"Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of thy death, the seven old men to whom obedience was commanded by the chieftain, curse thee because thou borest away with thee the soul of their hero. In their addresses to the people, with scorn and scoff upon their lips, they sneer and call thee 'WOMAN;' but the people weep, and pray: Lord Christ, Son of the Virgin, give to the maiden ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... at her aunt, whose head was bent over her writing, the smooth bands of her silky, brown hair shining brightly in the lamp-light. No doubt some, perhaps most, grown-ups would scoff at her tale if she told it, Mollie thought. Grown-up people as a rule love best to jog along on well-trodden, safe, commonplace paths, and avoid adventurous by-ways, but Aunt Mary, Mollie felt sure, was an anti-jogger, so to speak, and would always choose ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... such pranks to draw people who scoff? It is They to whose critical words you are deaf. Though in your country you are not a prophet, is This how you make one, that's spelt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... allowances for Bible stories and Shakespeare. We know that the mysteries were often in bad repute for their indecency and realism, even in an age of low standards. Anybody who is not in the convention can scoff at it, however low his own code may be. The Greeks described the Phrygian mysteries as abominable and immoral, while they praised and admired the Eleusinian. "The former were introduced by slaves and foreigners, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... and whatever its worth, No matter how strong or clever, Some one will sneer if you pause to hear, And scoff at your best endeavour. For the target art has a broad expanse, And wherever you chance to hit it, Though close be your aim to the bull's-eye fame, There are those who will never ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... though not answered, carries a significance. A creation of beauty suggests a fulfilment, which is the fulfilment of love. We have heard some poets scoff at it in bitterness and despair; but it is like a sick child beating its own mother—it is a sickness of faith, which hurts truth, but proves it by its very pain and anger. And the faith itself is this, that beauty is the self-offering of the One to ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... 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 some great miracle might ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... backward with scorn and derision And scoff the old book though it uselessly lies In the dust of the past, while this newer revision Lisps on of a hope and a home in the skies? Shall the voice of the Master be stifled and riven? Shall we hear but a tithe of ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... madness has raged, unabated, for four years. It was so infectious that his associates caught it—all but three. The men about the Daily News office who clung to the Republican party through thick and thin, who endured, therefore, every scoff, jibe, and taunt which sin could devise, and who, preferring honorable death to the rewards of treachery, proudly cast their votes for the nominees of the grand old party,—these three men are entitled to places in the foremost rank ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... enthusiastically of the accomplishments and the hopes of the Cornell Menorah Society. About thirty new members were enrolled, bringing our membership list up to one hundred. This number includes five members of the faculty and about a score of graduates. Several men who had come to the meeting to scoff stayed to enroll. The subsequent meetings have also been well attended. Our organization is gaining greater and greater prestige ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... touched poison and immunity and murder, but inwardly he began to scoff at his own habits of suspicion. However, before he could reach for the glass, Pierce had given a short snort as though in recognition of his presumptuousness and drank his own ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... against which there is no guard but that of a clear and unbiased reason, but it renders him also base and abject when under misfortunes, the sport and contempt of that wicked and debauched part of the human species who are apt to scoff at despairing misery, and to add by their insults to the miseries of those who sink ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... fifty years ago, could have imagined that to-day women would be steadily monopolizing learning, teaching, literature, the fine arts, music, the church and the theater? And yet that is the condition at which we have arrived. We may scoff at the way women are doing the work, and reject the product, but that does not alter the fact that step by step women are taking over the field of liberal culture as opposed to the ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... subway; to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning. It will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in America who has seen Prince Henry do anything, or try to. The man who was absent and didn't see him to anything, will scoff. It is his privilege; and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself, to be different from other Americans, and better. As his opinion of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, and concentrates and coagulates, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... them with royal tapestries. The servants of the suitors came also and cut wood for the fires. Eumaios arrived early, driving three fat hogs. He saluted Odysseus and asked him if he were well treated by the suitors, or if they continued to scoff at him. Odysseus answered him: "May the gods punish the ruthless men who perpetrate such wrongs in a stranger's home." While they were talking together the goatherd joined him, and repeated the sneers and abuse of the preceding day. Odysseus took no notice of ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... when one cent was riches unspeakable, treasured for months and often displayed in triumph to penniless companions. Poor indeed are they who have never known the day of small things and the size of a cent. It is said money is only good for what it will buy, and the miser who hoards is the scoff of mankind. I must have been a descendant of Shylock for I loved cents for themselves and the feeling of importance they gave me. I polished them until they shone like gold and the face of the Father of his Country gleamed with irridescent ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... to go back!" she announced. "I shall be ready when it's time—now anybody can say what anybody pleases. Scoff at me—do. I expect it! But I'm getting homesick to see a street-car and a—a policeman! It's lovely and peaceful here, but I've had my fill of it now—I want to go home and bump into crowds and hear big, stirry noises. It's different ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... Antipater was already seized with his sickness, and Cassander, taking upon himself the command, had found a letter of Demades's, formerly written by him to Antigonus in Asia, recommending him to come and possess himself of the empire of Greece and Macedon, now hanging, he said, (a scoff at Antipater,) "by an old and rotten thread." So when Cassander saw him come, he seized him; and first brought out the son and killed him so close before his face, that the blood ran all over his clothes and person, and then, after bitterly taunting and upbraiding him with his ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... And when de General saw de shirt, He jus' was mad enough To tink he got to hold review Widout his best Dutch ruff. Ma'am said she 'lowed it was de calf Dat had done chawed it off; But when de General heard dat ar, He answered with a scoff; He said de marks warn't don' of teef, But plainly dose ob shears; An' den he showed her to de do' And cuffed me on ye years. And when my ma'am arribed at home She stretched me 'cross her lap, Den took de lace away from me An' sewed it on ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... 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 they got ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... round the world, we are still accompanied by those old circumnavigators, the stars, who are shipmates and fellow-sailors of ours—sailing in heaven's blue, as we on the azure main. Let genteel generations scoff at our hardened hands, and finger-nails tipped with tar—did they ever clasp truer palms than ours? Let them feel of our sturdy hearts beating like sledge-hammers in those hot smithies, our bosoms; with their amber-headed canes, let them feel of our generous pulses, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... lover of Hounds; I have followed many a pack of dogs many a mile, and heard many merry Huntsmen make sport and scoff at Anglers. ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... time, as Milton shrewdly intimates, dreaded more the rending of their pontifical sleeves than the rending of the Church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with the "Defence of Unlicensed Printing" before him? Who scoff at Quakerism over the "Journal" of George Fox? Who shall join with debauched lordlings and fat-witted prelates in ridicule of Anabaptist levellers and dippers, after rising from the perusal of "Pilgrim's Progress?" "There were giants in those days." And foremost amid ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... taste that I cannot get rid of at my pleasure, not a desire that I do not scoff at, not a hope that does not make me smile or laugh. I ask myself why I stir, why I go hither or thither, why I give myself the odious trouble of earning money, since it does not ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... was apt to scoff, With jokes most aptly timed, Said Sam might any day go off, 'Cause ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... the most interesting and significant expressions of humanity. Yet books are thickly peppered with humbug. "Travellers' stories" have been the scoff of ages, from the "True Story" of witty old Lucian the Syrian down to the gorillarities—if I may coin a word—of the Frenchman Du Chaillu. Ireland's counterfeited Shakspeare plays, Chatterton's forged manuscripts, George Psalmanazar's forged ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Behn in her own Epilogue when she speaks of 'fat Cardinals, Pope Joans, and Fryers'; and Lord Falkland's scoff in his Prologue to Otway's The Soldier's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... The rabble rout forbore 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, Now ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... were 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
... have been telling you of my ambitions! Mean of them! They might have known you'd scoff. All boys do, but I fail to see why if a girl has brains she should not use them as ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and reject the feeding of the multitude. To some the walking on the water will be a legendary exaggeration of a swim, ending in an ordinary rescue of Peter; and the raising of Lazarus will be only a similar glorification of a commonplace feat of artificial respiration, whilst others will scoff at it as a planned imposture in which Lazarus acted as a confederate. Between the rejection of the stories as wholly fabulous and the acceptance of them as the evangelists themselves meant them to be accepted, there will be many shades of belief and disbelief, of sympathy and ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... England; for if civilization depends on bringing the highest quantity of rational enjoyment within the reach of general society, England is wholly superior in civilization to the shivering splendours of the Continent. Foreigners are beginning to learn this; and those who are most disposed to scoff at our taste, are the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... denunciation await that man who stands unawed before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard of individual ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... praying while the other engaged in active duties. All was done with religious gravity and decorum. If we went out, the make-believe continued even in the street; the two hermits would say the Rosary, using their fingers to count on, so as not to display their devotion before those who might scoff. One day, however, the hermit Therese forgot herself—before eating a cake, given her for lunch, she made a large Sign of the Cross, and some worldly folk did not ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... you prefer to take the risks, and remain chief of the guard yourself?" she said with an angry scoff. "Truly there did not seem to be many thrusting forward to strip you of the office. I shall have a fine sorting up of places in payment for this night's work. But for the present, Tarca, do ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... has been in my room, and nailed Matthew vii. 1, Mark x. 7, and Ezek. xviii. 20, on my wall. He found my diary, and has read it, not to profit by, alas! but to scoff." ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... nothing. The night deepens around them. The sense of calamity and catastrophe rises in the spectator's mind. They start again. This time they hear a louder noise, and glance helplessly around and feebly try to scoff away their terror. The sound dies away, and they converse in appalled and fragmentary whispers. But again a low, cautious, sliding noise arrests them. Angelo springs up, runs for his hat and cloak, blows out the candle upon the table, and escapes from the room, while his mistress totters to the ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... was kneeling in his corner, hands clasped in prayer. (He did so night after night unmolested.) The crowd watched curiously—but had anyone dare to scoff they, as Mahieu said, "would a' knocked ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... church with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorn'd the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray. The service past, around the pious man, With steady zeal each honest rustic ran; E'en children follow'd with endearing wile, And pluck'd his gown to share the good man's smile. His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest, Their welfare ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had Bowen's counsel never reached his ear. The very act of advising to the commission of a crime is of itself unlawful. The presumption of law is that advice has the influence and effect intended by the adviser, unless it is shown to have been otherwise; as that the counsel was received with scoff, or was manifestly rejected and ridiculed at the time it was given. It was said in the argument that Jewett's abandoned and depraved character furnishes ground to believe that he would have committed the act without such advice from Bowen. Without doubt he was a hardened and depraved ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... instances the more accurate and better expressed. Mr. Sawyer substitutes "despised" for "mocked," as the translation of [Greek: henepaichthae]. Is this literal? or is it an improvement? The Greek verb [Greek: hemaiso] has the signification primarily to deride, to mock, to scoff at, and secondarily to delude, to deceive, to disappoint, but it has not the meaning to despise. The word mock is used in our language in both these significations,—in the secondary sense when it refers to men's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... shallow scoff to say that prayer is absurd, because it is not possible for us, by means of it, to persuade God to change His plans. He produces foreknown and foreintended effects, by the instrumentality of the forces of nature, all of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Glauben Dich neu bekehren, es gibt ein Gluck;" this is the only thing that is true and eternal. I cannot preach to you, nor explain it to you; but I will pray to God that He may powerfully illumine your heart through His faith and His love. You may scoff at this feeling as bitterly as you like. I cannot fail to see and desire in it the only salvation. Through Christ alone, through resigned suffering in God, salvation and rescue ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Steve," he cried. "It wasn't for what I might get out of it, or—or what it might bring me, I used to scoff at whatever others considered big and fine and clean, but I played it straight, just the same. I played it as well as I knew how—straighter than you'd believe. I thought it would make her happier, because I tried that hard. And she . . . Steve, if I had been a woman—a woman like what ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... irony in the treatment of what he loves. The irony must, mark you, be pervading and obvious. Disraeli's great ladies and lords won't do, for his irony was but latent in his homage, and thus the reader feels himself called on to worship and in duty bound to scoff. All's well, though, when the homage is latent in the irony. Thackeray, inviting us to laugh and frown over the follies of Mayfair, enables us to reel with him in a secret orgy of ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... song, And they ate and drank and were merry: but amidst the glee of the cup They felt themselves tangled and caught, as when the net cometh up Before the folk of the firth, and the main sea lieth far off; And the laughter of lips they hearkened, and that hall-abider's scoff, As his face and his mocking eyes anigh to their faces drew, And their godhead was caught in the net, and no shift of creation they knew To escape from their man-like bodies; so great that day was ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... I," continued Monsieur 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 us the cause of ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... strong, hardy, and enterprising. Had those early pioneers been of a weaker fiber, the history of our country would never have been written in glory. But let us not forget that the pioneers were mostly men of deep piety, whose rugged strength was rooted in true faith and the fear of God. Let those who scoff at religion, remember that without it our country would never have become what it is today. The fear of God is not only the beginning of wisdom, but also the keynote to prosperity and ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... glanced one at another in meaning comment thereon. Never was a leader of men or beasts more cordially hated than Lupus. There was not a dingo who could call his leadership into question; even the young and daring members of the pack who pretended to scoff at the traditional awe in which Tasman was held, admitted the tyrannical mastership of Lupus as something ever-present and unavoidable; but that by no manner of means lessened their cordial hatred of the fierce half-breed, with his massive neck and shoulders that fangs seemed powerless to hurt, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... to his face. A caitiff hound, A 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 ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... 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 ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... She had obviously just come from one of those elaborate finishing schools in which the daughters of rich people are turned into hothouse plants by sycophants and parasites and sent out into the world the most perfect specimens of superautocracy, to patronize their parents, scoff at discipline, ignore duty and demand the sort of luxury that brought Rome to its fall. With admiration and amusement she watched her say good-by to one woman after another as the various tables broke up. It really gave her quite a moment to see the ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... 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 ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... offer cheer: in Ulster there— Fanatic sentiment, you'll say, and scoff it— I see a hundred thousand men who care For something dearer than their stomach's profit; Under the Flag they stand at silent pause, True Democrats that hold by Freedom's charter, Resolved and covenanted for the Cause To give their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... her master, as he hasten'd off With his new purchases, the infant caught, And bid the mother, with a heartless scoff, Fling it away: said he, "'Tis good for nought; None of this lumber can we have, the road Is long enough to tread without ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... 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 ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... seemed truly desperate to Miles, as he and his comrades passed through the narrow streets, for no pitying eye, but many a frown, was cast on them by the crowds who stopped to gaze and scoff. ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... surrounding 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; ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... southern India and in Bengal. I have seen a handful of traders gradually swallowing up the native powers, and it seems to me that it may well be that, in time, they may become the masters of all India. Were I to say as much to any of our princes, they would scoff at my prediction; but it has been my business to learn what was passing elsewhere, and I have agents at Madras and Calcutta, and their reports are ever that the power of the English is increasing. A few years ago, it seemed that the ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... Yorke in his antagonist's ear with a sinister smile, "rotten manners! for just that, my buck, I'll make you scoff 'muffin' ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... Never scoff at people because they fall. A first-class runner is supposed to be able to run at high speed, using turns without falling. So he will, probably, if he intends to, but no first-class runner worth his salt would always run like this. He will always be trying something ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... pretending devoted attention to Mami's precepts and the 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 our ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... a contemptuous jest to my Lady Cavaliere, this fairer lady remembers John clad in goat-skins and crying in the wilderness. I wish, she says, that mankind might sit at a sumptuous table, but I shall not scoff at the wooden spoon that feeds its hunger. She hangs one picture upon her wall: it is Christ sitting at meat with publicans and sinners. And so season after season, year after year, she carries her sympathy, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... degrade her from a haughty beauty into a maudlin hag, disgusting and ridiculous? Why cast such very merciless stones at one who, by his own avowal, had erewhile witched his very soul from him? Why rejoice to see this once beautiful creature the scoff of all the heartless young fops of Rome? If she had injured him, what of that? Was it so very strange that a woman trained, like all the class to which she belonged, to be the plaything of man's caprice, should have been fickle, mercenary, or even heartless? Poor Lyce ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... with them, they have much endured; Scoff not at their fond hopes and earnest plans, Though they may seem to thee wild dreams and fancies. Perchance, in the rough school of stern Experience, They've something learned which Theory does not teach; Or if they greatly err, deal ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Bart had stirred up a number of enemies, for, when a man is successful in life, are there not always a hundred unsuccessful fellows who stand about and scoff? ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... 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 for. I knew the meaning of that restless craving that ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... us it seemed strange as a miracle,—this black regiment, the first mustered into the service of the United States, doing itself honor in the sight of the officers of other regiments, many of whom, doubtless, "came to scoff." The men afterwards had a great feast, ten oxen having been roasted whole for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... 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 to the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... good as wise. Never was he caught suffering his feelings to escape from his controul or management; his word was esteemed in the council as the word of wisdom; his warning of danger was regarded as the cry of the owl. Never did he mock the wretched, or laugh, or scoff at the insane; he was always respectful to the aged; and he daily cried to the Master of Life, from the high grounds, with clay spread thick upon his hair, and at every successful hunt offered, to the same Great Judge ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... approached, and still the traitor allowed him to suffer. And there was the hate and scorn of man, the clamor for vengeance from society, the condemnation of the jury who had prejudged his case, the sneer of the paid advocate, the scoff of the gaping crowd, to whom the plea of noblesse oblige and stainless honor and perfect truth seemed only maudlin sentimentality and ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... scoff at religion, and to work on Sundays, though not so openly as on other days of the week. He went to church now because he was proud of his wife; not out of devotion, ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... been one of those That danced for bread in flesh-color'd hose, With Rosina's pastora bevy, The jeers it had met,—the shouts! the scoff! The cutting advice to "take itself off" For sounding ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... murmured, 'Atheist! How sinfully the wicked scoff!' And sent the old men on their way, And drove the boys and ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Verplanck, it must be confessed that going to and from school Peter was prone to lay down both books and hat, oftentimes in the mud, and square himself pugnaciously if he chanced to meet one of the boys of the "Vly Market," who were wont to scoff and tease the Broadway boys unmercifully; and fierce battles were the frequent outcome of the feeling between the two sections, and in ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... with red brick dwellings and the sunny white bulk of the old Brevoort House. Far off, the sky-scrapers begin to loom, whipping out flags and steam plumes. It is a treeless vista, yet it is hazed with spring! Imagination, you scoff—and dust. Yet you look again, and it is not imagination, and it is not dust. It is the veil of spring, cast with delicate hand over the city. These laughing sight-seers atop the green 'bus now going under the arch ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... sacrilegious, they are excommunicated, who impeach the magic of the past and the poison of tradition. And the thousand million victims themselves scoff at and strike those who rebel, as soon as they are able. All cast stones at them, all, even those who suffer and while they are suffering—even the sacrificed, a little ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... flocks, to compose long sermons, the burden whereof was a warning against having any intercourse, direct or indirect, with the Harz demon. The fortunes of Martin Waldeck have been often quoted by the aged to their giddy children, when they were heard to scoff at a ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... thou slew’st, and no amends To me didst ever make; Now scoff thou hast upon me cast, For which ...
— Little Engel - a ballad with a series of epigrams from the Persian - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... may rail against money, Spurn its beneficent power; Bears spurn impossible honey, Foxes the grapes that are sour. Men, who can never be funny, Scoff at the funny man's dower; Lands where it seldom is sunny Find ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... replied the Honorable Margaret promptly. "Saint Ruth's eats 'em alive. I came to scoff and remained to thread needles myself. Phyllis will be minding the ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... divided by the fearful conflict, with malignant hate lighting the fires of either camp, and with hands reeking in fraternal blood—with both sections of our land more or less afflicted—with credit impaired, with the scoff and jeers of nations ringing in our ears—we stand losers of almost every thing but our individual self-respect, which has inspired both foes with the ardor and courage born within us as Americans. This it is that leaves us unshorn of our strength; this it ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... worst was that our failure to unriddle the enigma In the "rags" of rival towns was made a byword and a scoff, Till each soul in the community felt branded with the stigma Of the unexplained suspicion ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... 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 with the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... persuade Margaret (who being sore From the doubts she'd felt before, Was prepared for mistrust) To believe her reasons just; Quite destroy'd that comfort glad, Which in Mary late she had; Made her, in experience' spite, Think her friend a hypocrite, And resolve, with cruel scoff, To renounce and ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... you have no respect for religion yourself, don't scoff at its observances in my presence. It is very unkind, and I will not allow it." She rose, with an air of ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... it is Leroy would never do?" The voice carried a scoff with it, the implication that his very ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... shall the creation, subjected to vanity for their sakes, find its freedom in their freedom, its gladness in their sonship. The animals will glory to serve them, will joy to come to them for help. Let the heartless scoff, the unjust despise! the heart that cries Abba, Father, cries to the God of the sparrow and the oxen; nor can hope go too far in hoping what that God will do for the creation that now groaneth and travaileth in pain because ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... 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 offered ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... Or if on Virtue's holy brow, A wreath of scorn I sought to twine— And bade her minions mocking bow, With sweeter vows at pleasure's shrine— Or if I mirrored to the thought, With glorious truth the charms of earth, While yet the trusting fool I taught, To scoff at Him who gave it birth— Or if I filled the soul with light, And bore its buoyant wing in air— To plunge it down in deeper night, And mock its maniac wanderings there— I did but wield the wand ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... for themselves. Another Spanish statesman expressed his doubt to them whether they were able to do so: he really thought England would one day become an apple of discord between Spain and France, as Milan then was. It was almost a scoff, to compare the Island that had the power of the sea with an Italian duchy. But from this very moment she was to take a new upward flight. England was again to take her place as a third Power between the two great Powers; the opportunity presented itself to her to begin open war with one of them, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... other in an adjoining room - I, as his lieutenant, taking turns. The thing was in its way a little triumph. A few of the visitors were deaf, and hugged the belief that they were the victims of a new kind of fancy-fair swindle. Of the others, many who came to scoff remained to take raffle tickets; and one of the phonographs was finally disposed of in this way, falling, by a happy freak of the ballot-box, into the hands of Sir William Thomson.' The other remained ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... madness I believe, but I so worked myself up to this idea that I could think of nothing else. If he dies with me it is well, and there will be an end of two miserable beings; and if he will not, then will I scoff at his friendship and drink the poison before him to shame his cowardice. I planned the whole scene with an earnest heart and franticly set my soul on this project. I procured Laudanum and placing it in two glasses on the table, filled my room with flowers and decorated ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... scoff and jeer whenever Geraint's name was spoken. 'The Prince is no knight,' they said. 'The robbers spoil his land and carry off his cattle, but he neither cares nor fights. He does nothing but wait on the ...
— Stories of King Arthur's Knights - Told to the Children by Mary MacGregor • Mary MacGregor
... Narkom, for the moment I thought you were fooling," he said in a tone of deep interest. "But I see now that you are quite in earnest, although the thing sounds so preposterous, a child might be expected to scoff at it. A man to get a magic belt; to put it on, and then to melt away? Why, the 'Seven-league Boots' couldn't be a greater tax on one's credulity. Sit down and tell ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... opportunity for repentance; prayers and curses issuing from his lips in horrible confusion up to the last moment of his existence. His death was witnessed by several of his companions in crime; and, while some tried to laugh and scoff away the unwelcome impression which the scene produced upon their minds, there were others who went into the open air and wandered away by themselves to ponder upon this miserable ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... If you will submit to the conditions we impose, Madame la Grange, and then show us any manifestations, I will never scoff at ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller
... tell, suh!" said Chatz, in a solemn manner; and somehow none of the boys seemed quite as ready to scoff at the Southerner's superstitious belief, ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... greatly scoff at this prophecy. In his chapter ("Hist. S. L.") upon Buddhism (the "false" religion), the eminent scholar speaks as though he resented such an unprecedented claim. "We are asked to believe"—he writes—"that the Ceylonese historians placed the founder of the Vijyan dynasty of Ceylon ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... are at strife; we dwell in the midst thereof, And they are but foolish who curse, and they are but shallow who scoff. Let hate die out, take rest, poor workers, be all at peace; Let the angry battle abate, and the barren bitterness cease! Ah, pleasant and pastoral picture! Thrice welcome whoever shall bring The sunshine of love after Winter, the blossoms of joy with the Spring! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... noble sympathy and 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
... last few weeks; that I try to arrange all my actions with a view to the new revelations of life and duty which I have certainly had; in simple language you know that, whereas, I not long ago presumed to scoff at conversion, and at the idea of a life abiding in Christ, I believe now that I have been converted, and that the Lord Jesus is my Friend and Brother; I want to tell you that I have found rest and peace in him. Is it any wonder that ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... had something to scoff, I'm starvin'," groaned Nippers, "but we'll hafta lay low till the bloody tub pulls out or we'll ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... 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 ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... scholars or 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 been handicapped ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... and entered upon the world for themselves, all the older apprentices fell into habits of dissipation, and finally sunk into the drunkard's grave. But the little boy, at whose abstinence they used to scoff, grew up a sober and respectable man, engaged in business for himself, and a few years ago, was worth a hundred thousand dollars, and had in his employ one hundred and ninety men, none of whom used ardent spirits. All this came from his having courage to say NO, to those who ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... the Commune, she wept, and she wept longer and more bitterly later at the cemetery, when she saw them lower the body of her child into the grave, without a prayer or a recommendation to God's mercy. You must not scoff at her, you see she was a poor weak woman, with ideas of the narrowest sort; but there are other mothers like her, quite unworthy of course to bear the children of patriots, who do not want their dear ones ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... was that it suggested humor, not resentment. Even in the tumult of wounded pride that took her heart by storm, she realized that her fiery vehemence had gone perilously near to a literal translation of the saintly scoff at old Barbariccia. And, now if ever, she must be dignified. Anger yielded to disdain. In an instant she grew cold and ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... attempt to turn aside this appeal which I now make to you with a laugh or a sneer. This is the Lord's word, and the word of the Lord is not to be put aside with a sneer. Do not scoff at this as a water of salvation. You certainly will not scoff at the word ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... Yes, and just because it would have smoothed the road for worthless belief, it was not given, but the apparently impossible promise was left in nakedness, for any one who needed sense to animate his faith, to scoff at. Is not that emphatic assertion of the fact, and emphatic silence as to the 'how,' a frequent characteristic of God's promises? If ever we are kept in the dark as to the latter, it is for our good, and for the encouragement of our growth in utter dependence and perfect trust. It is not well ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is a Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a patronizing 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 height of a Scotland ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... retorted Dangerfield, with a cold scoff. 'But you say he may possibly live six weeks more; and all that time the wick is smouldering, though the candle's short—can't you blow it in, and give ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the bleak Mission House of Lima Street; but inasmuch as she never thought about her appearance it would have been a waste of time for anybody to try to romanticize her. The civilizing effect of her presence in the slum was quickly felt; and though Lidderdale continued to scoff at the advantages of civilization, he finally learnt to give a grudging welcome to her various schemes for making the bodies of the flock as comfortable as her husband tried to ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... 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 children, and who has sowed ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... an elementary way, they need concerning the nervous system, the essential musculatures, and the epithelia, whose manifold activities are in some certain mode concomitant to the succession of compound mental events. Surely, and widely, those who a few years ago "came to scoff" at the ever-rising scientific stream of mind-protoplasm relationship will "remain to pray" to the rising and satisfying goddess of the new philosophy. The body with its unimagined intricacies and beauties of still unguessed adaptation and its ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... with frozen feet Came to the marble halls of state, And told his mission but to meet The chill of scorn, the scoff of hate. "Is Oregon worth saving?" asked The treaty-makers from the coast; And him the Church with questions tasked, And said, "Why did you leave your post?" Was it for this that he had braved The warring storms of mount ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... 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. Off, would-be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... Congregations Lay deep their plots together through each Land, Against the Lord and his Messiah dear. Let us break off; say they, by strength of hand Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear, Their twisted cords: he who in Heaven doth dwell Shall laugh, the Lord shall scoff them, then severe Speak to them in his wrath, and in his fell 10 And fierce ire trouble them; but I saith hee Anointed have my King (though ye rebell) On Sion my holi' hill. A firm decree I will declare; the Lord to me hath say'd Thou art my Son I have begotten thee This ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... is good-natured, the youth's in a glow, And he thinks—with some "cuts"—it will be "a great go," At night, at night! But oh, what a difference In the morning! The critics call the thing "an awful warning," They "guy," and sneer, and scoff, And his bantling's taken off, "To make room for some old farce, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... way, like so many garden plots—the rectangular oblongs in a garden in which pot-herbs are grown—on the green grass, below the blue sky, by the side of the quiet lake. Cannot you fancy how some of them seated themselves with a scoff, and some with a quiet smile of incredulity; and some half sheepishly and reluctantly; and some in mute expectancy; and some in foolish wonder; and yet all of them with a partial obedience? And says John in the true translation: 'So the men sat down, therefore Jesus took ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... a clearer idea of what this thing called patriotism means? Nay, do not scoff at our Otto; he is only carrying on the old, old game called reaching out after place and power; is doing exactly what you would do yourself, if you had the will to rise to the mountain-tops where live ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... nothing, and the moment we come across a first-class expert we begin to take a pride in his superiority. It cannot offend us, who have no right at all to be his match on his own ground. Besides, there is a very curious sense of satisfaction in getting a fair chance to sneer at ourselves and scoff at our own pretensions. The first person of our dual consciousness has been smirking and rubbing his hands and felicitating himself on his innumerable superiorities, until we have grown a little tired of him. Then, when the other fellow, the critic, the cynic, the Shimei, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... she did not herself know? Any mother who reads this will, I think, scoff at the notion; and yet I think it was so. Weak and ill as she was when it all happened, bewildered and dazed by the murder of her master and the terrible suspicion thrown on her husband, lying for weeks after in a half swoon, and believing herself at the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... That thou art mindful of him! Though in creation's van, Lord, what is man! He wills less than he can, Lets his ideal scoff him! Lord, what is man That ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... rays hold the answer. Their power would be even greater than atomic power. There's another source I've heard mentioned, but most people scoff at it. That's the use of electromagnetic fields in space. The earth has its magnetic field, of course, and so does the ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... curses, as they rolled up half smothered from his huge chest, were deeper and more diabolical by far than their own. He even jeered at them; but, however disgusting his frown, there was something truly apalling in the dark gleam of his scoff, which threw them at an immeasurable distance behind him, in the power of displaying on the countenance the worst of ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton |
