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More "Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they are gone, I know not how, And woman's written on your brow. Time draws his finger o'er the scene; But I cannot forget between The Thing to me you once have been Each sportive sally, wild escape,— The scoff, the banter, and the jape,— And antics of my ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Guly, firmly, drawing back; "I will not drink. However you may scoff, Mr. Clinton, at woman's influence, it is to that I impute my strength to withstand temptation here. My last promise to my mother, was never to become a wine-bibber, and ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... voiced strangely radical sentiments concerning Life and its obligations. They were often startling, particularly as she made no secret of the fact that she and her husband never "got on." Between puffs of cigarette smoke she would scoff at the laws of marriage and speak with much leniency of divorce. Her sympathies were invariably with offenders, and Joyce thought her rather too fond of the society of men. Meredith feared and disliked her. The fear was ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... a perfect type of the Georgian courtier to whom loyalty, patriotism, honesty, and honor were so many synonyms for folly. He was effeminate in habits and appearance, but notoriously licentious; he affected to scoff at learning but made some pretense to literature, and had written 'Four Epistles after the Manner of Ovid', and numerous political pamphlets. Pope, who had some slight personal acquaintance with him, disliked his political connections and probably despised his verses, and in the 'Imitation' ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... again: we shall see their different conduct presently. When the three came back like furious creatures, flushed with the rage which the work they had been about had put them into, they came up to the Spaniards, and told them what they had done, by way of scoff and bravado; and one of them stepping up to one of the Spaniards, as if they had been a couple of boys at play, takes hold of his hat as it was upon his head, and giving it a twirl about, fleering in his face, says to him, "And you, Seignior Jack Spaniard, shall ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... two ladies took their tea alone, nor could they talk of any other subject than madame, and her most unexpected call for Doctor Moran's services." It was always the Dutch Doctor Gansvoort she had before," said Mrs. Moran; "and she was ever ready to scoff at all others, as pretenders.—I do wonder what keeps your father ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... you; You scoff even at your own calamity— And such calamity! how wert thou fallen 20 Son of the Morning! and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... sky is but a concave mirror, showing nothing behind, and in looking into which they see only their own distorted images, like the reflection of a face in a spoon. Hence it needs not surprise that they are not very devout worshippers; it is a great wonder they do not openly scoff. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... nothing of the race will scoff and say they never heard of such a thing as a singing and religious red man. Those who know him well will say, "Yes, but you have given to your eastern Indian songs and ceremonies which belong to the western ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... side of the question. What, if circumstance should lead Perdita to suspect, and suspecting to be resolved? The fibres of his frame became relaxed, and cold dew stood on his forehead, at this idea. Many men may scoff at his dread; but he read the future; and the peace of Perdita was too dear to him, her speechless agony too certain, and too fearful, not to unman him. His course was speedily decided upon. If the worst befell; if she learnt the truth, he would neither stand her reproaches, or the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... "Scoff!" Kenkenes cried. "But I can tell thee this: Rameses will put his foot on the neck of Amon-meses if the pretender trouble him, and will wed with a slave-girl if she break the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... 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 of the world—a place of wonder ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... do scholars or physicians scoff at the ancient authorities who dominated medical thinking for so many centuries. The seventeenth-century physician striving to reduce the frightful inroads that disease made into the colony at Jamestown may have been handicapped by the erroneous doctrines ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... 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 not, all her mummeries ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... Latin, as Ainsworth elaborately explains, "a mocking by grimaces, mows, a flout, a frump, a gibe, a scoff, a banter;" and Sannio is "a fool in a play." The Italians change the S into Z, for they say Zmyrna and Zambuco, for Smyrna and Sambuco; and thus they turned Sannio into Zanno, and then into Zanni, and we caught the echo in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to jar! [Aside. K. Edw. Return it to their throats; I'll be thy warrant. Gav. Base, leaden earls, that glory in your birth, Go sit at home, and eat your tenants' beef; And come not here to scoff at Gaveston, Whose mounting thoughts did never creep so low As to bestow a look on such as you. Lan. Yet I disdain not to do this for you. [Draws his sword, and offers to stab Gaveston. K. Edw. Treason! ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... yourself when you wake in the morning. And some day you will come to see what it means just to know that you know, and then your understanding and your heart will go out to all who have never known. You will pity all who scoff and all who yearn, and you will say to yourself: 'The world needs to know more about love. More than knowledge or science or any other thing, the world needs more faith in love.' Then some day you will see that you not only know but have power to make it plain, and you will not hold back any longer ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... before I take up my tale, I want to anticipate the doubting Thomases of psychology, who are prone to scoff, and who would otherwise surely say that the coherence of my dreams is due to overstudy and the subconscious projection of my knowledge of evolution into my dreams. In the first place, I have never been a zealous student. I graduated last of my class. I cared more ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... "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 ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... is a Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a patronizing manner at that humble follower of the great investigator; but as a matter of fact we should have been just as dull ourselves. We should not even have risen to the modest height ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... accustomed to say, "It is a pity he is not an ENGLISHMAN." It is pleasant, I say, to trace this "certain condescension" in the good old times. Jacob Rathgeb (1592) says the English are magnificently dressed, and extremely proud and overbearing; the merchants, who seldom go unto other countries, scoff at foreigners, who are liable to be ill-used by street boys and apprentices, who collect in immense crowds and stop the way. Of course Cassandra Stubbes, whose mind was set upon a better country, has little good to say of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... me how, by three-fold scoff, When cares of life perplex us, To smoke, or sleep, or fiddle them off, And scorn ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... discovered principle of radioactivity. Somewhere deep in Nature's laboratory these waters become charged with an uplifting power which is imparted to those who bathe according to the rules which many years of experience have prescribed. Many physicians refuse to verify the waters' virtues; some openly scoff. But the fact stands that every year hundreds who come helpless cripples walk jauntily to the station on their departure, and many thousands of sufferers from rheumatic ills and the wear and tear of strenuous living return to their homes restored. I myself can testify to the surprising ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... beginnin' of time," I scoff. "They laughed at Leonardo da Vinci, Columbus, Edison, a guy named Durante. Even the guy who first sat down at a pianer. We will take what we can git, pal, and then come back and ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... schools in which the daughters of rich people are turned into hothouse plants by sycophants and parasites and sent out into the world the most perfect specimens of superautocracy, to patronize their parents, scoff at discipline, ignore duty and demand the sort of luxury that brought Rome to its fall. With admiration and amusement she watched her say good-by to one woman after another as the various tables broke up. It really gave her quite a moment to see the way in which Joan gave as careless and unawed ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... separation destroy that greatness. Once disunited, we are no longer great. The nations of the earth who have looked upon you as a formidable Power, and rising to untold and immeasurable greatness in the future, will scoff at you. Your flag, that now claims the respect of the world, that protects American property in every port and harbor of the world, that protects the rights of your citizens everywhere, what will become of it? What becomes of its glorious influence? It is gone; ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... turned Divine, I have forgot his name, I met him a while since at Sir D. Gawden's at dinner, Dr. Waterhouse! He preaches in a devout manner of way, 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. And, the truth is, I did observe Mrs. Hollworthy smile often, and many others of the parish, who, I perceive, have known him, and were in mighty expectation of hearing him preach, but could not forbear smiling, and she particularly upon me, and I on ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the damsel rebuke and scoff at Sir Beaumains, and would not suffer him to sit at her table. "I marvel," said the Green Knight to her, "that ye thus chide so noble a knight, for truly I know none to match him; and be sure, that whatsoever ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... you 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... always uncertain whether the individual spectator who has witnessed an amateur performance of a piece will be anxious to see how it really acts or determine never to suffer from it again. Perhaps it is rather cheap to scoff at the amateur performances, some of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... her nobility: which is all the more reason why I shouldn't take advantage of it. We may scoff at the social inequalities as much as we please, but we can't laugh them out of court. As between a young woman who is an heiress in her own right, and a briefless lawyer, there are differences which a decent man is bound to efface. And ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... 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 it, I ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Till one of those two brothers, half aside And fingering at the hair about his lip, To prick us on to combat 'Like to like! The woman's garment hid the woman's heart.' A taunt that clenched his purpose like a blow! For fiery-short was Cyril's counter-scoff, And sharp I answered, touched upon the point Where idle boys are cowards to their shame, 'Decide it here: why not? ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... will clear the stair that leadeth to God!' Now sit I at His feet, lame and weak, and men scoff at knowledge, —'Aha, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... shall see Jesus Christ face to face, and have your whole outer and inner history, as it is known to God, minutely revealed to your own mind, and to the assembled jury of the universe? Will your thinking, or saying, that the whole is a fiction, make it so? Will your scoff at God's revelation of the future prevent the dead from rising, or the Judge from appearing? Will a foolish jest, or a proud callousness, or a subtle argument, or a brave indifference to what others fear, enable you, on the resurrection morning, to shut your ears against the sound of the ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... which I have come across in the hospital, and which seem to me to bear the mark of the old army as distinct from the new, are: "bondook," a rifle; "sound scoff" (to the bugler, to sound Rations); "scran," victuals, rations; "weighing out," paying out; "chucking a dummy," being absent; "get the wind up," be afraid (and "put the wind up," make afraid); "the home farm," ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... of the man in the broad-brimmed hat grew grave. Scoff as he might among the men of the district when the serious ones voiced their fears to him, his own thoughts always came back to those fears. From the Red River Valley to the foothills long-smouldering indignation ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... I was sure of it, thinking they meant to be good and worshipful. Then they would ask if I was ready to take counsel, and they said, 'Many things are revealed unto us in these last days that the world would scoff at,' but that it had been given to them to know all the mysteries of the Kingdom. Then they said, 'You will see Joseph and he will tell you what you are ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... table. Dinner very good, of course. Menu written in pencil on a porcelain card, with the formula in gilt and a coronet. Indeed, the very cans that came up to my bedroom with hot water were marked with coronet and cipher. I was inclined to scoff at this, at first, as ostentatious; but after all, as the things were to be marked, how could ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... Against our power? I vouch to witness truth. The myrrh tree,[35] that with shamefast tears bewails Her father's love, still weepeth yet for ruth,[36] But now, this world not seeing in these days Such present proofs of our all-daring[37] power, Disdains our name, and seeketh sundry ways To scorn and scoff, and shame us every hour. A brat, a bastard, and an idle boy: A[38] rod, a staff, a whip to beat him out! And to be sick of love, a childish toy: These are mine honours now the world about, My name disgrac'd to raise again therefore, And in this age mine ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... in the Book of Wisdom who say: "Let unrighteousness be our law," 2, 11. Also in Psalms, 12, 4: "Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?" Again in Psalm 73. "They scoff, and in wickedness utter oppression: they speak loftily," etc. Such were the giants who withstood the Holy Spirit to his face, who, through the mouth of Lamech, Noah and the sons of Noah, exhorted, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... because thou 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 trust the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Were we to seek to endow cavalry with the tenacity and stiffness of infantry, or to take from the mounted arm the mobility and the cult of the offensive which are the breath of its life, we should ruin not only the cavalry, but the Army besides. Those who scoff at the spirit, whether of cavalry, of artillery, or of infantry, are people who have had no practical experience of the actual training of troops in peace, or of the personal leadership in war. Such men are ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... on the water will be a legendary exaggeration of a swim, ending in an ordinary rescue of Peter; and the raising of Lazarus will be only a similar glorification of a commonplace feat of artificial respiration, whilst others will scoff at it as a planned imposture in which Lazarus acted as a confederate. Between the rejection of the stories as wholly fabulous and the acceptance of them as the evangelists themselves meant them to be accepted, there will be many shades of belief and disbelief, of sympathy ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... All self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw others fill the seats of the boats, All offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake, or opinion's sake, All pains of enthusiasts scoff'd at by their neighbors, All the limitless sweet love and precious suffering of mothers, All honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded, All the grandeur and good of ancient nations whose fragments we inherit, All the good of the dozens of ancient nations unknown to ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... called the Sea Queen, but by some mischance, ship and figurehead never came together, and the old wood-carver left it to his daughter, in lieu of other property. It has not been wholly unproductive, Mrs. Bruce fancies, for the casual passers-by, like those who came to scoff and remained to pray, go into the shop to ask questions about the Sea Queen and buy chops out of ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... was assembled far from the cities, in a lone place where none came to scoff or criticize. When it was finished, I took my place and sealed the port by which I had entered. The Adventurer spurned the Earth beneath its cradles, and in the middle of the Twenty-second century, as time is computed on Earth, man first ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... then ye proved thieves, And now all carelessly ye scoff at death. Both of your fathers were good, honest men; Your mother lives, their widow, in good fame; But you are scapethrifts, unthrifts, villains, knaves, And as ye lived by ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... no respect of persons there; Then comes the Coffee-man to greet you, With welcome Sir, let me entreat you, To tell me what you'l please to have, For I'm your humble, humble slave; But if you ask, what good does Coffee? He'l answer, Sir, don't think I scoff yee, If I affirm there's no disease Men have that drink it but ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... 