Daniel seem to be able to swallow the amusing interpretations ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... Comedies; he promises you that his precepts will lead you to happiness, though he uses neither flattery, nor bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. I scoff at Cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... That shop may be closed; but oh! what a sign of the times, that it has been permitted to exist for one day. It appears to me, my Father, that the days of your sway are numbered in Spain; that you will not be permitted much longer to plunder her, to scoff at her, and to scourge her with scorpions, as in bygone periods. See I not the hand on the wall? See I not in yonder letters a 'Mene, mene, Tekel, Upharsin'? Look to ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... and lovingly, gratefully held that of John, as the Apostle, and the robber-chief now penitent and forgiven, together left the wilderness; within sight of the astonished band; some of whom were greatly touched by what they had seen and heard, while others were ready to scoff at what they called ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... 'Atheist! How sinfully the wicked scoff!' And sent the old men on their way, And drove the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... age of incredulity, but Salemina, Francesca, and I have not come to Ireland to scoff, and whatever we do we shall not go to the length of doubting the fairies; for, as Barney O'Mara says, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... scoff, on every side Great hints of Him go by,—Souls that are hourly crucified On some ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... would make short work of the performer. It was market day, and the singer was selling printed sheets of poesy. The old tune was fairly correct, but the words were strange and sad. "When Britain first at Hell's command Prepared to cross the Irish main, Thus spake a prophet in our land, 'Mid traitors' scoff and fools' disdain, 'If Britannia cross the waves, Irish ever shall be slaves.' In vain the warning patriot spoke, In treach'rous guise Britannia came—Divided, bent us to her yoke, Till Ireland rose, in Freedom's name, and Britannia boldly braves! Irish are no longer slaves." ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... of prayer went up, and there were none to scoff, when the aged man bent his knee, and lifted his heart to God in prayer, beseeching him, for Jesus Christ's sake, to have mercy upon their souls. Many prayed in that hour of trial that never prayed before. It was an hour that closed the scorner's lip, and made the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... many an unfortunate female, who has once strayed into the thorny paths of vice, would gladly return to virtue, was any generous friend to endeavour to raise and re-assure her; but alas! it cannot be, you say; the world would deride and scoff. Then let me tell you, Madam, 'tis a very unfeeling world, and does not deserve half the blessings which a bountiful Providence ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... everything is in the heart, and that nothing is at all if we do not feel it. Sometimes I have spoken of these things to my mother, but she does not see as I do. I dare not tell my father all I think, and Juste is so much a creature of moods that I am never sure whether he will be sensible and kind, or scoff. One can not bear to be laughed at. And as for my sister, she never thinks; she only lives; and she looks it—looks beautiful. But there, dear Lucie, I must not tire you with my childish philosophy, though I feel no longer a child. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... separation destroy that greatness. Once disunited, we are no longer great. The nations of the earth who have looked upon you as a formidable Power, and rising to untold and immeasurable greatness in the future, will scoff at you. Your flag, that now claims the respect of the world, that protects American property in every port and harbor of the world, that protects the rights of your citizens everywhere, what will become of it? What becomes of its glorious influence? It is gone; and with it ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Her neighbours scoff, and her menace, But saddened friends grieve at her sore disgrace, Love, through their heart, in fervour rills, Each one respects this plaintivest of girls; And many a pitying soul a prayer said, That ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... to my sceptical friend: "Those who praise the simple life and those who scoff at it are both very extravagant as a rule. Let the matter be stated temperately. The tramp does not want a world of tramps—that would never do. The tramps—better call them the rebels against modern life—are perhaps only the first searchers for new life. They know themselves ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... sped from the shadow of the forest. Each day we went farther afield, and each night trooped merrily in through the gates with hopes of homes and clearings rising in our hearts—until the motionless figure of the young Virginian met our eye. It was then that men began to scoff at him behind his back, though some spoke with sufficient backwoods bluntness to his face. And yet he gave no sign of anger or impatience. Not so the other leaders. No sooner did the danger seem past than bitter strife sprang up ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... her cheeks as she spoke, and Wilhelm was not sufficiently blase to scoff at the doting nonsense of a love-sick woman. Love has enormous power, and at its heat all firmness, all resistance, melts away. Pilar's affection filled Wilhelm with heartfelt emotion and gratitude. He denied himself ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Suffering. They must hear the curse pronounced, and then depart into the world which has begun to grow thorns for them. Yes, sufferings after death. What is history but the story of punishment? When men scoff at what is called eternal punishment they forget, or, perhaps, have never given it a thought, that the punishment of the first crime is going on at the present moment. Thorns and briars are but parables. They are real, it is true. Man must wrestle with his mother earth for every bit ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... to scoff these thoughts away and when they would not leave him, he called himself a simpleton, scolded himself for his fastidious taste, and resolved to start ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... make him see visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades women that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really means them to do it for his. He steals the mother's milk and blackens it to make printer's ink to scoff at her and glorify ideal women with. He pretends to spare her the pangs of childbearing so that he may have for himself the tenderness and fostering that belong of right to her children. Since marriage began, the great artist has been known as a bad husband. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... wrong? Pity that so many daring, honest men should have been spitted on rapiers, cloven with sabres, riddled with bullet-holes, for the sake of a vain breath, emptier than the glass he had raised to his lips last night! And yet—he might search, and deny, and argue, and scoff—honour remained a fact. No, not a fact, a law. A law having rules, and conditions and penalties and rewards all defined in the human heart, all equally beyond the range of the human intelligence. His brain could not imagine ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... parents' deep concern, and earned cries to God in their behalf can forget them—they must, they do, at times, affect them. While any thing of this nature remains, there is hope. Some, who in early life, scoff at warning and counsel, are afterwards brought to repentance: And such often testify, that impressions made by parental faithfulness in their tender years, were the means of their awakening and amendment. This should encourage those whose children give them little hope, to persevere ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... scoff, malign, or ... worse! Thou hast an independent purse; Alike to thee its smile or sneer, It hath no power to cause thee fear, Nor is its ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... population of habitual criminals which forms a class by itself. Habitual criminals are not to be confounded with the working or any other class; they are a set of persons who make crime the object and business of their lives; to commit crime is their trade; they deliberately scoff at honest ways of earning a living, and must accordingly be looked upon as a class of a separate and distinct character from the rest of the community. According to police estimates this class consists of between 50,000 and 60,000 persons in England ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... I've got an appetite. I could scoff iron-filings an' horseshoe nails an' thank you kindly, ma'am, for a ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... conquered. The bitterness of spirit which she carried about with her took the form of a scoffing pessimism. A hard laugh at the things which made other people shake their heads and uplift their hands; a ready scoff at all tenderness; a sneer at anything which could by any stretch of imagination be called good; a determined running up of what was hard, sordid, and worldly, and a persistent and utter skepticism as to the existence of the reverse of those things; ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... present writer of The present poem—of—I know not what— A tendency to under-rate and scoff At human power and virtue, and all that; And this they say in language rather rough. Good God! I wonder what they would be at! I say no more than hath been said in Dante's Verse, and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... out of Sicily, who would answer for his return? Pythias made reply that he had a friend, who would become security for his return; and while Dionysius, the miserable man who trusted nobody, was ready to scoff at his simplicity, another Pythagorean, by name of Damon, came forward, and offered to become surety for his friend, engaging, if Pythias did not return according to promise, to suffer death ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and an idol-breaker; but his is a kindlier irony, a less incisive philosophy. Perhaps, however, this influence led to lack of faith in his own work, to his loss of an ideal, which Zola thinks the real secret of his sudden change from novelist to journalist. Voltaire taught him to scoff and disbelieve, to demand "a quoi bon?" and that took the heart out of him. He was rather fond of exposing abuses, a habit that appears in those witty letters to the Gaulois which in 1878 obliged him to suspend that journal. His was a positive mind, interested in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... by Hills and Field we may find such abundant errata, reducing the text to nonsense or to blasphemy, making the Scriptures contemptible to the multitude, who came to pray, and not to scoff. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and love their business. No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect we hear too much of it in literature. The weather is regarded as the very nadir and scoff of conversational topics. And yet the weather, the dramatic element in scenery, is far more tractable in language, and far more human both in import and suggestion, than the stable features of the landscape. Sailors and shepherds ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dare be so prophane To mock and jeer and scoff At holy things, or holy men, The Lord shall cut ...
— Divine Songs • Isaac Watts
... to the bosom of the Almighty Father, after alighting, for one painful moment, upon the confines of the lower world. As it was, custom ordained that there should be no mourning for what had never really been. Anguish, hope, and the patient love at which we do not scoff when the mother-bird broods over the eggs that may never hatch—these were to be no more named or remembered. In silence and without sympathy she must endure her disappointment. The tenderest woman about whose knees cluster living ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... her? Jealous they Who scoff at buyers in true love's mart. Who can my sound good sense gainsay If I confess I ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a patronising manner at that humble follower of the great investigator, but, as a matter of fact, we should have been just as dull ourselves. We should not even have risen to the modest level of a Scotland Yard Bungler. We should simply have ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... had assembled in the square, despite the increasing rain. Many had come to scoff. What a farce it all would be! They did well, however, to wait two days! The rain was almost over. It would probably stop by the time ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... word had long been a scoff on the lips of some in Nethermuir, but even the scoffers had to confess that, to some of the missioners at ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... consented to hear Mass, and St. Cloud was the place where this ancient usage was first re-established. He directed the ceremony to commence sooner than the hour announced in order that those who would only make a scoff at it might not arrive until the service ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Sea Queen, but by some mischance, ship and figurehead never came together, and the old wood-carver left it to his daughter, in lieu of other property. It has not been wholly unproductive, Mrs. Bruce fancies, for the casual passers-by, like those who came to scoff and remained to pray, go into the shop to ask questions about the Sea Queen and buy chops ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... accustomed to say, "It is a pity he is not an ENGLISHMAN." It is pleasant, I say, to trace this "certain condescension" in the good old times. Jacob Rathgeb (1592) says the English are magnificently dressed, and extremely proud and overbearing; the merchants, who seldom go unto other countries, scoff at foreigners, who are liable to be ill-used by street boys and apprentices, who collect in immense crowds and stop the way. Of course Cassandra Stubbes, whose mind was set upon a better country, has little good to say ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dormienda"; Lucretius, of course, gloried in the thought that there is no life beyond. In the following century the learned Pliny could write of death as the relapsing into the same nothingness as before we were born, and could scoff at the absurdities of the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... with clasped hands and eager eyes, listening to the exhortations of the priests, and ready, as might be seen from their earnest gaze, to suffer martyrdom in the cause. More, however, stood indifferently round, or, after listening to a few words, walked on with a laugh or a scoff; indeed, preaching had already done all that lay in its power. All those who could be moved by exhortations of this kind were there, and upon the rest the discourses and sermons ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... the Coffee-man to greet you, With welcome Sir, let me entreat you, To tell me what you'l please to have, For I'm your humble, humble slave; But if you ask, what good does Coffee? He'l answer, Sir, don't think I scoff yee, If I affirm there's no disease Men have that ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... out of countenance some preacher of rather more than usual energy and zeal, have known one of this band pierced by 'a dart from the archer,' convinced that religion is 'the one thing needful,' and though he came 'to scoff, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... adviser of Queen Caroline. Clever, affable, unprincipled, and cynical, he was a perfect type of the Georgian courtier to whom loyalty, patriotism, honesty, and honor were so many synonyms for folly. He was effeminate in habits and appearance, but notoriously licentious; he affected to scoff at learning but made some pretense to literature, and had written 'Four Epistles after the Manner of Ovid', and numerous political pamphlets. Pope, who had some slight personal acquaintance with him, disliked his political connections and probably despised his verses, and in the 'Imitation' ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... Jupiter we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or scoff. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... of his day in England; half parson and half journalist; loyal to the bone; courageous to the bone; not an originating man, but original; a receiver, and, through his own personality, a transmitter of great thoughts to the masses; a fighting theologian; a fighting politician; a howling scoff to orthodoxy; a flying flag and peal of trumpet and tuck of drum to freedom everywhere. This ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... en fergit de distress, En dem w'at stan's by ter scoff, For de harder de pullin', de longer de res', En de bigger de feed ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... I have a shred of reputation left? Already I am supposed to be your mistress. Everybody knows; nobody cares. There are so many living that way here. If you told them we were innocent they would scoff at us. If you go they will ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... have been resorted to in any civilized state, or that it should have been transferred by Plato to an ideal or imaginary one, is very singular to us. The most extreme democracy of modern times has never thought of leaving government wholly to chance. It was natural that Socrates should scoff at it, and ask, 'Who would choose a pilot or carpenter or flute-player by lot' (Xen. Mem.)? Yet there were many considerations which made this mode of choice attractive both to the oligarch and to the democrat:—(1) It seemed to recognize that one man was as good ...
— Laws • Plato
... judge to say that?" asked the doctor, trying to scoff, but not a little pleased. "I'm sure I can't tell you, Mrs. Graham, only the idea has grown of itself in my mind, as all right ideas do, and everything that I can see seems to favor it. You may think that it is too early to decide, but I see plainly ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... saucy Jade; Sure the Wench is tipsy! How can you see me made [To him.] The Scoff of such a ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... it, of course they will. You surely cannot suppose I should, in cold blood, sit down to write a story in which nobody was to fall in love or be in love! Sir, scoff as you may, love is the one vital principle in all romance. Not only does your cheek flush and your eye sparkle, till "heart, brain, and soul are all on fire," over the burning words of some Brontean Pythoness, but when you open the last thrilling work of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rivers. Dutch patriots declare with legitimate pride, 'God gave us the sea, but we made the shore,' and no one who has seen the artificial barrier that guards the mainland from the Hook to the Texel will disparage their achievement or scoff at ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... Suffering and enduring anguish. They who once on bounty feasted, Now enclosed in pangs of hunger; They who were the poor's oppressors, Now oppressed and trodden under. Now destroyers are destroyed, Scoffers are with scoff betaken, And the lofty are made humble; And he shudders to behold them. Then an awful oath is spoken, Bidding to unbar the passage; And the burdened words are answered With another oath as fearful From the fierce and sullen keeper; And the ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... physicians scoff at the ancient authorities who dominated medical thinking for so many centuries. The seventeenth-century physician striving to reduce the frightful inroads that disease made into the colony at Jamestown may have ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... generous feeling. Doubtless, he also, whose blood received a mingling tide from his proud mother—he, the acknowledged focus of the kingdom's wealth and nobility, had been taught to repeat my father's name with disdain, and to scoff at my just claims to protection. I strove to think that all this grandeur was but more glaring infamy, and that, by planting his gold-enwoven flag beside my tarnished and tattered banner, he proclaimed not his superiority, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... needs a perito is a perrito (little dog)!" exclaimed Father Damaso, with a scoff. "One would have to be more of a brute than the natives, who erect their own houses, if he did not know how to build four walls and put a covering over them. That's all that ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... she exclaimed; "ay, possibly! but would the scorn of any other man so have crushed self-esteem? The injuries of the wicked do not sour us against the good; but the scoff of the good leaves us malignant against virtue itself. Any other man! Tut! Genius is bound to be indulgent. It should know human errors so well—has, with its large luminous forces, such errors itself when it deigns to be human, that, where others may scorn, genius ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been inclined to scoff at this apparition as a heretical innovation, there was still the story of Concepcion, the Demon Vaquero, whose terrible riata was fully as potent as the whaler's harpoon. Concepcion, when in the flesh, had been a celebrated herder of cattle and ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... love. But," his voice mastered by emotion, "how dare I say such words to you? In the sphere in which you live they would be considered a dastardly insult—one must not dare to move one step from the beaten track of custom. The world would scoff at the idea that my love for you is more sacred and reverent than that of a man who, inspired by a momentary passion for a woman and desiring her, obtains his end by a simple and speedy means, without reflection ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... is a mere social bribe. Hofman could fill a Bowery dance-hall with the elect; you only have to lead them to the latest architectural vagary on Fifth Avenue. They are bound to be there, for, even while they scoff, they like to keep an eye on Mrs. Lloyd Avalons for fear she may prove to be worth knowing after they have snubbed her; so play your best. It may lead to other engagements ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... high, So noble was his manly front, So calm his steadfast eye;— The rabble rout forebore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through all the people crept, And some that came to scoff at him, ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... well knowing that every sip, in itself a delight, brought him a step nearer to agony and death! When she should wake, and he let the light fall upon her face, he knew—so he said to himself—he knew the likeness would vanish in an appalling unlikeness, a mockery, a scoff of the whole night and its lovely dream—in a face which, if beautiful as that of an angel, not being Juliet's would be to him ugly, unnatural, a discord with the music of his memory. Still the night was checkered with moments ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... was going on, behold, up came a merchant riding on a she-mule and followed by two black slaves, and brake a way through the people, saying, "O folk, are ye not ashamed to mob this stranger and make mock of him and scoff at him?" And he went on to rate them, till he drave them away from Ma'aruf, and none could make him any answer. Then he said to the stranger, "Come, O my brother, no harm shall betide thee from these folk. Verily they have no shame."[FN18] So he took him and carrying him to a spacious ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... boss of more religious people than anybody, and though you may belong to any other kind of church, and when you are home you don't care a continental for any religion except your own, or your wife's religion, and you act like an infidel, and scoff at good people, when you get to Rome and see the churches thicker than saloons in Milwaukee, and everybody attending church and looking pious, you catch the fever, and try to forget bad things you ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck |
