"Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... superiority. It cannot offend us, who have no right at all to be his match on his own ground. Besides, there is a very curious sense of satisfaction in getting a fair chance to sneer at ourselves and scoff at our own pretensions. The first person of our dual consciousness has been smirking and rubbing his hands and felicitating himself on his innumerable superiorities, until we have grown a little tired of him. Then, when the other ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... been inclined to scoff at this apparition as a heretical innovation, there was still the story of Concepcion, the Demon Vaquero, whose terrible riata was fully as potent as the whaler's harpoon. Concepcion, when in the flesh, had been a celebrated ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... water off, Or folk be cutting weed, While he doth at misfortune scoff, From every trouble freed. Or else he waiteth for a rise, And ne'er a rise may see; For why, there are not any ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In welding together into noble form, whether in the book of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration, whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... lesson suits the trend of the Play, and advances upon the outcome of the preceding Act. To whom is Berowne's line (V, ii, 477)—"Speake for yourselves, my wit is at an end"—addressed? How is the King brought to confusion? Is the Princess too hard upon him? Why does Berowne scoff ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... "Do not scoff at Robak," he said; "I know him; he is a clever priest. That little worm130 has gnawed a larger nut than you; I have seen him but once, but as soon as I set eyes on him I noticed what sort of bird he was; the Monk ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... is a Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a patronising manner at that humble follower of the great investigator, but, as a matter of fact, we should have been just as dull ourselves. We should not even have risen to the modest level of a Scotland Yard Bungler. We should ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... thoughtfully at her aunt, whose head was bent over her writing, the smooth bands of her silky, brown hair shining brightly in the lamp-light. No doubt some, perhaps most, grown-ups would scoff at her tale if she told it, Mollie thought. Grown-up people as a rule love best to jog along on well-trodden, safe, commonplace paths, and avoid adventurous by-ways, but Aunt Mary, Mollie felt sure, was an anti-jogger, so to speak, ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... church with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorn'd the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray. The service past, around the pious man, With steady zeal each honest rustic ran; E'en children follow'd with endearing wile, And pluck'd his gown to share the good man's smile. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "but I've got an appetite. I could scoff iron-filings an' horseshoe nails an' thank you kindly, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... upon the wine that's white, and on the wine that's red; I've looked on cider flowin', till it fairly turned me 'ead; But oh, the finest scoff will be, when all is done and said, A pint o' Bass in ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... damsel turning right, "And what say you, my noble lord ?" quoth she. He taunting said, "I that am slow to fight Will follow far behind, the worth to see Of this your terrible and puissant knight," In scornful words this bitter scoff gave he. "Good reason," quoth the king, "thou come behind, Nor e'er compare thee ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... man scoff; lest he drives away the means of real information.—And let all men watch, ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... blazon of iniquity was a particular fat monk, of an arrogant nature, with the crimson complexion of surfeit and constipation, who for many causes and reasons was held in greater aversion than all the rest, especially by the boys, that never lost an opportunity of making him a scoff and a scorn; and it so fell out, as he was coming proudly along, turning his Babylonish banner to pleasure the women at the windows, to whom he kept nodding and winking as he passed, that his foot slipped and down he fell as it ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... for he shrank not, he, From answering to his face. A caitiff hound, A reptile fool, is he who fawns on men Before their faces, while his heart is black With malice, and, when they be gone, his tongue Backbites them. Openly Polydamas Flung back upon the prince his taunt and scoff: "O thou of living men most mischievous! Thy valour—quotha!—brings us misery! Thine heart endures, and will endure, that strife Should have no limit, save in utter ruin Of fatherland and people for thy sake! Ne'er may such wantwit valour craze my soul! Be mine to cherish ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... which he adored, had said its last word. He was haunted by the morbid idea that decadence must inevitably succeed a certain degree of progress: and he trembled lest the lovely art, which made him love life, should stop short, and dry up, and disappear into the ground. Christophe would scoff at such pusillanimous ideas. In a spirit of contradiction he would pretend that nothing had been done before he appeared on the scene, and that everything remained to be done. Olivier would instance French music, which seemed to have reached a point of perfection and ultimate ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... scoff'd as proud to bear Brute heart in human shape; Nor drop nor morsel deign'd to share With alien or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... Newman Street, was at a place called Westbourne Green, now absorbed into endless avenues of "palatial" residences, which scoff with regular-featured, lofty scorn at the rural simplicity implied by such a name. The site of our dwelling was not far from the Paddington Canal, and was then so far out of town that our nearest neighbors, people of the name of Cockrell, were the owners of a charming ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... think it is. What right have I to judge others severely, do you suppose, when I must ask for indulgency myself? Or have you forgotten that I am a laughing stock to everyone, who is not too indifferent even to scoff?... By the way," he added, "did you keep ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... a scene in undergraduate days. It was the Corn Exchange at Cambridge, where the most famous of all American evangelists was holding one of a series of revivalist meetings. The great bare hall was packed with youths, who came, some to scoff and others to pray. The coarse-figured, bald-headed, brown-bearded man in black on the platform, with his homely phrase and (to polite undergraduate ears) terrible Yankee twang, was talking vehemently of the trivial instruments the ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... antagonist's ear with a sinister smile, "rotten manners! for just that, my buck, I'll make you scoff 'muffin' 'till you're ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... who could make it strong. Suddenly she felt in her that consciousness which the weakest have at times felt, and which, however the rationalist may scoff, the Christian dare not disbelieve—that sense of not working, but being worked upon—by which truths come into one's heart, and words into one's mouth, involuntarily, as if some spirit, not our own, were at work within ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... it by the lights of his wonderful fancy, until at last it became something quite different from the original paradox, and full of truth and wisdom. But when such a paradox went off in a letter, there it remained unqualified; and they who, not having known him, scoff at his friends who claim for him the honours of a great critic, seem ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... a scoff. "Failing nothing! You're a pair of young idiots. I'm good for twenty years more of hard work, but, as I told Harold, I would like to quit and travel, and I shall do so just as soon as I am convinced that he can take ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... loss to determine whether it was intended as a sneer at my old coat, or whether the writer really desired an exposition of the text named. But, believing that no one could so far forget a due sense of propriety as to deride honest poverty, or scoff at so faithful a servant as my old coat had been, even though it now began to show signs of age, I chose to take the latter view of the case. With this conviction, I should proceed to make the text the subject ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... he cried. "It wasn't for what I might get out of it, or—or what it might bring me, I used to scoff at whatever others considered big and fine and clean, but I played it straight, just the same. I played it as well as I knew how—straighter than you'd believe. I thought it would make her happier, because I tried that hard. And she . . . Steve, if I had been a woman—a ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... I cannot trust myself with such anticipations. I am well aware how little the world sympathises with the man whose fortunes are the sport of his temperament—that April-day frame of mind is ever the jest and scoff of those hardier and sterner natures, who, if never overjoyed by success, are never much depressed by failure. That I have been cast in the former mould, these Confessions have, alas! plainly proved; but that I regret ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... doubters whose sincerity we recognize and respect, but occasionally I find young men who think it smart to be skeptical; they talk as if it were an evidence of larger intelligence to scoff at creeds and to refuse to connect themselves with churches. They call themselves "Liberal," as if a Christian were narrow minded. Some go so far as to assert that the "advanced thought of the world" has discarded the idea that there is a God. To ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... newer stone age men. I have never heard the very rude chipped and unpolished axes of the older drift men or cave men described as thunderbolts: they are too rough and shapeless ever to attract attention from any except professed archaeologists. Indeed, the wicked have been known to scoff at them freely as mere accidental lumps of broken flint, and to deride the notion of their being due in any way to deliberate human handicraft. These are the sort of people who would regard a grand piano as a fortuitous concourse ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorn'd the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray. 180 The service pass'd, around the pious man, With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; Even children follow'd with endearing wile, And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile. His ready smile a parent's warmth express'd, 185 Their welfare pleas'd him, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... children. True, its contents already are so antiquated that parents reject almost every sentence of it for themselves; true, the man of today understands its language only with difficulty—what of it, the children must gulp down the moldy, musty food. How we would scoff and jeer if a similar report were made about the school system of China! To this Lutheran Catechism, which I would best like to see in state libraries only, are added many antiquated hymns of mystical turgidity, which a simple youth, even with the best will does not know how to use. All ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... certain people always grow splenetic— Why, goodness knows—at everything pathetic, And scoff it down. We all know how, of late, An unfledged, upstart undergraduate Presumed, with brazen insolence, to declare That ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... And when these giovinastri, other people's boys, the scum of the gay world, flung their unsavory jests in the face of the old man who had no son to come after him, the silly insults so lightly uttered, so little thought of, the natural scoff of youth at old age, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... high estate gathered to witness it. A roaring fire was built in a pit over the mouth of which eight men held the great sack, which rolled, and beat about before the wind as it filled and took the form of a huge ball. The crowd was unbelieving and cynical, inclined to scoff at the idea that mere smoke would carry so huge a construction up into the sky. But when the signal was given to cast off, the balloon rose with a swiftness and majesty that at first struck the crowd dumb, then moved it to cheers of amazement ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... persons as both know and love their business. No human being[10] ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect we hear too much of it in literature. The weather is regarded as the very nadir and scoff of conversational topics. And yet the weather, the dramatic element in scenery, is far more tractable in language, and far more human both in import and suggestion than the stable features of the landscape. ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... story was completed, When the wondrous tale was ended, Looking round upon his listeners, Solemnly Iagoo added: "There are great men, I have known such, Whom their people understand not, Whom they even make a jest of, Scoff and jeer at in derision. From the story of Osseo Let us ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... commission of a crime is of itself unlawful. The presumption of law is that advice has the influence and effect intended by the adviser, unless it is shown to have been otherwise; as that the counsel was received with scoff, or was manifestly rejected and ridiculed at the time it was given. It was said in the argument that Jewett's abandoned and depraved character furnishes ground to believe that he would have committed ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... warning in her voice—"you must never forget that she's an Episcopalian, a lost soul, dead in forms and ceremonies and trespasses and sins." So his mother scoffed at Ardea's faith; and Ardea—no, she did not scoff, her contempt was too generous for that; but it was there, just the same. And the Methodists fellowshiped neither, and the Baptists excluded the Methodists, and the Catholics retorted to the Protestant charge ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... or physicians scoff at the ancient authorities who dominated medical thinking for so many centuries. The seventeenth-century physician striving to reduce the frightful inroads that disease made into the colony at Jamestown may have been handicapped ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... dumb as though Some Antichrist had trodd'n them down, once more Swells forth amid the new-lit paschal lights The "Gloria in Excelsis:" sudden then That mighty conflict ceased, save one low voice Twice heard before, now edged with bitterer scoff, "That race thou lov'st, though fierce in wrath, is soft: Plenty and peace will melt their Faith one day:" Then with that whisper dying, died the night: Then forth from darkness issued earth and sky: Then fled ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... dark Redan, in silent scoff, Lay, grim and threatening, under; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... youth's in a glow, And he thinks—with some "cuts"—it will be "a great go," At night, at night! But oh, what a difference In the morning! The critics call the thing "an awful warning," They "guy," and sneer, and scoff, And his bantling's taken off, "To make room for some old farce, Sir!" In ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... scoff, and the pessimist may croak, but even they must take hope at the picture presented in the simple and touching incident of eight Grand Army veterans, with their silvery heads bowed in sympathy, escorting the lifeless body of the Daughter of the Confederacy from Narragansett ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... William Knox and of —- Sinclair, his wife, {2a} unlike most Scotsmen, unlike even Mr. Carlyle, had not "an ell of pedigree." The common scoff was that each Scot styled himself "the King's poor cousin." But John Knox declared, "I am a man of base estate and condition." {2b} The genealogy of Mr. Carlyle has been traced to a date behind the Norman Conquest, but of Knox's ancestors nothing is known. ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... beauty of Israel for ever is fled, And low lie the noble and strong: Ye daughters of music, encircle the dead And chant the funereal song. Oh, never let Gath know their sorrowful doom, Nor Askelon hear of their fate; Their daughters would scoff while we lay in the tomb, ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... may be somewhat advantageous. It is always uncertain whether the individual spectator who has witnessed an amateur performance of a piece will be anxious to see how it really acts or determine never to suffer from it again. Perhaps it is rather cheap to scoff at the amateur performances, some of which, no doubt, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... the heir of Portugal. Poor Columbus, sickened and disappointed by these continual delays, irritated by a sense of the waste of his precious time, follows the Court about from one place to another, raising a smile here and a scoff there, and pointed at by children in the street. There, is nothing so ludicrous as an Idea to those ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... him all about Thorberg, he did not scoff, nor laugh, nor take it seriously either. He just considered it, with one large hand grasping his beard. "Well," he said, "some people have the gift, there's no doubt, and if your Thorberg had it ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... a certain fashion. You have deceived us. It is much uglier, more dull, dirtier, sadder and harder, at least in our opinion and to our imagination: you judge us as overexcited and disordered; if so, it is your fault. For this reason, we curse and scoff at your world and reject your pretended truths which, for us, are lies, including those elementary and primordial verities which you declare are evident to common sense, and on which you base your laws, your institutions, your society, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... murmured, 'Atheist! How sinfully the wicked scoff!' And sent the old men on their way, And drove ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of the heart. If a telegram was sent to them that you were down with smallpox, they would take the first train to come to you. They would willingly take the disease into their own bodies and die for you. If you scoff and sneer at your father and mother you will have a hard harvest; you will reap in agony. It is only a question of time. There ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... infinity of harm by their caricatures. Firstly, the caricatures are not true, for the crime in Ireland is not greater than that in England; secondly, they exasperate the people on both sides of the Channel, and they do no good. It is ill to laugh and scoff at a ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... accordingly, was not fully liberated into the character. He advanced with cautious care and he executed each detail of his design with precise accuracy. To various auditors, for that reason, the work seemed a little Methodistical; and drab is a colour at which the voice of the scoffer is apt to scoff. But the impersonation of Dr. Primrose soon became equally a triumph of expression and of ideal; not only flowing out of goodness, but flowing smoothly and producing the effect of nature. It was not absolutely and identically the Vicar that Goldsmith has drawn, for its personality ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... the public works of merit, Written with vigour, fraught with spirit, Applause crowned all my labours; But thy delusive pages speak My palsied powers, exhausted, weak, The scoff of friends ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... room and will not be expelled; they peer over the shoulder, and tug at the hand which fain would write; they turn images upside down, and distort the thoughts; and here and there, from ceiling and wall, they grin, and scoff, and oppose: and what was just gushing as an aspiration from the soul, is converted to a ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... spring, a man with frozen feet Came to the marble halls of state, And told his mission but to meet The chill of scorn, the scoff of hate. "Is Oregon worth saving?" asked The treaty-makers from the coast; And him the Church with questions tasked, And said, "Why did you leave your post?" Was it for this that he had braved The warring storms ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... ever one like me Win thee back again? With the joyous and the free Thou wilt scoff at pain. Spirit false! thou hast forgot All but those who ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... for you, Marquise, to scoff at the omens; you are too learned to believe in them; but it is in our blood, perhaps, and it's no use us fighting against presentiments, for they're stronger than we are. I had no heart to get ready for the journey—not a bit. We are cut off from the world, ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... though not all, are commissioned with the rest, Heaven blesses, and Fortune aids the struggle: but where you send out a general and an empty decree and hopes from the hustings, nothing that you desire is done; your enemies scoff, and your allies die for fear of such an armament. For it is impossible—ay, impossible, for one man to execute all your wishes: to promise, [Footnote: Chares is particularly alluded to. The "promises ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... directors that presided over Bostock's. It was a record Christmas for Bostock's. The electric cars were thundering over the frozen streets of all the Five Towns to bring customers to Bostock's. Children dreamt of Bostock's. Fathers went to scoff and remained to pay. Brunt's was not exactly alarmed, for nothing could alarm Brunt's; but there was just a sort of suspicion of something in the air at Brunt's that did not make for odious self-conceit. People seemed to become intoxicated when they ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... you prefer to take the risks, and remain chief of the guard yourself?" she said with an angry scoff. "Truly there did not seem to be many thrusting forward to strip you of the office. I shall have a fine sorting up of places in payment for this night's work. But for the present, Tarca, do ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... inconceivable it all seemed! How the outside world would scoff if I attempted to explain or publish my discovery! I felt that the time had not yet come to take anyone into my confidence, and I determined still to keep all a secret. I was then unaware, however, that the ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... Mexico is, and Russia where Canada is, and Germany separated from us by a few hours' steaming, certain peace-mongers would have been hanged long ago, and our cooing doves of peace would have had molten tar mixed with their feathers. An Italian proverb runs, "It is easy to scoff at a bull from a window," and we indulge in not a little of such babyish effrontery from our safe place in the world. Germany, on the other hand, looks out upon the world from no such safe window-seat; she is down in the ring, and must be prepared at all hazards to take care ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... After all, it must be remembered that there are many kinds of lovers' hearts, and that those who can understand the "New Life" of Messer Dante's are very few, and fewer still those that can live that life. But I here protest very solemnly that it was with no thought of scoff or mockery that I made my ballad, but just for the sake of saying, in my way, the things I thought about the pretty women that pleased me and teased me, and made life so gay and fragrant and variegated in those far-away, dearly remembered, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... length, however, consented to hear Mass, and St. Cloud was the place where this ancient usage was first re-established. He directed the ceremony to commence sooner than the hour announced in order that those who would only make a scoff at it might not arrive until the service ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... undisturbed. "It's all very well to scoff, but one may get a side-light anywhere. In diplomacy nothing's ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... be on my way," observed the wily step-father, beating a retreat so hastily that Eddie missed the opportunity to scoff. But the contemplative smile remained just as ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mrs. Bonner who had clearly come to scoff. With her was Mrs. Bronson, whose attitude was that of a person torn between conflicting influences. Her husband had indicated to the crafty Bonner and the subtle Peterson that while he was still loyal to the school board, and hence perforce opposed to Jim Irwin, and ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... care about any more, but if you will let me talk to you about something— See here, Anna. Yes, I mean Anna. What nonsense for us to attempt to keep up the Miss Moore and Mr. Sanderson business. I used to scoff at love at first sight and say it was all the idle fancy of the poets. Then I met you and remained to pray. You've turned my world topsy-turvy. I can't think without you, and yet it would be folly to tell this to my Governor, and ask his consent to our marriage. He wants me to finish ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... if his presence poisoned the air, he said: "It is that fellow's fault, great Caesar, if the citizens of my native town dare commit such crimes. He torments and persecutes them in your name. How many a felony has been committed here, merely to scoff at him and his creatures, and to keep them on the alert! We are a light-headed race. Like children, we love to do the forbidden thing, so long as it is no stain on our honor. But that wretch treats all laughter and the most innocent fun as a crime, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... among the maidens, Gay with paint and decked with feathers, She would look on him with kindness That the others might not scoff him; She would smile upon his weakness, Though she did ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... their serious ideas of international instruction. It was said that the Englishman takes his pleasures sadly; and the pleasure of despising foreigners is one which he takes most sadly of all. He comes to scoff and does not remain to pray, but rather to excommunicate. Hence in international relations there is far too little laughing, and far too much sneering. But I believe that there is a better way which largely consists of laughter; a form of friendship between ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... the explosion in the subway; to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning. It will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in America who has seen Prince Henry do anything, or try to. The man who was absent and didn't see him to anything, will scoff. It is his privilege; and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself, to be different from other Americans, and better. As his opinion of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, and concentrates and coagulates, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... jocular scoff unto Joseph Carnaby, thus accosting him, whom his shirt, being made stiffer than usual for the ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... women, old women, mothers with married sons and daughters; women of society as it is exploited in the Sunday supplements; school girls, shop girls, factory girls—all had told her their troubles; and men of every condition had come to scoff and had remained to express, more or less offensively, their admiration. Some of the younger of these, after a first visit, returned the day following, and each begged the beautiful priestess of the occult to fly with him, to live with him, to marry him. When this happened ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... thee in their flowing odes. Then, if those who were not English, and hated England, and all connected therewith, had yet much to say in thy praise, when thou wast far inferior to what thou art now, why should true-born Englishmen, or those who call themselves so, turn up their noses at thee, and scoff thee at the present day, as I believe they do? But, let others do as they will, I, at least, who am not only an Englishman, but an East Englishman, will not turn up my nose at thee, but will praise and extol thee, calling thee mart ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... all other truths, must slowly win its way to general acceptance. While large numbers of people still scoff at it, even as the world not so very long ago scoffed at hypnotism as a fantastic theory with no foundation in fact, there is nevertheless a large and rapidly growing number who personally know the truth about clairvoyance. There is every conceivable ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... my regrets for meeting him, (when he thinks, if I had not, I must have been Mr. Solmes's wife,) would perhaps treat me with indignity: and thus, deprived of all refuge and protection, I should become the scoff of men of intrigue; a disgrace to my sex—while that avowed loved, however indiscreetly shown, which is followed by marriage, will find more excuses made for it, than ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... it is an age of incredulity, but Salemina, Francesca, and I have not come to Ireland to scoff, and whatever we do we shall not go to the length of doubting the fairies; for, as Barney O'Mara says, 'they stand ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that she did not herself know? Any mother who reads this will, I think, scoff at the notion; and yet I think it was so. Weak and ill as she was when it all happened, bewildered and dazed by the murder of her master and the terrible suspicion thrown on her husband, lying for weeks ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... occupies itself with sneering, carping, and fault-finding; and is ready to scoff at everything but impudent effrontery or successful vice. The greatest consolation of such persons are the defects of men of character. "If the wise erred not," says George Herbert, "it would go hard with fools." Yet, though wise men may learn ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... saucy Jade; Sure the Wench is tipsy! How can you see me made [To him.] The Scoff of such a ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... dwindled since To penny things—at our Black Prince Historic pens would scoff— The only one we moderns had Was nothing but a Sandwich lad, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... hear the Doctor that is lately turned Divine, Dr. Waterhouse. He preaches in a devout manner, not elegant nor very persuasive, but seems to mean well, and that he would preach holily; and was mighty passionate against people that make a scoff of religion. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... Espouscado, is a bitterly indignant protest against those who would suppress the dialect, against the regents and the rectors whom "we must pay with our pennies to hear them scoff at the language that binds us to our fathers and our soil!" And the poet cries out, "No, no, we'll keep our rebellious langue d'oc, grumble who will. We'll speak it in the stables, at harvest-time, among ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... what right has Arnold, what right has any dictionary, to define the word Irreverence for me? What their ideals are is nothing to me. So long as I reverence my own ideals my whole duty is done, and I commit no profanation if I laugh at theirs. I may scoff at other people's ideals as much as I want to. It is my right and my privilege. No man has any right ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... in offering advice, were it not addressed to one still younger. Mr. Townsend has the greatest difficulties to encounter; but in conquering them he will find employment; in having conquered them, his reward. I know too well "the scribbler's scoff, the critic's contumely;" and I am afraid time will teach Mr. Townsend to know them better. Those who succeed, and those who do not, must bear this alike, and it is hard to say which have most of it. I trust that Mr. Townsend's share will be from 'envy'; he will soon know mankind ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... perplexity towards Nuttie, who was in agony all the time, lest there should be a scoff that might remain in the ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and a secret conspiracy ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... sat quite spell-bound, while Mackay's prophesying voice ranged up and down through all the modulations of thunder, from the hurrying mutter to the reverberant shock and climax: and those who came to scoff remained to wonder. ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... of course they will. You surely cannot suppose I should, in cold blood, sit down to write a story in which nobody was to fall in love or be in love! Sir, scoff as you may, love is the one vital principle in all romance. Not only does your cheek flush and your eye sparkle, till "heart, brain, and soul are all on fire," over the burning words of some Brontean Pythoness, but when you open the last thrilling work of Maggie Marigold, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and quiet without his waking presence, the ladies would gather in groups outside his door as if in a king's antechamber, waiting for him to awaken, saying to one another ever and again, "Sh, sh!" He professed to scoff at the attentions he received, would grunt and growl "Humbug!" yet nevertheless he thrived in this latter-day sunlight. His old bones took on flesh. His aged kindly face, all seamed with care as it had been, filled out, the wrinkles turning into twinkles. Abraham ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... experienced some opposition: nevertheless it pleased the Almighty to permit us to dispose of about eighty Testaments, which were purchased entirely by the very poor people; those in easier circumstances paying no attention to the word of God, but rather turning it to scoff ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... days are passing fair! As if a breath of spring Had permeated all the air, And touched each living thing With thankfulness for such a boon— Discounting with a scoff The almanac's report that "June Is yet a ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... of our allies the affair may appear a trifle, father; and such white planters as cannot refuse to hear the tidings may scoff at them; but Jean Francais, a negro and a slave—is it possible that he makes light ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... arms! kneel all! caps off! Old Blue Light's going to pray; Strangle the fool that dares to scoff! Attention! it's his way! Appealing from his native sod In forma pauperis to God Lay bare thine arm—stretch forth thy rod, Amen! That's Stonewall ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... may mildly scoff, That hard, afflicting churchyard cough Gives pretty plain advice, "Be off, While yet you can." It is not time yet, John, to ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... the raised throne of his council chamber. All the Lords of his Council were there and all in black. There was Norfolk with his yellow face who feigned to laugh and scoff, now that he had proved himself no lover of the Queen's. There was Gardiner of Winchester, sitting forward with his cruel and eager eyes upon the table. Next him was the Lord Mayor, Michael Dormer, and the Lord Chancellor. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... hear'st Men scoff at Heaven and Fate, Because the Gods thou fear'st Fail to make blest thy state, Tremblest, and wilt not dare to ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... gunner, who was apt to scoff, With jokes most aptly timed, Said Sam might any day go off, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... have played, cries of "hog" or "wobbler" arise, remember that you are engaged in a sport and not in politics and that there is nothing really offensive in the terms. Finally, never scoff at the language used, and above all remember that what is one man's game may be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... to scoff at his fancy; he wooed it. He pictured the girl's hair loose from the rough cap—curly, rather wild hair with an uplift in every tendril. What colour was it? Gold-brown probably, like the eyes. For five minutes he tried to ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... fanfare of music. A quiet, motherly looking woman, plainly dressed, with a Bible in her hand, she commanded almost immediately the respect of that large crowd—from the men in the orchestra stalls to the gallery gods. One half intoxicated fellow began to scoff at her, but was almost immediately hushed by the scarcely less drunken ones around him. It was a sight that hushed them all into respectful silence, for a respectable, earnest woman, with the Holy Book in her hand, will have a subduing effect upon almost ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... however, the differences were scarcely less or fewer than those which it was to heal; an Infallibility which taken literally and unqualified, became the source of perplexity to the well-disposed, of unbelief to the wavering, and of scoff and triumph to the common enemy, and which was, therefore, to be qualified and limited, and then it meant so munch and so little that to men of plain understandings and single hearts it meant nothing at all. It resided here. No! there. No! but in a third subject. Nay! neither ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his efforts with roars of laughter, and Jack himself was at first too overcome with merriment to do more than scoff. At last, however, he went for a rope, cast it over the giant's two heads, so, with the help of a team of horses, drew them shorewards, where two blows from the sword of ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... you that the Chancellor gave it to me, gave it to me with his own hands, willingly,—pressed it upon me. No, don't scoff!" he went on quickly. "Listen! This is a genuine thing. The Chancellor's mad. He was lying in a fit when I left the Palace. It will be in all the evening papers. You will hear the boys shouting it in the streets within a few minutes. Don't interrupt and I'll tell you the whole ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... scoff in fun concerning 'grandmama's tutor,' hurt Lady Charlotte for more reasons than one, notwithstanding the justification of her fore-thoughtfulness. The girl, however, was privileged; she was Bobby Benlew's dearest friend, and my lord loved the boy; with whom nothing could be done at school, nor ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... involves the others of taking care that we have goodness to show, and that we do not make our goodness repulsive by our additions to it. There are good people who comfort themselves when men dislike them, or scoff at them, by thinking that their religion is the cause, when it is only their own roughness and harshness of character. It is not enough that we present an austere and repellent virtue; the fair food ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren |
