"Ridicule" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had grown to be greatly respected in Erisaig. The audacity of four 'wastrel laddies' setting up to be fishermen on their own account had at first amused the neighbours; but their success and their conduct generally, soon raised them above ridicule; and the women especially were warm in their commendation. They saw how Rob gradually improved the appearance of his brothers and cousin. All of them had boots and stockings now. Not only that, but they had white shirts ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... you were then!" cried Papillette. "If you are not willing to become the ridicule of the court, I advise you to quit it ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... that the heroes of these tales of chivalry were men of flesh and blood. He himself, he said, was convinced that these stories were nothing but fables and falsehoods, and that none of the personages in them ever lived. Whereupon Don Quixote began to ridicule the curate, and went on to describe his heroes, saying that his faith was so strong that he could almost swear he had seen Amadis of Gaul and some of the others he worshiped. Then he embarked on a description of these knights, giving the color of their eyes, of their beards ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... taking off my forage-cap, "your ridicule is not the most disagreeable incident that I expect to meet with to-day. I am attempting to do my duty, and I must ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... joined and were going back toward the church. The jealous, infuriated woman continued, in a half-audible voice, to hurl her insulting tirade over those broad, exuberant shoulders in front of her—a splendid pedestal for a beautiful head with luxuriant hair. Dolores turned around with a smirk of biting ridicule on her face. Beg pardon! Had all that been for her? When would that dirty scullion stop annoying a lady? Couldn't a person look at a parade without being insulted? And a glitter of gold sparkled with a wicked gleam in the pupils of her ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the charge of the Luxembourg, and in that situation he fully justified my choice. But since that period he has behaved towards me with the utmost ingratitude—entered into all the silly cabala against me, blamed all my measures, and turned into ridicule the Legion of Honour. Have not some of the intriguers put it into his head that I regard him with jealousy? You must be aware of that. You must also know as well as I how anxious the members of the Directory were ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... second, during which these two women regarded each other. The one, eyes blazing, meteoric; at bay, aggressive; suffering in advance and resenting in advance the scorn and ridicule and insult she had thrown herself open to; a beautiful, burning, bubbling lava cone of flesh and spirit. And the other, calm-eyed, cool- browed, serene; strong in her own integrity, with faith in herself, thoroughly at ease; dispassionate, imperturbable; a figure chiselled from some ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... To have the knowledge that his own wife had baulked him brought home to him in this mocking fashion, to find how little a thing had tripped him that day, to learn how blindly he had played into the hands of fate, above all to be exposed at once to his wife's resentment and the ridicule of the Court—for he could not be sure that I should not the next moment disclose his name—all so wrought on him that for a moment I thought he would strike ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... course, not all the Irish, even of the wretchedly poor, are thus unskilled and helpless, but a deplorably large class is; and it is this class whose awkwardness and utter ignorance are too often made the theme of unthinking levity and ridicule when the poor exile from home and kindled lands in New York and undertakes housework or anything else for a living. The "awkwardness," which means only inability to do what one has never even seen done, is not confined to any class or nation, and should be ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... officers of the law, and the united efforts of the vengeance-breathing population throughout the country round about to hunt the murderers down? Why, it seemed as if the devil himself were holding justice up to ridicule ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... your charge. Those materials I have furnish'd, When by you refined and burnish'd, Must, that all the world may know 'em, Be reduced into a poem. But, I beg, suspend a while That same paltry, burlesque style; Drop for once your constant rule, Turning all to ridicule; Teaching others how to ape you; Court nor parliament can 'scape you; Treat the public and your friends Both alike, while neither mends. Sing my praise in strain sublime: Treat me not with dogg'rel rhyme. 'Tis but just, you should produce, With each fault, each fault's excuse; Not to publish ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... ignore it. The papers were silent. Underneath this calm, however, the activity was redoubled. The prominent Negroes were carefully catalogued, written to, and put under personal influence. The Negro papers were quietly subsidized, and they began to ridicule and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... ground of equality, in order to treat with Mr Oswald, and that our negotiations should be fruitless. In what an awkward situation should we then be? We should find ourselves betrayed by our too great pliancy, and our too great desire of peace, to the ridicule of our enemies, the contempt of other nations, and the censure of our own minds. What a page would this ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... were convinced, and the torment of the mosquitoes proving stronger than the fear of our ridicule, all three sprang out of their saddles, and made a rush at the next bed of penny-royal that came ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... the plough, but before Putnam could take his position, one of them, a frisky animal, put down her head and shook her horns so threateningly that Gem abandoned her corner of the sheet and fled in terror, leaving the mortified patriots to the full blaze of public ridicule. Tom was furious, but he reserved his rage for another time. "Bring those cows together by main force and hold 'em still, boys," he said in a concentrated tone as he picked up the corner of the sheet. ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... of none. There can be no doubt but that I was somewhat vulgar in my manners, and my carriage was certainly quite unlike that of my companions. Some of them even jeered me, but I regarded them not. A real grief is armour-proof against ridicule. In a short time, it being six o'clock, the supper was served out, consisting of a round of bread, all the moisture of which had been allowed to evaporate, and an oblong, diaphanous, yellow substance, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... by rubbing bits of wood together. They recalled to us what the Gray Mahatma had said about Galileo trying to make the Pope believe that the earth moved around the sun. The Pope threatened to burn Galileo for heresy; they only offered to pillory us with public ridicule; so the world has ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."[218] In reply to the Sadducees, who attempted to ridicule His statements regarding resurrection, He said, "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God";[219] and He put them to silence by showing that the truth of resurrection was implied in the name by which God revealed ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... and drudged, and plotted to gain my ends, and am at last disappointed by other people's folly, may in pity be allowed to swear and grumble a little; but a captious sceptic in love, a slave to fretfulness and whim, who has no difficulties but of his own creating, is a subject more fit for ridicule than ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... constitute a fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life. I have endured a great deal of ridicule, without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule. I am ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... about the beginning of your career. He said that if only the spirit of your first days could come back—" Her tone grew quicker, as though she feared ridicule in Loder's silence. "He asked me to use my influence. I know that I have little—none, perhaps—but I couldn't tell him that, and so—so ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... court, with a society kept in funds by the self-expatriated wives and daughters of our business men, she lacks the reasons for which Baron Haussmann bedecked her and made her beautiful. The good Loubet, the worthy Fallieres, except that they furnish the cartoonist with subjects for ridicule, do not add to the gayety of Paris. But when Harden-Hickey was a boy, Paris was never so carelessly gay, so brilliant, never so overcharged with life, color, ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... summer school of (so-called) philosophy still meets at Concord in July—the last survival of the speculative ignorance of the dark ages, and the worship of Greek literature. The copious ridicule of the press has no effect upon this serious gathering. Its verbose platitudes and pretentious inanities continue to be repeated, furnishing almost as good an antithesis to science and philosophy as Mrs. Eddy and her disciples. There is no lack ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... foibles; he was not an anchorite by any means. His stern, Spartan idea of discipline may have been overstretched, and blind adherence to routine in his daily habits may have justly invited the lash of ridicule. What is pretended here, and that, without fear of contradiction, is that his faults, which were those of a man, were loudly proclaimed, while his spirit of justice, of benevolence and generosity ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... experiment to vary our food by purchasing* a few dogs, and after having been accustomed to horse-flesh, felt no disrelish to this new dish. The Chopunnish have great numbers of dogs which they employ for domestic purposes, but never eat; and our using the flesh of that animal soon brought us into ridicule ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... and in England. My opinion being asked, I said, that though the climate of France was much superior to that of England, I believed that agriculture had arrived at a greater state of perfection with us than in France. Most of the Frenchmen treated the idea with ridicule; upon which I said, let us refer to Monsieur Las Cases, who has lived several years in England. "You are right," said he; "there can be no doubt, that agriculture has arrived to much greater perfection in England than in France; but what I admire most in England, are the country-seats ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... the rest of her existence. She did not take a prominent part in any of the important doings of Grey Abbey; and, though Lord Cashel constantly referred to her, for he thought it respectable to do so, no one regarded her much. Fanny felt, however, that she would neither scold her, ridicule her, nor refuse to listen: to Lady Cashel, therefore, at last, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... and danger are over, and it would be easy to turn this matter into ridicule, but from that hour to this the wooden cross which turned the flood of my feelings then into a saving channel has never left me. I keep it, not indeed for what it was, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sincere, but the compliments are not meant to deceive, they only profess to be forms. Why do the English talk of the beautiful sentiment of the Bible and pretend to feel it so much, and when they come and see the same life before them they ridicule it. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... every moment; he has not been seen again; he did not come to sleep where we passed the night." Such is the candour and simplicity of manners—such the boasted happiness—of man in the state of nature! He kills his son to escape the ridicule of having twins, or to avoid journeying more slowly; in fact, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... from the early Spanish chroniclers, who often began their literary works with an account of the Creation! The love of linking together the material and the poetic is, of course, at the basis of this striving after effect, and no philosophical observer would pretend to hold it up to ridicule. Anglo-Saxon civilisation grows material and commercial; the Spanish-American preserves and cultivates some poetic and cultured imagery; and perhaps Nature intends the one to affect the other in the future amalgamation of the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... front of this contains a large circular window measuring twenty-nine feet across the glass, filled by a number of circular apertures. This is Lord Grimthorpe's design, upon which much not undeserved ridicule has been showered. He informs us that this arm of the transept was in a somewhat better condition than the southern one, but that all the upper part and the turrets needed rebuilding. In the rebuilt walls of the transept he used the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... the Quakers were standing out from the bench, all intent on the Rube. He had stirred them up. First it was humor; then ridicule, curiosity, suspicion, doubt. And I knew it would grow to wonder and certainty, then fierce attack from both tongues and bats, and lastly—for ball ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... than in any other man, with moral enthusiasm and with intellectual grasp, has held in the modern world the same rank which was accorded to him in the old; but he cannot enjoy the same appreciation. Macaulay's ridicule has rescued from oblivion the criticism which pronounced the eloquence of Chatham to be more ornate than that of Demosthenes, and less diffuse than that of Cicero. Did the critic, asks Macaulay, ever hear any speaking ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the village had often, but vainly, endeavored to lead these unhappy people to a sense of religion, but he was always received by them with scoffing and ridicule. ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... find places in the Church; and one half of Madrid was brought thither by expecting to meet the other half. The only persons truly anxious to hear the Preacher were a few antiquated devotees, and half a dozen rival Orators, determined to find fault with and ridicule the discourse. As to the remainder of the Audience, the Sermon might have been omitted altogether, certainly without their being disappointed, and very probably without their perceiving ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... "I have never seen you manifest so much nervous excitement. Do you not see how ridiculous is your request? You want me to bring ridicule, not to say disgrace, on myself, by suddenly forbidding Alphonse my house. What will he suppose, what will the world think, except that there has been some extraordinary cause for such a procedure? And all out of a silly, romantic, imaginary notion which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... him for stammering, nor turn him to ridicule; if you do, it will make him ten times worse; but be patient and gentle with him, and endeavour to give him confidence, and encourage him to speak to you as quietly, as gently, and deliberately as ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... suspected some form of treachery at the outset, he was soon obliged to ridicule his fears. There were nearly a score of men there, and a single glance revealed to him the gratifying fact that no treachery could be practiced in such an assemblage. Among their fellow guests there was an English lord, an Austrian duke, a Russian prince, a German ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... whether the Eastern Church has a screen quite different from their own screen at the altar, and whether she has been always tenaciously exclusive in teaching, worship and organisation. Who of us and of you asks about the integrity of the Christian spirit? If St Paul were amongst us he would ridicule our controversies on Filioque and all the trifles concerning Church organisation and the external expressions of Christianity. He would ask: What happened with the spirit he preached? What happened ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... contemplation on religious subjects, took upon himself the public ministry. In the year 1650 he was imprisoned at Derby for speaking publicly in the church after divine service; on being brought before a magistrate, he bade the company "tremble at the word of the Lord;" the expression was turned into ridicule, and he and his friends received ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... alone personally, is so completely out of humour with us for not having acted in strict concert with them, or him, or in conformity to their ideas in negotiating the definitive treaty [of Amiens], that I find he takes pains to turn it into ridicule, and particularly to represent the arrangement we have made for Malta as impracticable ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... not likely that danger would come from within. It could not. The place was too well guarded on all sides. Besides, if he fired and gave an alarm that turned out to be false, there would be a severe reprimand from the officers, and a long course of ridicule and ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... when, together with her daughter, they translate Tacitus, read Tasso, and get entangled in endless discussions upon Descartes. Even Mme. de Grignan, who rarely likes her mother's friends, in the end gives due consideration to this loyal confidant, though she does not hesitate to ridicule the mysticism into which ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... prefixed to it, for the style is greatly in advance of his boyish writing of that year. It is an interesting document, enthusiastic and gay in a manner hardly to be met with again in its author, and diversified with graceful praise of St John's College, defence of good poetry, and wholesome ridicule of those who were trying to introduce the "Thrasonical huffsnuff" style of which Phaer and Stanihurst ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... But their ridicule soon turned into delight as they gazed at the wondrous display of tints, beautifully blended, so that no two colours jarred. But it was not only in its hues that there was so much fascination to the eye, for all three gazed in wonder at the peculiar appendages which added to the strangeness ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... half-drunken buffoon, whose wit, such as it was, was retailed all over the place; a man who was specially pleased if he could be present in any assembly collected for any serious purpose and turn it into ridicule. He got upon a chair, not far from where George sat, but refused to go upon the platform. "No, thank yer my friends, I'm best down here; up there's the place for the gentlefolk, the clever uns, them as buy grey mares!"—(roars of laughter)—"but, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... breaks off abruptly. It is directed against the Epicureans. It throws ridicule on appealing to the affection of brutes for their offspring instead of ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... unsuspecting calf into the belief that the slyly inserted finger was that conduit? The triumph of the Irish girl was explained, and I sank back, covered with confusion. Fiske, however, blurted out: "Why, I never should have thought of that in all my life," whereat he too became the target of ridicule. ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... had indeed been much. I thought in the simplicity of my heart that God was as great as an emperor, and could bestow, and had bestowed on me as much as the German had conferred, or could confer on his vassal. No part of my insanity was ever held in such ridicule as this. And yet the idea cleaves to me strangely, and is liable to stick ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... perhaps—for her own missionary path had ever been so easy and untroubled. Mrs. Kirke was a woman of marked beauty, whose sweet imperiousness, sympathy, humor, and tact made her the adored of the islanders. She not only spoke native well, but with a zest and sparkle, a silver ripple of irony, ridicule, and good-fellowship that carried everything before it. No kings ever bothered Mrs. Kirke. Even the redoubtable Tembinok, with forty boats full of armed savages, had been stemmed in his Napoleonic career and turned back by her from his projected invasion ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... said Mr Rogers, as the procession drew nearer. "He is a ruler over his people, so deserves respect. If you ridicule what will no doubt seem very absurd, we shall make an enemy instead ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... his self-control; he spoke with a quietness which made Katharine rather anxious that he should explain himself, but at the same time she wished to annoy him, to waft him away from her on some light current of ridicule or satire, as she was wont to do with these intermittent young men of ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... amorous of corruption; not Poe was more spellbound by the scent of graveyard earth. So Beddoes has written a new Dance of Death, in poetry; has become the chronicler of the praise and ridicule of Death. 'Tired of being merely human,' he has peopled a play with confessed phantoms. It is natural that these eloquent speakers should pass us by with their words, that they should fail to move us by their sorrows or their ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... worthy of remark) of twenty fortresses held in that country for the pope, not one escaped falling into his hands. Not satisfied with these injuries inflicted on the pontiff, he resolved to banter him by his words as well as ridicule him by his deeds, and wrote, that he had only done as his holiness deserved, for having unblushingly attempted to divide two such attached friends as the duke and himself, and for having dispersed over Italy letters intimating that he had quitted the duke to ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... cried Jack, joyfully, and Mrs. Minot clapped her hands, for every new member was rejoiced over by the good people, who were not discouraged by ridicule, indifference, or opposition. ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... would ridicule Sir Adrian's labours in his cause with the most gentle note of affectionate mockery. But, from the desire doubtless to save one so disinterested and unworldly from any accusation of complicity, he was silent upon the schemes ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... inflicted on science by the oppositions of a headless religion; any more than we can forget the injury which has been inflicted on religion by the oppositions of a heartless science. Secondly, we have seen this very question of the inhabitation of the planets and satellites rendered a topic of ridicule for Thomas Paine, and an inviting theme for raillery to others of sophistical spirit, by the way in which it has been foolishly mixed up with sacred or spiritual concerns. Surely, the object of God in the creation of our terrestrial ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... the exposition of a somewhat complicated budget of finance or legislation, or whether he showed it most in the heat of extemporary debate. At least this we may say, that from the humbler arts of ridicule or invective to the subtlest dialectic, the most persuasive eloquence, the most cogent appeals to everything that was highest and best in the audience that he was addressing, every instrument which could find place in the armory of a member of this House, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... if she is a pound, is Mrs. Joe. Expensive to keep up in velvet and satin, not to speak of mutton and beef. Your mother comes cheap," he would add aside to Clarence, with a rolling laugh. Thus he did not in the least exempt his descendants from the universal ridicule which he poured on all the world; but when he sat down opposite his timid little delicate wife, and by his University man, who had very little on the whole to say for himself, Mr. Copperhead felt the increase in gentility as well as the failure in ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... to going to school with about equal measures of delight and dread; my pride and ambition longed for this first step in life, but Rupert had filled me with a wholesome awe of its stringent etiquette, its withering ridicule, and unsparing severities. However, in his anxiety to make me modest and circumspect, I think he rather over-painted the picture, and when I got through the first day without being bullied, and made such creditable friends on the second, I began to think that Rupert's experience ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Episcopal Church, comprising almost all the learning, the evangelistic zeal, and the charitable activity and self-denial of the American church of that time, that heard these unwonted pretensions with indignation or with ridicule; in the Episcopal Church itself they were disclaimed, scouted, and denounced with (if possible) greater indignation still. But the new party had elements of growth for which its adversaries did not sufficiently reckon. The experience of other orders in the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... impression that there was one equally impenetrable about the pedlar himself. Having little else, however, than a passing thought, a fancy, on which to ground this surmise, he prudently concealed it, from an apprehension of being mistaken, and, consequently, of subjecting himself to ridicule. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... gentleman, profound student of Shakespeare! When the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy was raging in America (it really did rage there!) Jefferson wrote the most delicious doggerel about it. He ridiculed, and his ridicule killed the Bacon enthusiasts all the more dead because it was barbed ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... best mothers and wives and daughters in America, the most intelligent and upright and pure- minded women in the land, loaded down with their hopes, wet with their tears—if they turned their hearts', prayers and deepest desires into ridicule, throwed 'em round under their feet, they wouldn't pay no attention to Dorlesky's errents, they wouldn't notice one little vegitable widow, humbly at that, and sort o' disagreeable." And says I, "I don't want Dorlesky's errents throwed round under foot, and she ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... remained refractory. He turned his head away from all that joy, and voluntarily exiled himself. While he could have been a peer, he preferred being an outlaw. Years had thus passed away. He had grown old in his fidelity to the dead republic, and was therefore crowned with the ridicule which is the natural reward of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... floor, between a brandy-bottle on one side, and a guttering, unsnuffed candle on the other, he roared with laughter, and stamped about in his usual boisterous way, till the flimsy little house seemed to be trembling under him to its very foundations. Mat bore all this noise and ridicule, and all the jesting that followed it about the futility of drowning his passion for Madonna in the brandy-bottle, with the most unruffled and exemplary patience. The self-control which he thus exhibited did not pass without its reward. Zack got tired of making jokes which were received with the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... doctor's fee is an honorarium. Even the most eminent physicians, as such biographies as those of Paget show, are sometimes miserably, inhumanly poor until they are past their prime. In short, the doctor needs our help for the moment much more than we often need his. The ridicule of Moliere, the death of a well-informed and clever writer like the late Harold Frederic in the hands of Christian Scientists (a sort of sealing with his blood of the contemptuous disbelief in and dislike of doctors he had bitterly expressed in his books), the scathing and quite justifiable exposure ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... and determination were soon put to the test. He had been a bar favourite so long that his absence was soon noticed, and the men he had so often entertained and treated were loud in their complaints and jeers. The ridicule was hard enough to bear, but the sneers at his stingy ways hurt ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... His insatiable curiosity made him thirst to taste of the bitter as well as the sweet, to be pricked by the thorn as well as smell the rose. He was quick to see the humorous side of a tale or episode, but he was tenderly sensitive to ridicule. When he appeared among his legal brothers-in-law in the Parliament House, a wit there among the unemployed advocates in the old hall called him the Gifted Boy. He winced under the laugh, and fled from "the interminable patter ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... time of Cooper's friendship with Charles Mathews in the early 1820's, he had been in touch with the stage, and in June, 1850, he mentions writing a three-act play in "ridicule of new notions." The title was "Upside Down; or, Philosophy in Petticoats"—a comedy. Of this play Cooper's friend Hackett, the American Falstaff of that day, wrote him: "I was at Burton's its first night and saw the whole of the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... is legally, but not morally, a citizen. He is a meddler, and Herculaneum is already too well supplied with meddlers. Do the wise thing, Mr. Warrington; withdraw. Otherwise your profit will be laughter and ridicule; for the Republican party can never hope to win under such equivocal leadership. That's all ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... the aboriginal Irish there had, during the long contest between Philip and Elizabeth, been a close connection. The exiled chieftain was welcomed at Madrid as a good Catholic flying from heretical persecutors. His illustrious descent and princely dignity, which to the English were subjects of ridicule, secured to him the respect of the Castilian grandees. His honours were inherited by a succession of banished men who lived and died far from the land where the memory of their family was fondly cherished by a rude peasantry, and was kept fresh by the songs of minstrels ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the country, who had joined the minute-men, came in one day to the Charleston Hotel, with a huge cockade on his hat, expecting to be received with great applause; but, to his astonishment, he was greeted with laughter and ridicule. ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... sounded his scientific friends, and could find among them not one who acknowledged a doctrine of transmutation. The reaction from the stand-point of Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin and Goethe had been complete, and when Charles Darwin avowed his own conviction he expected always to have it met with ridicule or contempt. In 1857 there was but one man speaking with any large degree of authority in the world who openly avowed a belief in transmutation of species—that man being Herbert Spencer. But the Origin of Species came, as Huxley has said, like a flash in the darkness, enabling the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... of childhood to bitter consciousness of himself by the ridicule which his club-foot had excited. The circumstances of his case were so peculiar that he could not apply to them the ready-made rules which acted well enough in ordinary affairs, and he was forced to think for himself. The many books ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Finley, President of the College in that province, relating the same experiment. It was read at the Royal Society, Nov. 21, of that year, but not printed in the Transactions; perhaps because it was thought too strange to be true, and some ridicule might be apprehended if any member should attempt to repeat it in order to ascertain or refute it. The following is a copy ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... the officer wanted, as it proved; for when he had come within good speaking distance he called angrily, "Ho! ye are there, are ye, hussy? Still busily seeking, I suppose, to be a pick-thanks with those in power by casting ridicule on those they ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... ranch practice was the keeping up of my bulls in winter-time and not putting them out with the cows till the middle of July. This also met with the ridicule of all the "old-timers"; but it was entirely successful! The calf crop was not only a very large one but the calves were dropped all about the same time, were thus of an even age (an important matter for dealers), and they "came" when their mothers were strong and ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... the ridicule was, that one of the company, who slily overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally mice, and had been altered to rats, as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... year one of the pre-Raphaelites, who had been at first treated with vehement opposition and ridicule, came so unmistakably to the front as to stagger his former critics, and render his future success certain. Even the previous year Millais's "Huguenot" had made a deep impression, and his "Order of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... unable to detain him any longer, reluctantly consented to his departure, and, hoping that ridicule and lack of success would soon drive him back to her, prepared for him the motley garb of a fool and gave him a ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... whether his uncle were right or no, but he hated him, and marked him down for an enemy. His grandfather had no great love for him either, and was in revolt against his theories; but he was easily crushed in argument by Theodore's fluency, which was never hard put to it to turn into ridicule the old man's simple generosity. In the end Jean Michel came to be ashamed of his own good-heartedness, and by way of showing that he was not so much behind the times as they thought, he used to try to talk like Theodore; but the words came hollow ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... proofs of the last remark. But when we consider them as a distinct people, differing in their manner of speech and in their dress and customs from others, rebelling against fashion and the fashionable world, and likely therefore to become rather the objects of ridicule than of praise; when we consider these things, and their steady and rigid perseverance in the peculiar rules and customs of the society, we cannot but consider their obedience to their own discipline, which makes a point of the observance of ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... community of Chaeronea, being archon of that town. Whether this dignity was annual or for life we do not know, but it was probably the former, and very likely he served it more than once. He speaks of his devotion to the duties of his office as causing him to incur the ridicule of some of his fellow-citizens, when they saw him engaged in the humblest duties. "But," he says, in Clough's version, "the story told about Antisthenes comes to my assistance. When some one expressed surprise at his carrying home some pickled fish from market ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... seventy-second year. "Athenaeum", October 14th, 1882, page 500.)...I have had an astounding letter from Dr. Boott (The letter is enthusiastically laudatory, and obviously full of genuine feeling.); it might be turned into ridicule against him and me, so I will not send it to any one. He writes in a noble ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... the presidency, he began an important communication by stating that he would answer as soon as he had taken a hasty plate of soup. That "hasty plate of soup" appeared in cartoons, was pictured on walls, etc., in every form of ridicule, and was one of the chief elements ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... and communicated them to the magicians as soon as he could deliver them to our holy prophet. Exulting in the knowledge obtained in this diabolical manner, these wretches tried to turn his prophecies into ridicule; and, seeing the evil effects of such practices among men, he prayed God to put a stop to them. From that time guardian angels have been stationed in different parts of the heavens, to keep off the devils; and as soon as one of them ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... wagged their wise heads, and cast mingled glances of pity, wonder, ridicule or disdain upon the poor deluded victim of the "latest humbug." Even the select circles heard of it as a report finally reached the daily paper, which appeared with a glaring head ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... whenever she could persuade him to offer himself; a thing she had no doubt of accomplishing with comparative ease. Not so the Captain. Like all weak men, there was nothing of which he stood more in terror than of ridicule. He had heard the manoeuvres of Miss Harris laughed at by many of the young men in Bath, and was by no means disposed to add himself to the food for mirth of these wags; and, indeed, had cultivated her acquaintance with a kind of bravado ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... and attempts at ridicule served to bring me into general notice. I soon found that, by reason of them, and without merit or effort of my own, I had become known throughout the whole country as "the Colored Professor." I had a status. The lady being the daughter of a highly respectable minister, she ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... addressed himself keenly to the shaving of the King of Oolb, lathering him and performing his task with perfect skill. And the courtiers crowded to follow the example of the King, and Shibli Bagarag shaved them, all of them. Now, when they were shaved, fear smote them, the fear of ridicule, and each laughed at the change that was in the other; but the King cried, 'See that order is issued for the people of Oolb to be as we before to-morrow's sun. So is laughter taken in reverse.' And the King said aside to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... winter days. Unluckily, in the exertions necessary to remove these inconveniences, the main attention has been diverted to this object; the old aims have been lost sight of, and to remove friction has come to be the end. That is the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the governments generally of the world, are cities and governments of the rich, and the masses are not men, but poor men, that is, men who would be rich; this is the ridicule of the class, that they arrive with pains and sweat ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... with a cube of sugar, a piece of candy, or some other pleasure-producing article; for every miss they are punished—made to suffer pain or discomfort. This same sort of procedure carries over into human affairs. Witness the hickory stick and the ruler, or count the nickels and caresses. Ridicule before the class, and praise for commendable behavior or performance, are typical of this same method. If it is followed, and it clearly has a place in the training of children, care should be exercised ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... if she pledged her word, it might not always be profitable to keep it; but she liked to be on pleasant terms with everyone, and would be amiable to the last, no matter what happened. Comedy was her forte, rather than tragedy. If tragedy entered her life she would probably turn it into ridicule. Wholly without care, whimsical and generous to a degree, if it suited her mood, Louise Merrick possessed a nature capable of great things, either for ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... should prefer to drop in on Hutchins at his own home. Now, Louis, enough of the honest old man for one night. I have a lovely thing by Eumenes that I want to show you. To-day is—Tuesday. Come to dinner on Sunday and pour the vials of your ridicule on my ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... cloud was due to the good offices of Hasbrouck. He saw matter of public interest in the swollen jest and threw the columns of the Sunday Times open to Jimaboy. Under the racking pressure, the sentimentalist fired volley upon volley of scathing ridicule into the massed ranks of anxious inquirers, and finally came to answering some of the choicest of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... brought an action against the bailiff in the court of king's bench, and obtained considerable damages; and in the meantime, he secured a seat for the borough of Kirkwall, in Orkney, by which he exposed himself to the ridicule of his enemies as a person ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... mankind! Too often has a poor, sickly ape, which by his very feebleness allowed himself to be captured and placed in a zoo, been compared to human beings. Even in spirit and movements he has been considered as a human caricature and heaped with ridicule. We have continually considered his defects, without noticing his better qualities. We would have a much higher idea of his great family, if we would take a human derelict and compare him to an ape ruler! This comparison would ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... indifference to transatlantic facts could not always be met in a laughing mood. It was too serious, too unfortunate, too obstinately persisted in to excite only ridicule. It was deplorable, upon the very verge of war, and incredible too, after all the warnings that had been had, that there should be among Englishmen such an utter absence of any desire to get accurate knowledge. In 1773 Franklin wrote: "The great defect here is, in all sorts ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... management of affairs. The third and last class was a body of theoretical philosophers—Stoics, Platonics, Pythagoreans, Epicureans, Peripatetics, and Cynics, who amused themselves in striking out plans—exposing the errors of those in operation—caricaturing—and turning the whole proceedings into ridicule. ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... Murray[58] said, "After Pascal's Letters, it is the most instructive piece of wisdom in the form of Irony ever written." Macaulay declared that Sydney Smith was "universally admitted to have been a great reasoner, and the greatest master of ridicule that has appeared among us since Swift." Even now, after a century of publishing, Peter Plymley's Letters retain their preeminence. The unexpurgated edition of the Apologia may rank with the Provincial Letters;[59] ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... feeling that is dear to the female breast, and violates all that is delicate and sensitive in our nature. Surely, where it is necessary from any adventitious circumstances to lay the heart open in this manner, it should only be done to those whose characters are connected with our own, and who feel ridicule inflicted on us, as disgrace heaped on themselves. A peculiar evil of these confidential friendships is, that they are most liable to occur, when, from their youth, their victims are the least guarded; ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... countries he might discover, together with other important concessions. The Spanish councillors deemed his demands too high to be granted, as too considerable even in the event of success; and, in case of disappointment, they thought it would reflect ridicule and the imputation of folly upon the court to have conceded such high titles. Owing to these considerations the business again ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... discontented with our taverns, or the execrations of some bluff sea-captain who was shocked with our manners. The uneasy sense we have of something in our national existence which has not yet been fitly expressed, gives poignancy to the least ridicule launched at faults and follies which lie on the superficies of our life. Every person feels, that a book which condemns the country for its peculiarities of manners and customs, does not pierce into the heart of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... strenuously commended open violence;—and sheltered under the consideration, that their depredations were to be practised upon a defenceless woman, who had not one protector, except an old priest, the subject of their ridicule;—assured likewise from the influence of Lord Margrave's wealth, that all inferior consequences could be overborne, they saw no room for fears on any side, and what they wished to execute, with care ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... enthusiasm she walked the floor, thinking of those whom she would ask to sign it. She would not subject herself to ridicule by calling upon those who sided with the king, but upon those who she knew were ready to make sacrifices for ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... against the mendicants, as well as by licences of buffoonery in the pulpit. For these he was censured, and even, it is said, suspended, by Nykke, Bishop of Norwich. Undaunted by this, he flew at higher game—ventured to ridicule Cardinal Wolsey, then in his power, and had to take refuge from the myrmidons of the prelate in Westminster Abbey. There Abbot Islip kindly entertained and protected him till his dying day. He breathed his last in the year 1529, and was buried in the adjacent ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... was that this grotesque personage, this pale, flabby, tun-bellied citizen became, in one night, a terrible captain, whom nobody dared to ridicule any more. He had steeped his foot in blood. The inhabitants of the old quarter stood dumb with fright before the corpses. But towards ten o'clock, when the respectable people of the new town arrived, the whole square hummed with subdued chatter. People spoke of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... irreverence, who glory in their atheism, and talk of infidelity as if it were a cardinal virtue. Whenever there is foul work to be done, they are almost always to the fore; whenever holy things are to be held up to ridicule, they are the men to do it. These are deliberate apostates; men who with their eyes open prefer darkness to light, who of set purpose deny the truth and embrace error. Happily the world contains but few such. To the honour of human nature, fallen though it be, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... Like all men of strong character, he possessed the power of forcing his emotions down into some inner depth, and, perhaps, like many reserved natures, he shrank from laying bare a wound too deep for any words of human speech, and winced at the thought of ridicule from those who do not care to understand. M. d'Albon was one of those who are keenly sensitive by nature to the distress of others, who feel at once the pain they have unwillingly given by some blunder. He respected his friend's mood, rose to his feet, forgot ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... kelkaj. Certain (sure) certa. Certainly certe, nepre. Certainty certeco. Certify certigi. Certify atesti. Certitude certeco. Cessation (of hostilities) interpaco. Cessation cxesado. Cession cedo. Cetaceous balena. Chaff (ridicule) moki. Chaff pajlrestajxo. Chaffinch fringo. Chagrin cxagreno. Chain cxeno. Chain of mountains montaro. Chair segxo. Chairman prezidanto. Chaise veturileto. Chalice kaliko. Chalk kreto. Chalky kreteca. Challenge, to ekciti, al. Chamber cxambro. Chambermaid ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... language in an inadequate and misleading sense about them. And the peculiar inappropriateness of this particular nickname to the views in question, arises from the circumstance which Mr. Mivart would doubtless have recollected, if his wish to ridicule had not for the moment obscured his judgment—that whether the law of evolution applies to man or not, that of hereditary transmission certainly does. Mr. Mivart will hardly deny that a man owes a large share of the moral tendencies which he ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... observant, intuitive, having a horror of ridicule, consequently quick at acquirement and teachable in mental and social habits, she had developed from absolute pagan indifference into a sweet, elderly Christian woman, whose broken English, quiet manner, and still handsome copper-colored face, were ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... makes him think, feel, and act as he does every hour of every day?" We are asking for the source of human motives, the science of human behavior, the charting of the human mind. It is hard to-day to understand how so much reproach and ridicule could have been aroused by the statement that the ultimate cause of nervousness is a disturbance of the sex-life. There has already been a change in the public attitude toward ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... considerable number to support him, represented both Governor and Council as persons disaffected to his Majesty's government, and enemies to the interest of the country. Being highly offended at the Assembly, he began to take great liberties without doors, and to turn some of their speeches into ridicule. Upon which an order was issued to take St. John also into custody; and then the Commons came to the following spirited resolutions: "That it is the undeniable privilege of this Assembly to commit such persons they may judge to deserve it: That the freedom of speech and debate ought not ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... his dress and his appearance generally. He was good-natured and obliging, and withal sensible, so that the young men who envied him and might be inclined to call him a fop or a dandy, could not prefix 'brainless' to these epithets and thus ridicule on him. The fact is, he was shrewder than any of them, and he knew it. They soon discovered it, and so did the girls, to the utter discomfiture of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... had raised in the little private sea of her tub had died down, and a froth of soap dried on the rawhide of her big forearms as her heifer eyes roamed the newspaper-gallery of portraits. One sudsy hand supported and suppressed her smile of ridicule. These women, belles and swells, were all as glossy as if they ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... when he puts a cigar between his unfledged lips. She thought she had given a tremendous stab to the dignity of Eaglenose; and so she had, yet it happened that the dignity of Eaglenose escaped, because it was shielded by a buckler of fun so thick that it could not easily be pierced by shafts of ridicule. ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... Tammany Halls possible, and to make of the police force here and there a protector of crime and a terror to those whose safety it is to guard. It exposes us, by the scandalous spectacle of its periodical spoils carnivals, to the ridicule and contempt of civilized mankind, promoting among our own people the growth of serious doubts as to the practicability of democratic institutions on a great scale; and in an endless variety of ways it introduces ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Jerrold, Hood, Sheridan, and Sidney Smith, indulged in repartee. They were PARASITIC wits. And so with the Irish, except that an Irishman is generally so ridiculously absurd in his replies as to only excite ridicule. "Artemus Ward" made you laugh and love ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... that men have not the power of restraint, the power to do right; it is that they lack the motive. They have lost the sense of right; they are even impelled to do wrong by the pressure of opinion around them. Boys and young men are driven into libertinage by the ridicule of their companions. Vice is considered manly. They seek sensuality in an evil emulation, as they learn to smoke, or gamble, or drink; and, later on, vanity has often more to do with excess than the force of lust. Young men seduce girls that they may boast of ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... wharf. They were not piled together, but scattered about, with spaces between them. Into one of those spaces I glided, and was soon out of sight of everybody, while everybody was equally hidden from my sight. I felt almost as if I had got clear of some danger; so pleasant is it to escape from ridicule, even though one may feel that he has ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... of the worst. There is a constant infusion of the romantic and enthusiastic, in proportion as the characters are natural and sincere: whereas, in the more artificial style of comedy, everything gives way to ridicule and indifference, there being nothing left but affectation on one side, and incredulity on the other.—Much as we like Shakspeare's comedies, we cannot agree with Dr. Johnson that they are better than his tragedies; nor do we like them half so well. If his inclination ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... most sensible insults which Jesus Christ received. But do not suppose, Christians, that this act of impiety ended there. It has passed from the court of Herod, from that prince destitute of religion, into those even of Christian princes. And is not the Savior still a subject of ridicule to the libertine spirits which compose them? They worship Him externally, but internally how do they regard His maxims? What idea have they of His humility, of His poverty, of His sufferings? Is not virtue either unknown or despised? It is not a rash ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... plucked out handfuls of her pale gold hair, the pretty blonde hair which had been almost as famous in Paris as Beaufort's or Madame de Longueville's yellow locks. The thought of De Malfort's ridicule cut her like a whalebone whip. She had fancied herself his Beatrice, his Laura, his Stella—a being to be worshipped as reverently as the stars, to make her lover happy with smiles and kindly words, to stand ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... to the object of your devotion should not make you rude or uncivil to other women. Every woman is her sister, and should be treated with becoming respect and attention. Your special attentions to her in society should not be such as to make her or you the subject of ridicule. Make no public exhibition ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... beautiful limbs and destroys the most magnificent splendor of its ideas. The government is AFRAID of the mind; hence it desires to kill IT. A government, however, may commit many mistakes, but it never ought to show that it is afraid, fear exposing it to ridicule. And if we ought not to weep over the persecutions which the apprehensions of the government have caused to be instituted against literature, we ought to laugh at them. Whole volumes of the most sublime works of Gibbon, Robertson, Hume, and other great historians have ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... serious, like the Germans; lovers of show, liking to be followed wherever they go by whole troops of servants, who wear their masters' arms in silver, fastened to their left arms, a ridicule they deservedly lie under. They excel in dancing and music, for they are active and lively, though of a thicker make than the French; they cut their hair close on the middle of the head, letting it grow on either side; they are good sailors, and better pirates, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... Amongst the pretexts for making war on the states of Holland were alleged their striking certain satirical medals, and engraving prints in ridicule of Charles II. See his proclamation of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... had the misfortune to have heard the hundred foolish stories of a foolish maid, this apparition of the chimney-sweeper is well managed; though, perhaps, ridicule might not effect so sudden st cure in all cases as it did in that of Antonia. By children who have not acquired terrors of the black-faced goblin, and who have not the habit of frequenting the kitchen and the pantry, this story should never ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... will expose the most important or interesting letter to the severest sarcasm and ridicule. However perfect in all other respects, no epistle that is badly spelled will be regarded as the work of an educated gentleman or lady. Carelessness will never be considered, and to be ignorant of spelling is to expose an imperfect ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... emotions until at last, clenching my hands, I determined I would go on and persevere in the adventure at all hazards; though I must confess I came to this final decision more from pride and fear of ridicule than strength ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... of Sir Thopas," as it is generally called, is introduced by Chaucer as a satire on the dull, pompous, and prolix metrical romances then in vogue. It is full of phrases taken from the popular rhymesters in the vein which he holds up to ridicule; if, indeed — though of that there is no evidence — it be not actually part of an old romance which Chaucer selected and reproduced to point his assault on the prevailing taste in literature. Transcriber's ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... for evidence that the dead still live. Hundreds of people are sufficiently sensitive to have some personal knowledge of the matter. The number is far beyond what it appears to be for two reasons. One is that the average person fears ridicule and keeps his own counsel about his occult experience. The other is the feeling that communications from departed relatives are too sacred and personal for public discussion. Tens of thousands of people have seen demonstrations at ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... the old barons of this name having been discovered at Herald's college. This was a rich harvest for Fitzpatrick and Hare; but the public gets accustomed to everything, and has an easy habit of faith. The new Baron cared nothing for ridicule, for he was working for posterity. He was compensated for every annoyance by the remembrance that the St James's Street waiter was ennobled, and by his determination that his children should rank still higher in the proud peerage of his country. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... was kept back from fear of what my companions would say. How miserable and contemptible is such a feeling! We are not afraid of displeasing our all-beneficent Creator, or appearing ungrateful for His mercies, and we are afraid of the ridicule of our fellow-men, or even of a sneer from the lips of those we despise the most. I dare say, if the truth were known, that McAllister, Bambrick, and others felt exactly as I did, and yet we were positively afraid of showing our feelings to each other. What ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... of a comedian, a buffoon, and a charioteer; as he sank deeper in a sickly, foul, and coarse dissipation,—the exquisite arbiter became a mere burden to him. Even when Petronius was silent, Nero saw blame in his silence; when the arbiter praised, he saw ridicule. The brilliant patrician annoyed his self-love and roused his envy. His wealth and splendid works of art had become an object of desire both to the ruler and the all-powerful minister. Petronius was spared so far in view of the journey to ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... support her daughter, who is dying of a consumption. I must own, to my shame, I feel a strong inclination to follow my uncle's example, in relieving this poor widow; but, betwixt friends, I am afraid of being detected in a weakness, that might entail the ridicule ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... authority could satisfy her high opinion of her own abilities. Imperitus is almost afraid to speak in her company; for, instead of assisting and palliating his natural deficiencies, she is the first to ridicule and expose them. Her passions, having never been checked, have become exceedingly violent. She converses on politics and divinity with all the fury of a partizan and a polemic; she seems impatient of the trammels of her ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... a man of good nature and a kindly heart, since he received affectionate record from Gay, Pope, and Swift. Mr. Walter Sichel quotes from "an unfinished sketch of a larger poem," by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in which Disney's worst characteristics are held up to ridicule. ("Bolingbroke and his Times," pp. 288-290). Swift often refers to him ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... greater Portion of Self-love, than the rest of the Race of Man, he believes that Affectation in his Mein and Dress, that Mathematical Movement, that Formality in every Action, that a Face manag'd with Care, and soften'd into Ridicule, the languishing Turn, the Toss, and the Back-shake of the Periwig, is the direct Way to the Heart of the fine Person he adores; and instead of curing Love in his Soul, serves only to advance his Folly; and the more he is enamour'd, the more industriously he assumes (every ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... pretty fair subject for ridicule: it seems rather too absurd to teach a bee anything! Nevertheless, it is worth while to think of it a little. Most of us know that by injudicious training, horses, cattle, dogs, &c., may be rendered extremely vicious. If there is no perceptible analogy between these and bees, experience proves ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... frequently makes us delighted to find even the most estimable characters in a ridiculous position. The above anecdote is perhaps exaggerated, but it is here recorded as a moral warning to those who yearn like Sancho Panza for a government, and not from a desire to cast ridicule upon one who was universally respected and esteemed, for the quiet decorum of his life, his high principles, his strict impartiality, and the conscientious discharge of all the duties of ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... of all courages. No training could make the Spaniards stand against us in the open field, but they were heroes in Saragossa. The caprices of courage and cowardice are innumerable. The French have no moral courage, they cannot stand ridicule, they cannot encounter disapprobation, they bow before oppression; a French soldier condemned by a court-martial cries for mercy like a child. The same man in battle appears indifferent to death. The Spaniard runs away without shame, but submits to death when it is inevitable ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... work; but I must beseech the public to be expeditious in taking off the whole impression, as fast as I can get it printed; because I must inform them that I have a more precious work in contemplation; namely, a new Roman history, in which I mean to ridicule, detect and expose, all ancient virtue, and patriotism, and shew from original papers which I am going to write, and which I shall afterwards bury in the ruins of Carthage and then dig up, that it appears by the letters of Hanno the Punic embassador at Rome, that Scipio was in ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... self-sacrifice, even though that self-sacrifice was of the hardest sort, seeing that it involved what all women hate—the endurance of a ridiculous position. For love can do all things: it can even make its votaries brave ridicule. ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... oratory is to be judged of by its effects, Caesar's sermon was a great oration. It began amid the silence of his own followers, and the tschts and pshaws of a little group of his enemies, who lounged on the outside of the crowd to cast ridicule on the "swaddler" and the "publican preacher." But it ended amid loud exclamations of praise and supplications from all his hearers, sighing and groaning, and the bodily clutching of one another by the arm in ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine |
