"Mockery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... priests; the color also left his face, as with shrinking lips he touched the Word of God in deliberate falsehood. Having then laid it down, Anthony received it with a firm grasp, and whilst his eye turned boldly in contemptuous mockery upon those who presented it, he impressed it with the kiss of a man whose depraved conscience seemed to goad him only to evil. After "clearing" himself, he laid the Bible upon the table with the affected air of a person who felt hurt at the imputation of theft, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... the Syrian blue of the skies, holding here and there a mountainous cloud, the brilliant sunshine of the early autumn day, all served to emphasize and revivify the splendid mosaic of colouring worn by the chieftains, as, without the mockery of speech, they mounted their horses, and faced ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... Sorrow Devoid of Blame (The widow'd Dame) Shall welcome be to-morrow. Thou, too, dull Night! may'st come unchid: This wall of Flame the Dark hath hid With turrets each a Pyramid;— For the Tears that we shed, are Gladness, A mockery of Sadness! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... penned those lines, Sarah little imagined how great a mockery was the title, "kind master," she gave her brother. She little suspected that three of those slaves whose uncertain destiny haunted her pillow were that brother's own children, and that he died leaving the shackles ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... sphere. It is an indispensable instrument of the will to righteousness. The good man and the good government resolve, in the spirit of the Lord, that certain abominations shall not take place. They express their will in a law. That law remains futile, it is a mockery and a fraud, unless they are prepared to enforce it by all the means in their power, even if need be by the shedding of blood. Much, no doubt, can and will be done to secure obedience by education, by persuasion, and by appeal. Every effort will be made to prevent the evildoer, and to convert him ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... died for can't afford to keep his birthday; it is the rich that he's going to cast into outer darkness, that keep it for their own ends, and it's a blasphemy and a mockery," proclaimed Nahum Beals. He was very excited that night, and would often spring to his feet and stride across the room. There was another man there that night, a cousin of Joseph Atkins, John Sargent by name. He had recently moved to Rowe, since he had obtained work at McGuire's, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... jeered at His royal title, and bade the mocking soldiers crown Him king. There are the very men who with impious hands placed upon His form the purple robe, upon His sacred brow the thorny crown, and in His unresisting hand the mimic scepter, and bowed before Him in blasphemous mockery. The men who smote and spit upon the Prince of life, now turn from His piercing gaze, and seek to flee from the overpowering glory of His presence. Those who drove the nails through His hands and feet, the soldier ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Loki made the company merry by the tales that he told in mockery of Thor. Loki long since had his lips unloosed from the thong that the Dwarf Brock had sewn them with. And Thor had forgotten the wrong that he had done to Sif. Loki had been with Thor in his wanderings through Joetunheim, and about these ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... perpetual nightmare and horror. His whole heart had gone into Regnault's cry—into Regnault's protest. For his own enchanted island had seemed to him often in the days of his wooing to be but floating on the surface of a ghastly sea, whence emerged all conceivable shapes of ruin, mockery, terror, and disease. It was because of the tremulous adoration which filled him from the beginning that the vice of Paris had struck him in this tragical way. At another time it might have been indifferent to him, might ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mockery were incessantly mingled with the audacious proceedings of the revolutionists. It was customary to give serenades under the King's windows on New Year's Day. The band of the National Guard repaired thither on that festival in 1791; in allusion to ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... time, he prepared to descend. Without warning, a strange, wailing cry swept over the face of the world. Starting in awful mystery, it ended with such a note of low and sordid mockery that he could not doubt for a moment whence it originated. It ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the judges, not only to the legal rights, but to the feelings of the prisoner, but because it came first in the order of time, and serves in a good measure to explain all the trials that follow it. Comment upon it is needless. Such a mockery of justice would disgrace the tribunals of savages. Whatever seems unfavorable to the prisoner is pressed home by the Chief Justice, most strongly against him. Whatever makes for him is kept out of sight. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... surely, if there do fall manna from Heaven, in the given Generation, and nourish in us reverence and genial nobleness day by day, it is blessed and well. Failing that, in regard to our poor spiritual interests, there is sure to be one of two results: mockery, contempt, disbelief, what we may call SHORT-DIET to the length of very famine (which was Friedrich's case); or else slow-poison, carefully elaborated and provided by ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Like a somber, gigantic ghost the animal moved, heroic of mold, embodying the spirit of the country, seeming to bear the sinister message of the desert, the whispered promise of death, the lingering threat, the grim mockery of life, and the conviction ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... occasionally offered to read to Cousin Marcia," Mr. Homer continued, "from the works of Keats and—other bards; but she has uniformly received the suggestion in a spirit of—mockery; of—derision; of—contumely. The last time I mentioned it, she exclaimed 'Cat's foot!' The expression struck me, ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... strange that in such a moment as this, I can jest in mockery of myself! but I will write on. Some keep a diary, because it is the fashion—a reason why I should not; some because it is blue, but I am not blue, only a blue devil; some for their amusement,—amusement!! alas! alas! and some that they may remember,—and I that ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... say: 'It is just like the United States. What an awful country it must be to live in!' Are we going back to such a state of things? Has it come to such a pass that law and justice are becoming a mockery? God forbid that it should ever come to this, but something must be done that not only our persons and property may be protected, but that our belief that we have and hold in this Canada of ours that British justice ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... furiously, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then stopped abruptly, with my hands clutching my hair. Above me towered the sphinx, upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in the light of the rising moon. It seemed to smile in mockery of my dismay. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... it handed them over to Secular Justice to undergo the penalty of the laws; exhorting the authorities at the same time to show clemency and mercy towards the unhappy wretches, and if they must suffer death, that at all events it might be without the spilling of blood." What mockery was this apparent intercession, not to shed blood, when to comply with their request, they substituted the torment and the agony of ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Percival wore—all woven of osier twigs; and when they beheld how he was armed with a javelin and with no other weapon, they mocked and laughed at him and jeered him. But Percival understood not their mockery, whereupon he said: "Lo! how pleasant and how cheerful is the world. I knew not it was so merry a place." So he laughed and nodded and gave them greeting who mocked him in that manner. And some of them said, "That is ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... wife's society, would bury himself in his library amongst his books. But suddenly the idea that his wife could form an attachment to another man filled him with terror. He resolved to remonstrate with her, but she received his expostulations with laughing and good-humoured mockery, which entirely frustrated his purpose. He dropped the subject; yet from that moment a new life began for the husband and wife. There was no outward sign of the change. Anna continued to meet Vronsky, and Aleksei felt himself ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Parnassus, to make very short work. The long poems never were worth anything, the short ones seldom. Even in this literary age the poetry of the day had become a public nuisance; it sometimes happened that one's friend would send home to him by way of mockery as a festal present a pile of trashy verses fresh from the bookseller's shop, whose value was at once betrayed by the elegant binding and the smooth paper. A real public, in the sense in which national literature has a public, was ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... happened, that, with the coming of the autumn months, Reuben, still floating drearily on a sea of religious speculation, and veering more and more into open mockery of the beliefs of all about him, grew weary of his affectations with respect to Adele. He fretted under the kindly manner with which she met his august civilities. They did not wound her sensibilities, as he hoped they might have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... him a present. On this the general shewed them the present he had proposed making, which the kutwal and the factor had made so light of; and, with whom they agreed, saying it was by no means a fit present, and would rather seem a mockery, and give offence. Even Bontaybo agreed in this opinion; and asked the general why he had not brought better things, as he knew that Portugal abounded in all manner of rich commodities. But the general excused himself as formerly, by saying that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... rain without his hat, his heart in the clutch of a prescient terror. No; the summer was over for the garden as well as for him; all forlorn and rifled, its few swaying shrubs tossed wildly about, a mockery of the grace and bloom that had once embellished it. His wet hair Streaming backward in the wind caught on the laurel boughs as he went down and down the tangled path that her homesick feet had worn to the crag which overlooked the Cove. Not ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the possibility of writing to you, this voyage would be an impossible task to me; and even as it is, the feeling that what I write must travel away from you for many days before it travels towards you again makes me half suspect it is a mockery after all. After these wonderful months of converse it seems incredible that I should be thus taken out of your hearing and out of the power of seeing you. That I long for a sight of your dear face, that I hunger for your touch and for your sweet voice, I need not tell you or further asseverate. ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... habitual veil of mockery was snatched aside and the tortured soul of the man leaped from his ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... the old man back to the idol. Eagerly, he clambered upon the outstretched hands, and stood there facing the grinning face, stroking the polished cheeks with beseeching fingers. The priests sank to the floor, bending themselves in mockery of the image. Four times they touched their foreheads to the ground, and as the fourth gesture was completed something moved swiftly behind the lips of the image, as though a plate had lifted for a ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... "A Mockery," &c. (Vol. viii., p. 244).—Thomas Lord Denman is the author of the phrase in question. That noble lord, in giving his judgment in the case of O'Connell and others against the Queen, in the House of Lords, September 4, 1844, thus alluded to the judgment of the Court of Queen's Bench in Ireland, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... Boileau to any of the allies against the said Baboon, had it ever been heard of out of France. Nor was it likely to make him popular in England, that his name was first mentioned amongst shouts of laughter and mockery. It is another argument of the slight notoriety possessed by Boileau in England—that no attempt was ever made to translate even his satires, epistles, or 'Lutrin,' except by booksellers' hacks; and that no such version ever took the slightest ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... she was bored and weary while doing the honors of her own salon with an absent mind. He even found the political opinions of his friend echoed by his wife, who laughed at him for what she called his Utopian liberalism. Her mockery had no malice in it; but still it was mockery, and behind it was Termonde, always Termonde. Nevertheless, he said nothing, and the shyness, which he had always felt in my mother's presence increased with his jealousy. The more unhappy he was, the more incapable of expressing his ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... adopted by the obnoxious or derided class; this tends to define the meaning. Or, again, the opposite result is produced, when the world refuses to allow some sect or body of men the possession of an honourable name which they have assumed, or applies it to them only in mockery ...
— Sophist • Plato
... read; and read, too, how Gerbert's brazen head had told him that he should be Pope, and not die till he had sung mass at Jerusalem; and how both had come true,—the latter in mockery; for he was stricken with deadly sickness in Rome, as he sang mass at the church called Jerusalem, and died ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... munificence; yet Buckingham, without any question, wove the net in which this lion fell; he seduced the very officers of the court; he invited Richmond over, assuring him of a popular uprising, which was proved to be a mere mockery by the miserable handful that rallied around him, until Richard fell at Bosworth. And after Buckingham's death, Richmond merely followed his plans, used the tools he had prepared, headed the conspiracy which this unmitigated traitor arranged, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... out, that each might witness the other's pangs. Strips of bark smeared with pitch enveloped the naked body of Lalement, and after making him fast to a stake they set the bark on fire. Round Brebeuf's neck a collar of red-hot hatchets was hung; and in mockery of baptism the savages poured kettles of scalding water upon the heads of both. Brebeuf was scalped, his tormentors drinking the blood, thus to endow themselves with his unflinching courage. After four hours the noblest Jesuit of all was dead; but Lalement was kept alive for ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... several States solemnly sanctioned these provisions, made them their paramount law, and individually sworn to support them whenever they were called on to execute any office. Vain provisions! ineffectual restrictions! vile profanation of oaths! miserable mockery of legislation! if a bare majority of the voters in any one State may, on a real or supposed knowledge of the intent with which a law has been passed, declare themselves free from its operation; say, here it gives too little; there, too much, and operates unequally; here it suffers articles ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... officiousness. It is in vain. There are swords, pistols, and poison still. Life has a thousand outlets: and to live, knowing what I know and never can forget, would be rank and hateful cowardice! I am determined. I will listen to their glosses no more. Persuasion is vain, and soothing mockery. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... over the outrage, the mockery of law and justice which disarmed men and locked them up in jails where they could be easily and safely reached by the mob—- the Afro-American ministers, newspapers and leaders counselled obedience to the law which ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... wife! No, not to avenge myself would be a crime, it would be encouraging them to new acts of injustice! No, it would be cowardice, pusillanimity, to groan and weep when there is blood and life left, when to insult and menace is added mockery. I will call out these ignorant people, I will make them see their misery. I will teach them to think not of brotherhood but only that they are wolves for devouring, I will urge them to rise against this ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... flattered!" says Lovelace, with a grave bow, though there is a little twinkling mockery in his glance. "When a lady so bewitching condescends to read what I have written, how can ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... and smile was too much for Constance, as it had happened more than once before; her own eyes fell and for a moment she wore a look of unwonted sadness and sweetness, at what from any other person would have roused her mockery. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... the existence of evil in the light of any principle whatever, he merely accumulates evil upon evil; and when the mass has become sufficiently terrific, with the jeering mockery of a small fiend, he delights in the contemplation of the awful spectacle as a conclusive demonstration that the Ruler of the world is unequal to the government of his creatures. His book is merely an appeal ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... thing!" Despite his mockery of the supernatural, Merriton could not help but feel a sort of awe steal over him, at the tale as told by Borkins in the eeriest hour of the whole twenty-four—that which hangs between darkness and dawn. Should he go or shouldn't he? He was a fool to believe ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... a scream. As for flushing and blushing, she had turned hot and turned pale so many times already during the evening, that there was really now nothing of that sort left for her to do; and she remained in complexion much as before. O, the mockery of it! That secret dream—that sweet word 'Baroness!'—which had sustained her all the way along. Instead of a Baron there stood Jim, white-waistcoated, demure, every hair in place, and, if she mistook not, even a deedy spark in ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... than an acquaintance. In the account of intimates is the unexpected name of Tupper, who, in days to come, acquired for a time a grander reputation than he deserved by his Proverbial Philosophy, and on whom the public by and by avenged its own foolishness by severer doses of mockery than he had earned.[39] The friend who seems most to have affected him in the deepest things was Anstice, whom he describes to his father (June 4, 1830) as 'a very clever man, and more than a clever man, a man of excellent principle ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... hopes and passions were recorded and gathered there; when in the dark the dead hands of forgotten men were stretched from their dusty graves to fumble once more for their old title deeds; at night, when it was lit up by flaring gaslight, the hollow mockery of this dissipation was so apparent that people in the streets, looking through the illuminated windows, felt as if the privacy of a family vault had been ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... arrested, his eyes devouring first one, then the other of then, with a glance that seemed to have grown oddly sobered. The flush died from his face, and his lips twitched like those of a man who seeks to control his emotions. Then slowly the colour crept back into his cheeks, a curl of mockery appeared on the coarse mouth, and the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... thrashed a ruffian who struck a woman, and narrowly escaped with his life for doing so. Henceforth he could but assent to a truce which implied mutual toleration; and yet he understood that his presence was not without its influence even on these irredeemables. Men called him "The Hunter," or in mockery "The Dook." He had done small services for one or two of them—even written a begging letter for a rogue who could not write at all, but posed as an "old public school man," fallen upon evil days. Alban was perfectly well aware that this was ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... with a dozen pairs of oxen to each, sent out to gather forage for the winter use of the fort; past dried-up streams, whitewashed with snowy alkaline deposits, cheating the eye at a distance with mockery of foaming water. Still, mile on mile, across rolling lands, with brief pause at the river to water horses, scaring the gay little prairie-dogs and laughing at the swift scuttle away of jack-rabbits, until by noon the long lines of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... over; but instead of "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York" being given, Cooke, in a respectful but decided tone, requested that "God save the King" might be played by the orchestra prior to the commencement of the play. The proposal at first but excited mockery and laughter, which, however, gave way to far different feelings, on Cooke firmly and composedly declaring, that, until his request was complied with, he was determined not to proceed; and, should ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... in arm with his now constant companion walked fitfully up and down, up and down, the floor. Sometimes he sat in a big chair that beckoned to him to rest; sometimes he raced with swift speed; once he threw himself upon his bed, and lay staring wide-eyed at the ceiling for hours. What mockery—hours! on the mantelpiece the clock told him that he had ceased his strides for ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... to think how he might have developed in the course of years. It happened, however, that a shipwreck—a form of disaster against which cynicism and precocity afford no protection—removed him from the world before he had come of age. Now, to call this infant young, would have been a mockery. To all outward appearance, indeed, he was a boy, but his mind was that of a selfish and used-up roue of sixty, without ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... kept up by glasses of strong liquor. The depraved priest does not seem likely to feel for the dead that hope expressed in our liturgy. The appearance and employment of almost every one present at this mockery of woe, is such as must raise disgust in the breast of any female who has the least tincture of delicacy, and excite a wish that such an exhibition may not be displayed at ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... worst of it. I'm not sorry, the way I ought to be. Besides, after what I've been these last two years—but you can't understand; it would just be mockery—mocking God. I told you I wasn't worth ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... at these words. 'Pelistes,' said he, 'what means this mockery? Thou knowest me well; thou knowest ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... him "George Adelbert" in mockery, were more and more contemptuous of him, and one or two were sullen, for they loved Fan and resented this "lily-fingered gent," who was to their minds "after the old man's acres." Young Compton, the son of a neighboring rancher, was most insulting, for he had himself once carried on a frank courtship ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... have let him know more plainly what it was that troubled her, and why could she not have shown a little tenderness toward him, instead of assuming, even when she said the kindest things to him, her air of mockery? And then, though she might pretend not to find Lizerolles stupid, he could see that she was bored there. Yet why had she chosen to stay at Lizerolles rather ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... moment when the black-robed tormentor from the Collegium Juridicum brings in the examination-paper. He plants himself in the doorway, and reads. Coldly, impassively, with a cruel mockery of the horror of the situation, he raises aloft this fateful document—this wretched paper-covered hoop, through which we must all spring, or dismount and wend our way ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... that the President shall exercise his constitutional power and arrest it if his judgment is against it. If he surrender this power, or fail to exercise it in a case where he can not approve, it would make his formal approval a mere mockery, and would be itself a violation of the Constitution, and the dissenting State would become bound by a law which had not been passed according to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the picturesque and dramatic elements gone. Romance died out along with the actual or possible tragedies of public life, and Humour came in, in the development most opposed to romance, a humour full of mockery and jest, less tender than keen-sighted, picking out every false pretence with a sharp gibe and roar of laughter often rude enough, not much considerate of other people's feelings. Perhaps there was something in the sudden cessation of the tragic character which had always hitherto distinguished ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... to win something besides independence, something without which independence would be a burden and a mockery—the respect of other nations; and in dealings between nations fear and respect are closely akin. The English still occupied posts within territory claimed by the United States, the Indians denied the right of the Americans to lands beyond the Ohio, and republican ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... door shut her out with a bang of contemptuous mockery, and the poor ladies were once more left alone ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... contrary to law, and which I will not receive; therefore go and reconsider your verdict, for I insist upon your giving some damage." The reader will easily conceive that I did not hear this in silence; I exclaimed, "For shame! what a mockery of justice!" Mr. Deputy threatened; I smiled a look of contempt and defiance. Mr. Deputy turned round to the officer, and peremptorily ordered him to turn the old man out; and he began to follow his instructions, by taking him by the collar. The old gentleman, however, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... as they licked their chops after their feed of horse-flesh. Then it was the clergyman reading from his Prayer Book in the garish light of the forge that fastened itself on his mind. The words seemed charged with bitter mockery: "We give Thee hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world." "Hearty thanks"! he muttered scornfully. "I'll gie God nowt o' t' sort. Life tasted ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... Arise, old man, from knees unused to bend, Or to another ear petition send! This artifice befits nor me nor thee, To beg of one twice threatened!—Mockery! First, by thy hand Nearchus felt the flame, Then love, forsooth, thy plea—(profaned name!) The path of Christian neophyte hast thou trod, And, in God's name, hast mocked Almighty God! Earth, heaven, and hell in turn have been thy tool, And him thou hast traduced thou wouldst ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... progress of our age. It lacks the balance of nature's principle of conservation. It lacks the completeness of universal law. It lacks the element of justice that is enthroned in every human consciousness and without which life would be a meaningless mockery and the world ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... was not ill. Most of its citizens did not even think it was ailing, but there were some anxious souls who wondered if the rosy exterior were not the mockery of an internal fever. They called in physicians, and after seven months spent in making their diagnosis, they have prescribed for Lawrence, and the town is alarmed to the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... remember, but not with apples, and stayed me, but not with flagons. She went in her benevolence, and, taking a blue and white soda-powder, mingled the same in water, and encouraged me to drink the result. It might be a specific for seasickness, but it was not for home-sickness. The fiz was a mockery, and the saline refrigerant struck a colder chill to my despondent heart. I did not disgrace myself, however, and a few days cured me, as a week on the ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... countenances, and, by their constantly looking at Perseus, and weeping, gave the spectators the idea that they bewailed his fate without taking any thought about their own. However, Perseus had sent to Aemilius asking to be excused the walking in procession; but he, as it seems in mockery of his cowardice and love of life, answered, "That was formerly in his own hands, and is now if he pleases." Meaning that death was preferable to dishonour; but the dastard had not spirit enough for that, but buoyed up by some ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... different when she thought of facing that stern old lady upstairs, and of the confession she had to make. It was not that her courage faltered. So far as resolutions went she was as firm as a rock. But she felt that there was a terrible ordeal to be gone through; and it seemed a mockery to be sitting there and pretending to eat her dinner and take things lightly, with that ordeal ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... he felt Lusine's presence, shielded by the walls of the shaft. Hers was a pale and light hand, one whose fingers tapped a barely heard code of impotent rage and voiceless screaming fear. Yet beneath that anguish was a base of confidence and mockery at others. She might be temporarily upset, but when the chance came for her to do something she would seize it with every ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... Hall; and pretty to see (it being St. Andrew's day,) how some few did wear St. Andrew's crosse; but most did make a mockery at it, and the House of Parliament, contrary to practice, did sit also: people having no mind to observe the Scotch saint's days till they hear ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... which his agents had bought and furnished for him. He looked at the pile of letters waiting for him upon his desk, little square envelopes many of them, but all telling the same tale, all tributes to his great success, and the mockery of it all smote hard upon the walls of his fortitude. Lower and lower his head drooped until it was buried in his folded arms—and the hour which followed he always reckoned the bitterest of ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said Frederick, "don't you hear those sounds?" he added, holding his hands out towards the city—"my courage cannot bear up against such mockery—vae ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... mockery of Christmas came to the city—a forced festival, unutterably sad, for all that the end of the war was subject of thanks in every church and synagogue. And so the mystic feast ended, scarcely heeded amid the slow, half-crippled groping for financial readjustment in the teeth ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... meals.—Shall we say grace at meals? To assent because it is the custom, or because it was so done in our childhood's home, may make an irreligious mockery of the act. Perhaps, too, there are some who even hesitate to omit the grace from an unspoken fear that the food might harm them without it. All have heard grace so muttered, or hurriedly and carelessly spoken, void of all feeling and ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... encountered. He stops short and eyes the newcomer curiously. It is always an impressive picture: the tortured, maddened animal, whose thin flanks are palpitating with his hot breath, his coat one shining mass of blood from the darts and the spear-thrusts, his massive neck still decked as in mockery with the fluttering flags, his fine head and muzzle seeming sharpened by the hour's terrible experience, his formidable horns crimsoned with onset; in front of this fiery bulk of force and courage, the slight, sinewy frame of the killer, whose only reliance ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... England is one of the sorrowfullest things in the world. I wonder if all other countries are as bad? Think of this woman's troublesome, miserable life; and now, after Fotheringay, the honour in which she lies in this temple is such a mockery! I ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... all. That was not for this moment. Keith was not in fault. It was this dreadful difficulty of occasion, binding her here when her heart was with him. To sit moping here by the fire when Keith called to her! Duty—the word was a mockery. "They" would say she ought to stay. Hidden voices throbbed the same message into her consciousness. But every eager impulse, winged with love, bade her go. To whom was her heart given? To Pa? Pity ... pity. ... She pitied him, helpless at home. If anything happened to ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... her eyes narrowed and grew very dark. Then suddenly she laughed—lightly, with just a suggestion of mockery in ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... other, at least. I'm tired of pretending to be other than I am. Why did you say 'being true to my husband'? You know it's mockery. Is it being true to live with a man I hate because man's law demands it, rather than true to you whom Nature's law sanctions? Don't speak to me of society's right and wrong! I despise it. There is no other tribunal than Nature, and Nature ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... great acts by which Bonaparte seemed determined to mark every day of his life. At the commencement of 1808 I received one of the first copies of the Code of Commerce, promulgated on the 1st of January by the Emperor's order. This code appeared to me an act of mockery; at least it was extraordinary to publish a code respecting a subject which it was the effect of all the Imperial decrees to destroy. What trade could possibly exist under the Continental system, and the ruinous severity of the customs? The line was ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... us anarchists and cutthroats. You, who are a product of the rotten government that has ground down and oppressed the people I represent. Because we rebel, you throw us in prison, making a mockery of your boasted liberty. So they did for a time in Russia. You call us 'cutthroats.' It's a good term. I hope to ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... flags—fluttering robes and rags—and grotesquely grim glimpses of decay. It was pretty cold, and though I was warmly clad, the base bizarrerie of the European clothes which I wore had become a perpetual offence and mockery in my eyes: at the first moment, therefore, I set out whither I knew that I should find such clothes as a man might wear: to the Turkish Embassy ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... and then of having him "seen to," and made to keep regular hours and be respectable; but, somehow, I seem to have grown to love him as he is with his daring mockery of Time. ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... them of the arrival of the distinguished visitor, and having assembled them, they proceeded together toward the coast to meet and receive the unhappy fugitive with the honors becoming her rank, though such honors must have seemed little else than a mockery in ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... which offered the least improvement on the existing state of things, and could find none. She imagined how all those Budmouth ones who should learn what had become of her would say, "Look at the girl for whom nobody was good enough!" To Eustacia the situation seemed such a mockery of her hopes that death appeared the only door of relief if the satire of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... suspected him, he must also suspect him of complicity in the Inter-County grab; he must suspect him of the ruthless crushing power that corrupts or annihilates opposition, making a mockery of legislation, a jest of the courts, and an epigram of a ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... to him a shield only against a petty provincial ruler, whilst the proud democrat of Athens would console himself under a sentence of death for a supposed violation of the national faith—which no one understood and which at times was the subject of the mockery of all—or the banishment from his home, his family, and his country with or without an alleged cause, that it was the act not of a single tyrant or hated aristocracy, but of his assembled countrymen. Far different is the power of our sovereignty. It can interfere with no one's faith, prescribe ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... around that bower, clasped her hand upon her heart, lest he should see its wild throbbings, and, forcing back the tears which moistened her long lashes, listened to the knell of all her hopes. Henceforth her love for him must be an idle mockery, and the time would come when to love him as she loved him then would be a sin—a wrong to herself, a wrong to him, and a ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... the gallows. Meantime he had said farewell to love and hope and faithfulness, even as he bade farewell to life. "Since she has forsaken me whom I thought faithful," said he to himself, "why, let it end, for life is a mockery I would not live out." And thenceforth, haggard but laughing, pale but with unbroken courage, he trod on his way through his few remaining days, the wonder ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... sense, the aspiration of the dead artist for perfect work and the honour it brings is a delusion, a sweet mockery of the fancy. But then so is every other aspiration which soars above the warm circle of the human affections, and if this delusion of the dead artist was held worthy of respect during the artist’s life, it is worthy of respect—nay, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... some gasoline out of the tank into a tin cup—thrust aside Ahmed and two other men—and primed the engine liberally. The engine coughed next time they moved the wheel, and in thirty seconds more we had it going. Ahmed came in for a volley of mockery for having to be shown the way to start his engine; but from the sour way he looked at me I was nearly sure he ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... that they were living creatures; but observing that they did not move, he approached nearer, and discovered that they were skeletons. Some were dressed as males, others as females; and many of them, in fearful mockery of death, had been placed in attitudes the most obscene and indecent. Presiding over this ghastly revel, was a gigantic skeleton, arrayed in what had once been a splendid theatrical dress, and grasping in its fleshless hand a large gilt goblet; this figure was seated on a sort ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... of Daedalus, the Greek architect, and his son, Icarus, who made themselves wings and flew from the realm of their foes; and the tale of Simon, the magician, who pestered the early Christian Church by exhibitions of flight into the air amid smoke and flame in mockery of the ascension. But do the many tales of sorcerers in the Middle Ages, who rose from the ground with their cloaks apparently filled with wind, to awe the rabble, suggest that they had deduced the principle of the aerostat from watching the action of smoke as did ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... beginning his promised narrative. A philosopher would have discerned something pathetic in the picture of the ragged rascal thus girdled about with blackguards of a baser sort, his lean body quivering, his eager face alive with emotions, mockery on his lips and sorrow in his eyes: to the sardonic king it afforded nothing more and nothing less than amusement. "You must know, dear Devils and ever-beautiful Blowens, that three days ago, when I was lying in the kennel, which is my humour, and staring at the sky, which ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... curious legend,[15] widely circulated in the Middle Ages, the men of Rochester did not accord a patient hearing to St. Augustine when he first came thither to preach the Gospel. They, instead, used him rudely, and in mockery threw at him and hung on his dress a lot of fish-tails. In anger the saint prayed to God to avenge him on his persecutors and "the Lord smote them in posteriora to their everlasting ignominy, so that not only on their own but on their successors' ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... been smiling gleefully over the proceedings, affect to resign themselves to the bad news of Malbrouck's death, and all altogether groan in hoarse bass mockery: ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... not be appeased by a mere mockery. They clamoured for the raising of money for a systematic defence of their colony, and the ground was cut from beneath the feet of the Assembly by a letter received from England by the Governor—not indeed in response to his recent urgent appeals, but still written with some knowledge ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... persons, discountenanced by Arthur, were placed on a level with their late antagonists. But selection is difficult where many are candidates. Free settlers of all sorts were equally eligible by their wealth, and made equal pretensions. Thus when the list was issued, it was received with mockery and laughter; and, said the scorners, all the "coat tails,"—rarely worn, except by free men—contain a commission. They were certainly numerous—large, in proportion to the emigrant adult population; but who can extinguish the flames of envy without kindling ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... eagerly. 'I have read through the New Testament again and again. Every word which is recorded of our Lord's sayings I have committed to memory, and I am sure that what I say is right. Either Christianity is a dead letter, a mockery, or we have been fighting this war in a wrong way. We have not been trusting to God for strength, and what is more, the best men in our Army and Navy realize it. Take the two men who, humanly speaking, ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... "walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." Surely there is some thing marvellous in this. For, let us speak the same language to the sick man: tell him, "Follow thy healthy nature, and them shalt not be sick," what would the words be but a bitter mockery? "How can you bid me," he would say, "to follow my healthy nature, when ye know that my diseased nature has bound me? Have ye no better comfort than this to offer me? Tell me rather how I may become able to follow my healthy nature; show me the strength ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... vast deal from her presence, rather than forego the honour of her sanction, Mrs. Dareville, without any motives of interest, or good-nature of sufficient power to restrain her talent and habit of ridicule, free from hope or fear, gave full scope to all the malice of mockery, and all the insolence of fashion. Her slings and arrows, numerous as they were and outrageous, were directed against such petty objects, and the mischief was so quick in its aim and its operation, that, felt but not seen, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... derision, coming from the door; looking to which the eyes of Nathan and the soldier fell upon a tall and naked Indian, shorn and painted, who, rifle in hand, the grim smile yet writhing on his features, and exclaiming with a mockery of friendly accost, "Bo-zhoo,[8] brudders,—Injun good friend!" was stepping that moment into the hovel; and as if that spectacle and those sounds were not enough to chill the heart's blood of the spectators, there were seen over his shoulders, the gleaming eyes, and heard behind ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... perfunctory quality in such attentions as he showed me, there was with it all a curious subtle something, so intangible that I found it utterly impossible to define or describe it, which yet impressed me with the feeling that it was all unreal, assumed, a mockery and a pretence; though why it should be so, I could not for the ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... addressed the outer envelope for her father's letters in care of Juan Dicampa. But that seemed a hollow mockery now. She was sending the letters to ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... with quiet mockery. "There always are. I will see to them. Difficulties are not without a certain advantage. They keep one ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... have subscribed to the theory that what makes us laugh is a sudden sense of our own superiority, thus attaching laughter to the self-assertive instinct, soon to be discussed. The laugh of victory, the laugh of defiance, the laugh of mockery, the sly or malicious laugh, support this theory, but can it be stretched to cover the laugh of good humor, the tickle laugh, or the baby's laugh in general? That seems very doubtful, and we must admit that we do not know the essential ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... thrilling to him. He forgot her mockery, forgot his rival, and sat down at her side, almost in possession of her waist. "Look here," he asked, "where are ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Don Mariano de Silva," said the former, with an air of brutal mockery that was habitual to him, "I rather think you are too loyal a gentleman to dishonour the laws of hospitality ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... noticed three people standing in line beneath the awning, and gazing upon me with interest. I recognized Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle Lorinet. They were all smiling with the same look of contemptuous mockery. I bowed. The man alone returned my salute, raising his hat. By some strange freak of fate, Berthe was again wearing a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... spoors that numerous animals were accustomed to come there. For some reason, however, none appeared at first, except hyenas and jackals, which came round staring and laughing at us in the most impudent manner. We threw stones at them, but this only tended to increase their mockery. At length I hurled a lump of wood at the head of one of them, which, hitting him on the nose, made him cry out, and the whole scampered off as fast as their logs could carry them. They were, I hoped, the forerunners of more noble brutes. I was not disappointed, for in a short time the ground ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... grew greater as we penetrated toward the heart of the city. On the main curio street the huge gilded signs hung as if in mockery above shops which had been stripped of all their treasures. Occasionally a restaurant remained open and these were crowded with chair coolies, who were waiting to be engaged by some merchant eager to escape from the city. Gone was all the life and bustle that my companions said made ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... to converse of the blue of the skies, of the murmur of waves and of fragrant breezes, and of the summits of crags, mingling here and there, after the fashion of travellers, laughter and mockery at the land of their fathers. And yet around them stretched the forests of Lithuania, so majestic and so full of beauty! The black currant, intertwined with a wreath of wild hop; the service tree, with the fresh blush of a shepherdess; the hazel, like a maenad, with green thyrsuses, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... mere mockery. If you placed ten thousand dollars in his hands, would you ever expect to see the first copper ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... strike, miss him, catch up in his tree, swish the cast off into the briars, break my top, break my heart, but—that is the humour of it. The passion, or instinct, being in all senses blind, must no doubt be hereditary. It is full of sorrow and bitterness and hope deferred, and entails the mockery of friends, especially of the fair. But I would as soon lay down a love of books as ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... stamps them as indispensably essential to proper living. The prayer of a man who does not believe in prayer is an example of the emptiness of unbelief. There is one minister in Chicago who openly announces that God does not and can not answer the prayers of mankind. And yet he prays. And what mockery is his praying. Mere words. No man is ever touched by such an empty form. Such prayers have none of that Heaven Force which establishes communion with the Lord. Surely "They draw near me with their lips, but their hearts ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... brutal passion would have converted the life of that pure and lovely girl? Now, however, she was safe, and still supporting her on his arm, Mr. Sinclair turned to his wife and tenderly moistened her parched lips. What a mockery of all human cares seemed that pale, peaceful brow—peaceful, while he whose lightest sorrow had thrown a shadow on her life was suffering anguish inexpressible, and the child who had lain in her bosom, to the lightest throb ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... under a great shock, and presently he said, as they paced up and down the garden walks, "Ay, I have been sore bestead, and I'll tell you how it came about, boys, and mayhap ye will pardon the poor fool, who would not own you sooner, lest ye should come in for mockery ye have not learnt to brook." There was a sadness and pleading in his tone that touched Ambrose, and he drew nearer to his uncle, who laid a hand on his shoulder, and presently the other on that of Stephen, who shrank a little ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... works of any one man will be limited, and where there will be no such mockery of good work as ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... knew only too well, and ready to believe that uniform and dirk would make a man of him at once, with all his terrors left behind. Perhaps the chief drawback was that the ladies WOULD say, 'What a darling!' affording Griff endless opportunities for the good-humoured mockery by which he concealed his own secret regrets. Did not even Selina Clarkson, whose red cheeks, dark blue eyes, and jetty profusion of shining curls, were our notion of perfect beauty, select the little naval cadet for her partner ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very pink and rather plump cheeks, and in his bright black eyes a sardonic sheen played as he loosely shook his host's hand. His expression was that of a man perpetually amused, as if anticipating a joke or recollecting a mockery. His voice was as languid as his limbs, but his words were precise and to ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... homage, as that which was paid by greater persons than themselves, they seemed, at the very same time, desirous to find some mode of intimating that the homage which they rendered they felt as an idle degradation, and in fact held the whole show as a mere piece of mockery. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... was in a few minutes adjusted to my neck. I felt its pressure, and I heard the confused sounds of the monotonous voice of the clergyman, as he muttered some prayers, that I must confess sounded to me at the time like a mockery ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... many battles won in the field and Diet; after titanic contests with kings in Christendom, and Solyman in the east, to fall, by the mockery of fate, into the grasp of ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... work none of its bad influence on us"? "None of its bad influence on us!" poor lad, whose life is wasted and character impaired in following the mirage of the suit, and who is killed by the mockery of its end. Thus do the two intertwined stories run; but apart from these, though all in place and keeping, and helping on the general development, there is a whole profusion of noticeable characters. In enumerating them, however baldly, one ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... about precedence; march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another's rochets, and at last flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him everywhere! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone; though there is enough of that too. But a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say, a laugh in the eyes most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high, brother also ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... which are not sincere or earnest, but are used in jest, or irony, in ridicule, sarcasm, or mockery, in insinuation or double-meaning, demand ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the man that of the woman," cried Madame Venus with proud mockery, "which you know better ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... throat had waved with melody in vain. He had worn his welcome out. Even the virtues which should have throbbed, tender and all-embracing, under priestly vestments, had no tenderness, no embrace for him,—only a mockery and a prophecy, a cold and cynical prediction that I should soon tire of his shrill voice. Yes, Cheri, your sweet silver trills, your rippling June-brook warbles, were to him only a shrew's scolding. I took the bird wrathfully, his name had been ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... celebration, "his majesty the Emperor Napoleon" had formally "renounced for himself, his successors, etc., all right of sovereignty and dominion, as well to the French empire and the kingdom of Italy, as over every other country." In return for this concession, as if in absolute mockery, "the isle of Elba, adopted by his majesty the Emperor ... as the place of his residence," was formed during his life into a separate principality, to "be possessed by him in full sovereignty and property," besides a certain annual ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... gods so thoroughly depraved. But in D, the case is different. Strictly speaking, the ancients never prayed; and it may be doubted whether D approaches so near to what we mean by prayer, as even by a mockery. You read of preces, of αραι, &c. and you are desirous to believe that pagan supplications were not always corrupt. It is too shocking to suppose, in thinking of nations idolatrous yet noble, that never any pure act of approach to the heavens took place on the part ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... him for the loss he had suffered in his private life; indeed, I almost think there were times when his triumphs as an author seemed to him utterly worthless—days of depression when the congratulations of his friends were nothing but a mockery. He had gained a striking success, it is true, but he had lost Freda; he was in the position of the starving man who has received a gift of bon-bons, but so craves for bread that they half sicken him. I used now and then to watch his face when, as often happened, ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... Merton, and the city is full of ladies of high degree. Their flounces and their furbelows are everywhere, and daily they congregate in Christ Church meadows and Trinity Grove, to hold revels displeasing to the Heads of Houses, who fear for the youth in their charge, and a mockery to their own hearts, which are anxious enough. Their dresses may be fine, but they themselves are lodged in garrets, and they miss the dainty fare to which they are accustomed. And all the while the wit and learning of ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... playing football in a school gymnasium—he is a wonderful example of early and precocious political fortune. There is in his face a certain cheery cynicism—a combination of self-confidence and perhaps of self-mockery, the attitude of most clear-sighted men towards fortune, even when she is most smiling. At the outset Mr. Asquith had to encounter an amendment from Mr. Chamberlain. It is needless to say that, while the most Radical Government which ever existed is proposing Radical legislation, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... fervor of the moment, I made my way to her side. Ah, God, how still! With what a mockery the closed lips and lids confronted my demanding gaze! A stone could not have ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... was sent, more specific and more urgent: but the men met the importunate kindness of the king with contemptuous mockery: "they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise." A portion of them carried their opposition beyond supercilious neglect into blood-thirsty enmity; "the remnant took his servants and entreated ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... and food was not plentiful, they deliberately left him to perish. They acted in a very cruel and heartless way. They cut down and stuck some poles in the snow, and then over the top they threw a few pieces of birch bark. This in mockery they called his tent. Then seating him on a piece of a log in it, where he was exposed to view from every side, they left him without any fire or blankets, and gave him only a small quantity of dried meat in a birch dish which they call a rogan. There, when he had eaten this meat, he was expected ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... dream, Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, 235 Startling with careless step the moonlight snake, He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, Shedding the mockery of its vital hues Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep 240 Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud; Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs Of Parthian kings scatter to every ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... dinner, a lonely, silent mockery of a meal. And back the question came, booming over the soft tinkling of glass and silver. He realized, with his salad, that four nights out of seven, Nellie dined like this, alone. His lower lip protruded, and lines of conscience fell in a curtain ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... brief scene" of Pyramus and Thisbe, performed by the rustics at the close of the play, is {151} nothing but a delightful parody on the very theme of Romeo and Juliet, even to the mistaken death, and the suicide of the heroine upon realization of the truth. At the end of the parody, as if in mockery of the Capulets and Montagues, Bottom starts up to tell us that "the wall is down that parted their fathers." Finally, the whole fairy story is the creation of ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... confidence in William induced him to believe that some such impression upon his mind had led him to the measure of sending a challenge, which, otherwise, addressed to a theologian, would have been a shameless mockery. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... death for every man, and feel all human weakness, yet without sin. But it was a deeper, more painful, and yet more noble feeling than mere fear which then convulsed His sacred heart; even the feeling of shame—the mockery of the crowd—the—But I dare not enlarge on anything so awful; at least I will say this—That he had to cry as none ever cried before or since, "O God, in thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded;" for he had, it seems, actually, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... gunning away in the salient, and seemed to hear the groans of men at Hooge, at St.-Eloi, in other awful places. The irony of that guest of ours was frightful. It was bitter beyond justice, though with truth in the mockery, the truth of a soul shocked by the waste of life and heroism;... when I met him later in the war he was on ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... his greeting, but in their eyes which shone peculiarly white in their blackened faces, Febrer felt something like hostile mockery of objectionable strangeness, as if he were of a different race and had committed an unheard of deed which forever placed him beyond ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the town of Boyville, says White,[12] in substance, which is impenetrable when its gates have once shut upon youth. An adult may peer over the wall and try to ape the games inside, but finds it all a mockery and himself banished among the purblind grown-ups. The town of Boyville was old when Nineveh was a hamlet; it is ruled by ancient laws; has its own rulers and idols; and only the dim, unreal noises of the adult world about ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... mockery. "Oh, no, you wouldn't! You know what it is, don't you? Yes, you do!" Penrod's curiosity stirred somewhat. "Well, all right," he said, "I got nothin' to do. I just as soon ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... No mockery here, nor herald's shield, To glitter o'er a bed of clay; But snow-drops and fresh violets yield A tribute ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... would stir no impulsive radical to violence. There probably was not uttered in the United States on that critical 4th of July, 1856, when the very foundation of the government was in dispute and the day itself seemed a mockery, a cooler, more logical speech than this by the man who, a month before, had driven a convention so nearly mad that the very reporters had forgotten to make notes. And the temper of this Princeton speech Lincoln kept throughout ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... said enough, Lucy," said Mrs. Fairchild, interrupting her. "I do not speak of our poor friends' faults out of malice, or for the sake of making a mockery of them; but to show you how people may live in the constant practice of one particular sin without being at all conscious of it, and perhaps thinking themselves very good all the time. We are all quick ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... became steeper and more rugged every moment; and the high hill air, instead of refreshing him, seemed to throw his blood into a fever. The noise of the hill cataracts sounded like mockery in his ears; they were all distant, and his thirst increased every moment. Another hour passed, and he again looked down to the flask at his side; it was half empty, but there was much more than three drops in it. He stopped to open it, and again, as he did so, something ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... have seen only some extracts from the Comoedia Divina; for, so far from Batornicki "plundering freely," I do not find any resemblance between the works except in the sole word comoedia. The Comoedia Divina is a mockery, not political, but literary, and as such anti-mystic and conservative. Die Ungoettliche Comoedie is wild, mystical, supernatural, republican, and communistic. It contains passages of great power, eloquence, and pathos. German critics are often prosy and inefficient, but not given ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... and Cleotos, arousing from his apathetic despair, felt more strongly that, if the lapse of love into mere friendship is a misfortune, the offer of friendship as a substitute for promised love is a mockery and an insult: his soul rebelled at being made a passive party to such a bargain; and he began himself to play the retaliatory part which a wronged nature naturally suggests to itself. Like Leta, he learned to hold out the limpid hand in careless ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Quaker at the tennis-court swear to himself when he loses; and told us what pretty notions my Lord Pembroke hath of the first chapter of Genesis, and a great deal of such fooleries; which the King made mighty mockery at. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... 1860), where it is added that "the brethren assembled round the tomb of Hiram, is a representation of the disciples lamenting the death of Christ on the Cross." Weishaupt, founder of the eighteenth-century Illuminati, also showed—although in a spirit of mockery—how easily the legend of Hiram could be interpreted in this manner, and suggested that at the periods when the Christians were persecuted they enveloped their doctrines in secrecy and symbolism. "That ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... jesting, all speaking loosely and wantonly about holy things (things nearly related to God and religion), making such things the matters of sport and mockery, playing and trifling with them, is certainly prohibited, as an intolerably vain and wicked practice. It is an infallible sign of a vain and light spirit, which considereth little, and cannot distinguish things, to talk slightly concerning persons of high dignity, to whom ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... for Wally. What the devil did the fellow mean? The deuce of it was that he knew all the facts and Wally did not. He talked as if he meant it, but behind those cool eyes there might lie either mockery or irony. One thing alone stood out to Selfridge like a sore thumb. His plans had come tumbling down like a house of cards. Either Big Bill had blundered amazingly, or he had played traitor. In either case Wally could guess pretty shrewdly whose hide ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... into this hovel decked with gold and jewels as if in mockery?—like a tyrant who should feast at a groaning table and compel the starving to look on at the banquet. Her delicate perception made her feel what trenchant discord her appearance offered to all that surrounded her, and the discord ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brothers in toil is carried to such an extent as I find it to be among those who have sworn to demand equal pay for equal work. Thus far in the history of our order that part of our platform has been but a mockery ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... a serious outlook it was little wonder then that Larry again burst out into shouts, that were hardly more than a mockery, it seemed to him, so hoarse had his voice become, and so incapable ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... load of sorrow and suffering that is laid upon it;—times when the anguish of the soul is such that the fair world around seems enshrouded with gloom, when the bright sun itself appears to shine in mockery, and when the smitten heart refuses ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne |