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 doff Your ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... Quarter. Nevertheless, it sufficed. It had its own boulevards, restaurants, cafes, concerts, theatres, palaces, shops, gardens, museums, and churches. There was no need to leave it, and if you were a proper amateur of the Quarter, you never did leave it save to scoff at other Quarters. Sometimes you fringed the Latin Quarter in the big cafes of the Boulevard St. Michel, and sometimes you strolled northwards as far as the Seine, and occasionally even crossed the Seine in order to enter the Louvre, which lined the other bank, but ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... quizzing, or of staring out of countenance some preacher of rather more than usual energy and zeal, have known one of this band pierced by 'a dart from the archer,' convinced that religion is 'the one thing needful,' and though he came 'to scoff, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... that his parents took this matter very seriously at first. His was an intensely affectionate nature, and they had often heard these same raptures before. However, like wise parents, they did not scoff. His mother wrote on August 23, 1816, in answer: "With respect to the other confidential matter, I hope the Lord will direct you to a proper choice. We know nothing of the family, good or bad. We do not ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... mound for their ordnance, so harassed and occupied were they with these incessant alarms. But Rigby, on whom devolved the plan and conduct of the siege, seeing that their affairs were in no thriving condition, but that rather they were the scoff and jest of the garrison, who daily taunted them from the walls, determined at all hazards to raise his cannon. For this purpose a considerable number of the peasantry and poorer sort in the neighbourhood, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... a thing or two," said the Colonel, with a bitter scoff; "and what's this, you old rogue? Why, you've rubbed away a wrinkle since we met. Take off those infernal spectacles, and look me in the face. Ha! I see the devil in your eye. How dare you let it ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the houses of the Busnees but for the purpose of prey; for the wild animals of the sierra do not more abhor the sight of man than she abhors the countenances of the Busnees. She now comes to prey upon you and to scoff at you. Will you believe her words? Fools! do you think that the being before ye has any sympathy for ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... sacrament. He admitted Satwa, Raja, and Tama,[FN127] but only as properties of matter. He acknowledged gross matter (Sthulasharir), and atomic matter (Shukshma-sharir), but not Linga-sharir, or the archetype of bodies. To doubt all things was the foundation of his theory, and to scoff at all who would not doubt was the corner-stone of his practice. In debate he preferred logical and mathematical grounds, requiring a categorical "because" in answer to his "why?" He was full of morality and natural religion, which some say is no religion ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... you scoff? Verily, you do an unconsidered deed. When one remembers all the liquids, medicinal, soporific, insipid, poisonous, which flood the throat of humanity, one may deem himself a favorite of Fortune to be placed so high in the catalogue. Though upon his lowliness gleam down the rosy and purple ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... blessed effect. But England never availed of them—never for an instant sought to turn them to good account. She preferred when Ireland was defeated, prostrate, and forlorn, to taunt her with her failure, scoff at her sufferings, and add to her afflictions. Such was her conduct during the mournful time that followed on the attempted insurrection ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... distinguishes the new theists from the Catholics, against whom the former have inveighed so loudly during the last two years only out of rivalry in fanaticism. It is the fashion today to speak of God on all occasions and to declaim against the pope; to invoke Providence and to scoff at the Church. THANK GOD! WE ARE NOT ATHEISTS, said "La Reforme" one day; all the more, it might have added by way of increasing its absurdity, we are not Christians. The word has gone forth to every one who holds a pen to bamboozle the people, and the first article of the new faith is that an infinitely ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... receiving! And pride may scoff at, or despise, What if but once sincere believing, Is grateful to the ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... her a guide-book to read up everything of interest. She said she was doing this to give her niece experience and prepare her for being by herself later on; but Donald declared she wanted to see "what kind of stuff" she was made of, and that if Barbara did not do things well, she would scoff at her greatly for thinking she could manage a house and children while she could not succeed in finding ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... the wench, and scoff'd at too! 'Tis intolerable; and shall I lose her thus? How it mads me, that I brought not my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... dark Redan, in silent scoff, 5 Lay grim and threatening under; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... easy to scoff at premonitions and haunting fears, but there can be no doubt that on this night an evil spirit was present in Roberta's apartment, a hideous, destructive entity that came and—wavered in its deadly purpose against Penelope, then—manifested ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... disaster in the tunnel; to 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 ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... that a man should be able to say you were slain. You boast of your strength and power. See, you follow the motion of my hand, as a dog would. See, you kneel before me, and prostrate yourself in the dust at my feet, at my bidding. Lie there, and think well whether you are able to scoff any more. You kneeled to the king of your own will; you kneel to me at mine, and though you had the strength of a hundred men, you must kneel there till I bid ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Now I could indeed imagine it were true. Because, perchance, you've lightly won some hearts, Thus you must be severe and scoff at all, As if you had good reason!—It is proof Of an ungenerous ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... been bred to the plough, Might be deaved wi' its clamorous clapper; Yet there 's few but would suffer the sough After kenning what 's said by the happer. I whiles thought it scoff'd me to scorn, Saying, Shame, is your conscience no checkit? But when I grew dry for a horn, It changed aye to Tak it, man, tak it. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... What it is Leroy would never do?" The voice carried a scoff with it, the implication that his very ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... nightly riot, Might rather seem a rake-frequented tavern; And ruin is their sport. Is not each servant A worn-out victim to those midnight revels, Without a sabbath's rest? (For in these times, All sanctity is scoff'd at by the great, And heaven's just wrath defy'd.) An honest master, Scarcely a month beyond his fiftieth year, (Heart-rent with trouble at these sad proceedings,) Wears to the eye a visage of fourscore: Nor ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... be good, be just, for the sake of mankind: but there is no life after this life'? Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous and misshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou done to me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this world, the hopes of another! Is there no other life? Well, then, I want thy gold, that at least I may hasten to ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... scoff—please. You see, there's a big future in this business. My father growled at first, but he's come clean around. The land was mine, and we are using it this way. The American public are going in for this thing. They want amusement and they want it quick. ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... 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. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Ellen, and swoon'd in his arms, But the PAINT-KING, he scoff'd at her pain. "Prithee, love," said the monster, "what mean these alarms?" She hears not, she sees not the terrible charms, That work her ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... top-like triangular appearance for one staggering second. The Tinleys did not go 'so' at all, and consequently they lost the satirical man, and were called 'the ballet-dancers' by Adela which thorny scoff her sisters permitted to pass about for a single day, and no more. The Tinleys were their match at epithets, and any low contention of this kind obscured for them the social summit they hoped to attain; the dream whereof was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... like the fleshless face of fear-painted death! Is that Voltaire? He who, with wit, thought to shear the Son of God of all His beams?—with wit, to loosen the dreadful fastenings of the Cross?—with wit, to scoff at Him who hung thereon, while the blood and water came from the wound in His blessed side?—with wit, to drive away those Shadows of Angels, that were said to have rolled off the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre of the resurrection?—with wit, to deride the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Lemminkainen.' At this the servant asked why she was not to ask Lemminkainen, and Louhi answered: 'Lemminkainen must not come, for he loves war and strife, and would bring disturbance and sorrow to our feast, and scoff at ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... sword's my own. Smile on, my lords; I scorn to count what feelings, withered hopes, Strong provocations, bitter, burning wrongs, I have within my heart's hot cells shut up, To leave you in your lazy dignities. But here I stand and scoff you: here I fling Hatred and full defiance in your face. Your consul's merciful. For this all thanks. He dares not touch a hair of Catiline. "Traitor!" I go but I return. This trial!— Here I devote your senate! I've had wrongs, To stir a fever in the blood of age, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... by time of my patron and friends; a kind of stranger in a new world, where curiosity is now diverted to other objects, and where, having no means of ingratiating my labours, I stand the single votary of an obsolete science, the scoff of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... rather important to understand the technique of rumors. The wise man does not scoff at them, for while they are often absurd, they are rarely baseless. People do not go about inventing rumors, except for purposes of hoax; and even a practical joke is never (to parody the proverb) hoax et praeterea ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... doubts she'd felt before, Was prepared for mistrust) To believe her reasons just; Quite destroy'd that comfort glad, Which in Mary late she had; Made her, in experience' spite, Think her friend a hypocrite, And resolve, with cruel scoff, To renounce and ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... steadfast eye;— The rabble rout forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through all the people crept, And some that came to scoff at him, Now turn'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... suffer death. The tyrant laughed his request to scorn. Once safe out of Sicily, who would answer for his return? Pythias made reply that he had a friend, who would become security for his return; and while Dionysius, the miserable man who trusted nobody, was ready to scoff at his simplicity, another Pythagorean, by name of Damon, came forward, and offered to become surety for his friend, engaging, if Pythias did not return according to promise, to suffer ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the sunny white bulk of the old Brevoort House. Far off, the sky-scrapers begin to loom, whipping out flags and steam plumes. It is a treeless vista, yet it is hazed with spring! Imagination, you scoff—and dust. Yet you look again, and it is not imagination, and it is not dust. It is the veil of spring, cast with delicate hand over the city. These laughing sight-seers atop the green 'bus now going under the arch feel it, too. These children screaming round your feet, as they dash ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... It was the changed attitude of Morehouse that led him on and on. So he told, too, of Dryad Anderson's purchase of the bleak old place on the hill and her reason. But when it came to her wild fury against the paper that had dared to scoff at the boy he paused. For a second he calculated the wisdom of exhibiting the bit of a red bow that had been entrusted him. It, without a doubt, would be the only passport he could hope for to a share of the glory, when it was all over. For the time being he jealously decided ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... out suchlike dirges, which any laundryman with a little sense would scoff at, think themselves great theologians ... Not that I want the kind of theology which is customary in the schools nowadays consigned to oblivion; I wish it to be rendered more trustworthy and more correct by the accession of the old, true learning. It will not weaken the authority of the ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... force of that Stentorian sound, Rose Belcour, dressed, and soon the lobby found. About the door a throng of varlets stood, A grinning and ill-favoured brotherhood, That scoff and gibe at every wight that wears Linen less black, or better coat than theirs. For these, young Belcour was too fair a mark; 'Make way,' cries one, 'he's going to the Park: His horses wait; he's going for a ride.' ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... and 'follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.' And one guarantee for all that far-reaching hope is in the tiny experiences of the present; for He who hath delivered our souls from death, our eyes from tears, and our feet from falling, is not going to expose Himself to the scoff, 'This "God" began to build, and was not able to finish.' But He will complete that which He has begun, and will not stay His hand until all His children are perfectly redeemed and perfectly conscious of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... faults why do I loss receive. But did you not so envy[363] Cepheus' daughter, For her ill-beauteous mother judged to slaughter. 'Tis not enough, she shakes your record off, And, unrevenged, mocked gods with me doth scoff. 20 But by my pain to purge her perjuries, Cozened, I am the cozener's sacrifice. God is a name, no substance, feared in vain, And doth the world in fond belief detain. Or if there be a God, he loves fine ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... out of her usually calm humour. Her first impulse was to go to her husband, and in the strength of her innocence to show him the letter. Then she laughed bitterly as she thought how the selfish old dandy would scoff at her sensitiveness, and how utterly incapable he would be of discovering the offender or of punishing the offence. Then again her face was grave, and she asked herself whether it was true that she was innocent; whether she were not really to ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... all noble sympathy and generous feeling. Doubtless, he also, whose blood received a mingling tide from his proud mother—he, the acknowledged focus of the kingdom's wealth and nobility, had been taught to repeat my father's name with disdain, and to scoff at my just claims to protection. I strove to think that all this grandeur was but more glaring infamy, and that, by planting his gold-enwoven flag beside my tarnished and tattered banner, he proclaimed not his superiority, but his debasement. Yet I envied him. His stud of beautiful horses, his arms ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... impossible that the theater should exist, save under a law of degeneracy. Its trend is downward; its centuries of history tell just this one story. The actual stage of to-day..is a moral abomination. In Chicago, at least, it is trampling on the Sabbath with defiant scoff. It is defiling our youth. It is making crowds familiar with the play of criminal passions. It is exhibiting women with such approaches to nakedness as can have no other design than to breed lust behind the onlooking eyes. It is furnishing candidates for the brothel. ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorn'd the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray. The service past, around the pious man, With steady zeal each honest rustic ran; E'en children follow'd with endearing wile, And pluck'd his gown to share the good man's smile. His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest, Their welfare pleased him, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... priests, and ready, as might be seen from their earnest gaze, to suffer martyrdom in the cause. More, however, stood indifferently round, or, after listening to a few words, walked on with a laugh or a scoff; indeed, preaching had already done all that lay in its power. All those who could be moved by exhortations of this kind were there, and upon the rest the discourses and sermons ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... twenty-seven electoral votes in the South and on the Pacific coast. This made the election, he argued, depend upon New York, and since Douglas would start without the hope of getting a single vote, it became the duty of every national Democrat to insist that the Illinoisan be withdrawn. People might scoff at this movement as "a cloud no bigger than a man's hand," he said, but it would grow in size and send forth a deluge that would refresh and purify the arid soil of politics. The applause that greeted this prophecy indicated faith in a principle that most people knew ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... seemed to imagine that Robert was making this outlay, supposing that he would yet be made equal in fortune by his father to the others, and there was constant repetition that he was to expect not a farthing—he had had his share and should have no more. There was only a scoff at Phoebe's innocence, when she expressed her certainty that he looked for no compensation, knowing that he had been provided for, and was to have nothing from his father; and Phoebe trembled under ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lay, pell mell and huddled, skeleton and mummy—the dry dark skin, the white gleaming bones of the dead, mockingly cased in gold, and decked with rubies; there, grim fingers protruded through the hideous chaos, and pointed towards the living man ensnared; there, the skull grinned scoff under the holy mitre;—and suddenly rushed back, luminous and searing upon Harold's memory, the dream long forgotten, or but dimly remembered in the healthful business of life—the gibe and the wirble of the dead ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who shall look backward with scorn and derision And scoff the old book though it uselessly lies In the dust of the past, while this newer revision Lisps on of a hope and a home in the skies? Shall the voice of the Master be stifled and riven? Shall we hear but a tithe ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... been illustrated by this: Suppose some one rushes into an office of philosophical, higher-critical professors, and cries, "Fire!" You would see those hard-boiled skeptics, if they believed the cry, rush unceremoniously and indecorously out of that building with all speed. People may scoff at faith working with lightning speed; but every exhibition of it only ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... no taste that I cannot get rid of at my pleasure, not a desire that I do not scoff at, not a hope that does not make me smile or laugh. I ask myself why I stir, why I go hither or thither, why I give myself the odious trouble of earning money, since it does not ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... lack of sympathy, or else from the nobler error of holding an opinion strongly and earnestly. We must never be betrayed into making the same mistake; we may try to persuade, and it is better done by example than by argument, but we must never allow ourselves to scoff and deride, and still less to abuse and vilify. We must rather do our best to understand the other point of view, and to acquiesce in the possibility of its being held, even if we cannot understand it. We must take for granted that ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the scoff of wit and the scorn of honour, where more wealth than wit is worshipped of simplicity; who spends more in idleness than would maintain thrift, or hides more in misery than might purchase honour; whose delights are vanities ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... been found. To learn from genius, we must try to recognize, both what is still imperfect, and what is grandly and unwontedly successful. There is no great work of art, not excepting even the Iliad or the Parthenon, which is not open, especially in point of ornament, to the scoff of the scoffer, or to the injustice of those who do not mind being unjust. But all art belongs to man; and man, even when he is greatest, is always ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... thought of his boasts to Wilhelmina. He had bet her two months before that, without turning his hand over or spending a cent of money, he could build her father a road; and now here it was, laid out like a highway—a proof that his system would work. She had chosen to scoff when he had made his big talk; but here he was back with his clothes full of money, and Judson Eells had kindly built the road. He looked up at the moon, where it rose swimming through the haze, and laughed until he shook; then he camped and ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... was feeling too deeply to be conscious of the rudeness in the scoff. "So you figure it out like that—do you? And you get some satisfaction out of that way of looking at it? The scheme of things is very fine, but he must pay the penalty of his own oversight, weakness—carelessness—whatever ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... 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, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... hat and a coat, with buttons on each side, attracted the gaze of the beholder and sometimes received censure or rebuke. A stranger from the old States chose to doff his ruffles, his broad-cloth and his cue rather than endure the scoff and ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... organist's concerts. Painters and men of letters were attracted by them; musicians seldom. Nor did Mr. Innes encourage their presence. Musicians were of no use to him. They were, he said, divided into two classes—those who came to scoff, and those who came to steal. He did ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... to be criticised. She has too long been assured of her angelhood, and denied her womanhood. It will not help her very greatly to be criticised as if she were being tomahawked. If they who come to scoff would but remain to teach! There has been much ungentle judgment of men by women, of women by men. Thoreau said, "Man is continually saying to Woman, 'Why are you not more wise?' Woman is continually saying to Man, 'Why are you not more loving?' Unless each is both wise and loving ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... colouring 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 to scoff ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... a [glass] [howl], and a [toast] [scoff], and a [cheer] [sneer], For all [the good wine, and we've some of it here] [strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer] In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, [Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all!] [Down, down, with the tyrant ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... if we cannot make wealth honestly. Say what you will, the Christian government we are approaching will not recognize property, because it is gradually becoming clear that the holding of property delays the Kingdom at which you scoff, giving the man who owns it a power over the body of the man who does not. Property produces slavery, since it compels those who have none to work for those ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... come kite! Hoi! come erne from off the fen! You followed us, and we fed you well, when Swend Forkbeard brought us over the sea. Follow us now, and we will feed you better still, with the mongrel Frenchers who scoff at the tongue of their forefathers, and would rob their nearest kinsman of land and lass. Hoi! Swend's men! Hoi! Canute's men! Vikings' sons, sea-cocks' sons, Berserkers' sons all! Split up the war-arrow, and send it round, and the curse of Odin on every man that will not pass it on! A war-king ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... a shrewd one! On my word, I hardly had suspected you so deep. What time I have been wasting! Mr. Faust, At last I know you for a prince of men— A brilliant mind, a high intelligence, A spirit incorruptible. The trash, Baubles and claptrap which the foolish herd Snatch at, you scoff—and rightly. I will not With one more word of it insult your mind That admirably penetrates to deeps Where I, too, love to dwell. I put aside All trivialities, and frankly say That I can offer you one ultimate gift Fit even for you—a subtle paradise Such ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... acquaintance with him by laughing at him and trying to cover him with ridicule. But in his presence those who come to scoff remain to pray. Such men really ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... as men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another only to scoff, I conclude, in accordance with what has gone before, that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey God freely ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... 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)
... used to do in the Fourth Reader Class, when we all with one accord turned against "Teacher's Pet." Teacher's Pet might be dowered with all the virtues, but we of the commonality would have none of them. We chose to scoff at an ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... then you got nearly beside yourself with fright and anger, and said it was the devil. And now for the third time the same sort of thing has happened. What is the good of telling you about it? You'd only scoff and jeer as you did before, although on this occasion it is your own life that has ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... story, as in the case of our Lord's parables, alone ensures that truth thus conveyed shall be intelligible to all men at all times. To object to the form, to scoff at or deride it, is as unintelligent as it would be, for example, to disparage the sublime teaching of the parable of the Prodigal Son on the ground that we have no evidence for the historical ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... and glow of life wax dim in thickly gath'ering gloom, Shall mortal scoff at sting of Death, shall scorn the victory of ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... concert audience will not raise it. If the audience were left to itself, it would permit late arrivals, and all the disturbance of chatter and movement. To twist the line of Goldsmith, those who came to pray would be at the mercy of those who came to scoff; and such mercy is merciless. The conductor stands in loco parentis. He is the advocatus angeli. He does for the audience what it would not do for itself. He protects it against its own fatal good-nature. He insists ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... the pastors, in their care of their flocks, to compose long sermons, the burden whereof was a warning against having any intercourse, direct or indirect, with the Harz demon. The fortunes of Martin Waldeck have been often quoted by the aged to their giddy children, when they were heard to scoff at a ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... advocates variously—probably quite as much as through the brazen, gross, and licentious wickedness of its enemies. Alas! what is it but a mutilated, feeble, discordant, and half-expiring instrument, at which Satan and his children, legally and illegally, scoff! Of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... should know, and desired Jeffreys to do the dirty work himself. There was something almost amusing in the artlessness of the suggestion, and had the subject been less personally grievous, Jeffreys could have afforded to scoff at the whole business. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... are many people still living who doubt the existence of dragons; who go so far as to assert that such creatures never did exist upon the face of this earth, and never did torment and destroy the inhabitants thereof, and persecute forlorn maidens. They scoff at the records which have descended to our times, as fabulous legends, composed by idle monks; who were accustomed to write fictitious histories during the dark ages. They deny to historical ballads that authority which Mr. Macaulay attaches to them; and yet the principal ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a clearer idea of what this thing called patriotism means? Nay, do not scoff at our Otto; he is only carrying on the old, old game called reaching out after place and power; is doing exactly what you would do yourself, if you had the will to rise to the mountain-tops where live the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... the judge to say that?" asked the doctor, trying to scoff, but not a little pleased. "I'm sure I can't tell you, Mrs. Graham, only the idea has grown of itself in my mind, as all right ideas do, and everything that I can see seems to favor it. You may think that it is too early to ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... informed her, came with better grace from those who had the power to enforce them; and, with a brutal scoff, the Croatian bade her merit their indulgence by frank discoveries and voluntary confessions. He insisted on knowing the nature of the connection which the imperial colonel of horse, Maximilian, had maintained ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... BURGUNDY. Scoff on, vile fiend and shameless courtezan! I trust ere long to choke thee with thine own, And make thee curse the ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... 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
... the stage. In order to give himself this pleasure he will often forsake the sunniest Broadway corner between Thirty-fourth and Forty-fourth to attend a matinee offering by his less gifted brothers. Once during the lifetime of a minstrel joke one comes to scoff and remains to go through with that most difficult exercise of Thespian muscles—the audible contact of the palm of one hand against ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Was poked with a condescending stoop, And a pointed beak, at the prostrate Bat, Which they eyed askance, as to ask, "What's that?" But none could tell; and the poults moved off, In their select circle to leer and scoff. ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... though not all, are commissioned with the rest, Heaven blesses, and Fortune aids the struggle: but where you send out a general and an empty decree and hopes from the hustings, nothing that you desire is done; your enemies scoff, and your allies die for fear of such an armament. For it is impossible—ay, impossible, for one man to execute all your wishes: to promise, [Footnote: Chares is particularly alluded to. The "promises of Chares" passed into ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... to shed the last drop of his blood in the cause of his God and his King; tenderly sensitive of his honour; proud, yet humble in the presence of all that is sacred and holy; serious, temperate, and modest was the old Castilian: and yet forsooth some are found to scoff at a noble and a loyal race because even at the plough they were lothe to lay aside the beloved sword, the instrument of their high vocation of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... accounted still adorable, Is Christ's cross only!—if the thief's would earn Some stealthy genuflexions, we rebel; And here the impenitent thief's has had its turn, As God knows; and the people on their knees Scoff and toss back the crosiers stretched like yokes To press their heads down lower by degrees. So Italy, by means of these last strokes, Escapes the danger which preceded these, Of leaving captured hands in cloven oaks,— ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... closed; but oh! what a sign of the times, that it has been permitted to exist for one day. It appears to me, my Father, that the days of your sway are numbered in Spain; that you will not be permitted much longer to plunder her, to scoff at her, and to scourge her with scorpions, as in bygone periods. See I not the hand on the wall? See I not in yonder letters a 'Mene, mene, Tekel, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... walked 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 not wish ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... on the point of throwing her pride to the winds and apologizing to Grace, Miriam and Anne for her childish behavior. Then she would scoff at her own weakness and go doggedly on. Her new roommate, Emma Dean, was a cheery sort of girl who lived every day as it came and refused to borrow trouble. She never criticized other girls, nor did ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... own basis. Has not this example of a gentleman very well known, some air of philosophy in it? He married, being well advanced in years, having spent his youth in good fellowship, a great talker and a great jeerer, calling to mind how much the subject of cuckoldry had given him occasion to talk and scoff at others. To prevent them from paying him in his own coin, he married a wife from a place where any one finds what he wants for his money: "Good morrow, strumpet"; "Good morrow, cuckold"; and there was not anything wherewith he more ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... offer cheer: in Ulster there— Fanatic sentiment, you'll say, and scoff it— I see a hundred thousand men who care For something dearer than their stomach's profit; Under the Flag they stand at silent pause, True Democrats that hold by Freedom's charter, Resolved and covenanted for the Cause To give their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... thy death, the seven old men to whom obedience was commanded by the chieftain, curse thee because thou borest away with thee the soul of their hero. In their addresses to the people, with scorn and scoff upon their lips, they sneer and call thee 'WOMAN;' but the people weep, and pray: Lord Christ, Son of the Virgin, give ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in store; and, if so——, but 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)
... Behn in her own Epilogue when she speaks of 'fat Cardinals, Pope Joans, and Fryers'; and Lord Falkland's scoff in his Prologue to Otway's The ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... greedy for profits, yet you scoff at us because we go chasing after business. You fetch heaps of money across the sea, and then turn up your sublimely snuffing noses as ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... figure would first bow and ask the blessing of God. And each time at the close the oak with rustling leaves pronounced distinct Amen! Let those jest who will. I do not know. I think perhaps the oak knows or it would not thus for years have whispered reverently its distinct Amen! I will not scoff. It is perhaps we who are ignorant. We do not know ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... judge to say that?" asked the doctor, trying to scoff, but not a little pleased. "I'm sure I can't tell you, Mrs. Graham, only the idea has grown of itself in my mind, as all right ideas do, and everything that I can see seems to favor it. You may think that it is too early ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... 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
... Dorn, Jane passed to anger against herself. This was soon followed by a mood of self-denunciation, by astonishment at the follies of which she had been guilty, by shame for them. She could not scoff or scorn herself out of the infatuation. But at least she could control herself against yielding to it. Recalling and reviewing all he had said, she—that is, her vanity—decided that the most important remark, the ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... seek to endow cavalry with the tenacity and stiffness of infantry, or to take from the mounted arm the mobility and the cult of the offensive which are the breath of its life, we should ruin not only the cavalry, but the Army besides. Those who scoff at the spirit, whether of cavalry, of artillery, or of infantry, are people who have had no practical experience of the actual training of troops in peace, or of the personal leadership in war. Such men ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... generally ignored, as this very Deity to whom you ascribe unlimited power, and from whom you say you receive life and everything. An eastern despot would take off the heads of those who treated him in such a style; and a republican politician would scoff at the idea of giving office to such lukewarm followers. Why, here in Christian Chicago the will of God is no more heeded by the majority than that of the Emperor of China, and the Bible might as well be the Koran. Looking at these facts from my impartial standpoint, I am driven to one ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... those early pioneers been of a weaker fiber, the history of our country would never have been written in glory. But let us not forget that the pioneers were mostly men of deep piety, whose rugged strength was rooted in true faith and the fear of God. Let those who scoff at religion, remember that without it our country would never have become what it is today. The fear of God is not only the beginning of wisdom, but also the keynote to prosperity ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... only jeered at Angelo for marrying Rosalina but he began to hang about his discarded mistress again and scoff at her choice of a husband. But Rosalina gave him the cold shoulder, with the result that he became more and more insulting to Angelo. Finally one day our client made up his mind not to stand it any longer, secured a revolver, sought out Tomasso in his barber shop and ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... with men. It will not hurt woman to be criticised. She has too long been assured of her angelhood, and denied her womanhood. It will not help her very greatly to be criticised as if she were being tomahawked. If they who come to scoff would but remain to teach! There has been much ungentle judgment of men by women, of women by men. Thoreau said, "Man is continually saying to Woman, 'Why are you not more wise?' Woman is continually saying to Man, 'Why are you not more loving?' Unless ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... down her cheeks as she spoke, and Wilhelm was not sufficiently blase to scoff at the doting nonsense of a love-sick woman. Love has enormous power, and at its heat all firmness, all resistance, melts away. Pilar's affection filled Wilhelm with heartfelt emotion and gratitude. He denied himself the right ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... not only of emotional intuition, but established scientific fact: and no modern sociologist, no psychologist who realizes how unknown in origin and how intimate in interpenetration are the forces that control our destiny, can afford to scoff at her. She had longed inexpressibly for outward martyrdom. This was not for her, yet none the less really did she lay down her life on the Altar of Sacrifice. The evils of the time, and above all of the Church, had generated a sense of unbearable sin in her pure spirit; ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... 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!" ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... and slaver; and the whole mouth, of yore so musical, grinning ghastly like the fleshless face of fear-painted death! Is that Voltaire? He who, with wit, thought to shear the Son of God of all His beams?—with wit, to loosen the dreadful fastenings of the Cross?—with wit, to scoff at Him who hung thereon, while the blood and water came from the wound in His blessed side?—with wit, to drive away those Shadows of Angels, that were said to have rolled off the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre of the resurrection?—with ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the English as emphatically as possible, that they must provide for themselves. Another Spanish statesman expressed his doubt to them whether they were able to do so: he really thought England would one day become an apple of discord between Spain and France, as Milan then was. It was almost a scoff, to compare the Island that had the power of the sea with an Italian duchy. But from this very moment she was to take a new upward flight. England was again to take her place as a third Power between the two ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... savage delight in gazing on this sad pilgrimage. At the foot of the glacier, which stood out sheer and steep before me, I felt so depressed, and my nerves were so overwrought, that I said I wished to turn back. I was thereupon met by the coarse sarcasm of my guide, who seemed to scoff at my weakness. My consequent anger braced up my nerves, and I prepared myself at once to climb the steep walls of ice as quickly as possible, so that this time it was he who found difficulty in keeping up with me. We accomplished the walk over ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... moves you; You scoff even at your own calamity— And such calamity! how wert thou fallen 20 Son of the Morning! and yet ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... which the creative artist feels; and therefore they do not understand, and not understanding, they wax merry, or cynical, or sarcastic, or wrathful, or envious; or they pass by unmoved. And I maintain that those who pass by unmoved are more righteous than they who scoff. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another only to scoff, I conclude, in accordance with what has gone before, that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey God freely with his whole heart, ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep, where Fame's proud temple shines afar! Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime Has felt the influence of malignant star, And waged with Fortune an eternal war! Checked by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown, And Poverty's unconquerable bar, In life's low vale remote has pined alone, Then dropt into the grave, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... out o' yer wages; she 's dreadful close," chuckled Captain Pharo, as we tucked the bag of meal away on the carriage floor. "See when ye'll scoff in my sails, and block up the ship's channel ag'in! Now then; touch and go is a good pilot," and we struck off on a divergent road at ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... you of my ambitions! Mean of them! They might have known you'd scoff. All boys do, but I fail to see why if a girl has brains she should not use them as ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... for the moment I thought you were fooling," he said in a tone of deep interest. "But I see now that you are quite in earnest, although the thing sounds so preposterous, a child might be expected to scoff at it. A man to get a magic belt; to put it on, and then to melt away? Why, the 'Seven-league Boots' couldn't be a greater tax on one's credulity. Sit down and ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... not likely to take much notice of you; and it is not for an indolent, freakish midge to scoff at a man whom she does not know, and couldn't appreciate if she ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour of sorrow? Scoffing will not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they must give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, and ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... greatness we have achieved? Disunion and separation destroy that greatness. Once disunited, we are no longer great. The nations of the earth who have looked upon you as a formidable Power, and rising to untold and immeasurable greatness in the future, will scoff at you. Your flag, that now claims the respect of the world, that protects American property in every port and harbor of the world, that protects the rights of your citizens everywhere, what will become of it? What becomes of its glorious influence? It is ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... only to be blasphemed by cruelty and fraud. The name of the Prince of Peace has been profaned by all kinds of injustice toward the Gentile whom he said he came to save. But I need not speak of what has been done towards the Red Man, the Black Man. Those deeds are the scoff of the world; and they have been accompanied by such pious words that the gentlest would not dare to intercede with "Father, forgive them, for they know not ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... an idiot! Milton, Shakespere, Dante, Tommy Moore, Pope, never, but Byron, too, perhaps, and last, not least, Me, and the Poet Close. We send our resonance echoing down the adamantine canyons of the future! We live forever! The worms who criticise us (asses!) laugh, scoff, jeer, and babble—die! Serve them right. What is the difference between Judy, the pride of Fleet Street, the glory of Shoe Lane, and Walt Whitman? Start not! 'Tis no end of a minstrel show who perpends this query; 'Tis no brain-racking puzzle from an inner page of the Family Herald, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... to scoff these thoughts away and when they would not leave him, he called himself a simpleton, scolded himself for his fastidious taste, and resolved to start ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... back; "I will not drink. However you may scoff, Mr. Clinton, at woman's influence, it is to that I impute my strength to withstand temptation here. My last promise to my mother, was never to become a wine-bibber, and ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... not interested in sin, or even immorality, but it is vitally interested in the effects of them. A person may stay away from church, but he must not scoff at the Holy Scriptures. He may bathe in the nude, but not at a public beach or near where persons are passing. A human model may be posed for an artist, but must not be exhibited in a ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... early thoughtless judgments must be overcome by a counter-resistance to itself, in a better audience slowly mustering against the first. Forty and seven years it is since William Wordsworth first appeared as an author. Twenty of these years he was the scoff of the world, and his poetry a by-word of scorn. Since then, and more than once, senates have rung with acclamations to ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... de load en fergit de distress, En dem w'at stan's by ter scoff, For de harder de pullin', de longer de res', En de bigger de feed ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... here;" taking with them at service time this so-called sermon, strong with the smell of books and of midnight oil; speaking it in pain of utterance, and delighted when the ordeal is over, with a delight most certainly shared by many who neither came to scoff nor remained to pray. Heaven help the man whom fate in the shape of foolish friends, or parents, or mistaken church-officials has sentenced to hard labour in the pulpit; who is condemned to preach without ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... thy progress to renown Thou canst endure the scoff and frown Of those who strive to pull ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of feeling, deeper reaches of pity and subtler perceptions of justice, the rank and file and the wooden spoons must needs apply the old ethics, even against the new teachers themselves. Every truth has to fight for recognition, to prove itself not a lie. The brilliant and impatient young men who scoff at conventions because the people who hold them are unreal—not persons, feeling and passing moral truths through their own soul, but parrots—forget that just because the people are unreal, their maxims are real; that they do not represent the people who mouth them, but the great moralists and ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... is it that you scoff? Verily, you do an unconsidered deed. When one remembers all the liquids, medicinal, soporific, insipid, poisonous, which flood the throat of humanity, one may deem himself a favorite of Fortune to be placed so high in the catalogue. Though upon his lowliness gleam down the rosy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... have been a Gazette last night, crammed With vast news, which, as no paper comes out on Sundays, we shall not learn here; and would you be such a goose as to creep through Brentford and Hammersmith and Kensington, where the bells may be drinking some general's health, and will scoff you for asking whose? Indeed you Shall not stir before to-morrow. Lysons is returned from Gloucestershire, and is to dine here to-day; and he will at least bring us a brick, like Harlequin, as a pattern of any town that ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... to the motherly way in which she behaved to his wife, acting as her mentor, as her adviser and guide in the intricate maze of Berlin society, and of court life. Debarred from all intimacy with her sisters-in-law, who were ever ready to scoff at, and to make fun of her, Augusta-Victoria was wont to have recourse to the countess in all her difficulties, and inasmuch as Count Waldersee himself is the most brilliant soldier of the German army, and was designated at the time by the great Moltke ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... High, So noble was his manly front, So calm his steadfast eye, The rabble rout, forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shuddering Through all the people crept, And some that came to scoff at him Now turned aside ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... you will submit to the conditions we impose, Madame la Grange, and then show us any manifestations, I will never scoff at ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller
... men are described in the Book of Wisdom who say: "Let unrighteousness be our law," 2, 11. Also in Psalms, 12, 4: "Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?" Again in Psalm 73. "They scoff, and in wickedness utter oppression: they speak loftily," etc. Such were the giants who withstood the Holy Spirit to his face, who, through the mouth of Lamech, Noah and the sons of Noah, exhorted, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... believe, to retire thus from the administration of affairs. 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
... place he began with the worthiest, namely, Guido Guerra; and in regard to the description of this man it is to be dwelt upon a little by the reader, because scoff at Dante, because, when he might have described this very distinguished man by his distinguished ancestors and his distinguished deeds, he does describe him by a woman, his grandmother, the Lady Gualdrada. But certainly the author did this not less praiseworthily than wisely, that he might here, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... points, of your inconsistencies, of your faults and failings; and cry—Fie on thee, fie on thee. We saw it with our eyes. For all his high professions, for all his talk of truth and justice, he is no better than the rest of the world. And that scoff does go very near to confound a man; because he feels that it is half true, half deserved, and is afraid that it may be quite true and quite deserved: and then confounded indeed he would be, by his own conscience and by God, as well as by man. All he can do is, to cry to God, like him who wrote ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar? Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime Has felt the influence of malignant star, And waged with Fortune an eternal war— Check'd by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown, And Poverty's unconquerable bar— In life's low vale remote has pined alone, Then dropp'd into ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... eyes and stare! But it's so. You and I may not see the day, but they'll see it. Mind I tell you; they'll see it. Nancy, you've heard of steamboats, and maybe you believed in them—of course you did. You've heard these cattle here scoff at them and call them lies and humbugs,—but they're not lies and humbugs, they're a reality and they're going to be a more wonderful thing some day than they are now. They're going to make a revolution in this world's affairs that will make men dizzy to contemplate. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... was besieged by Waller and taken after ten days. His soldiers, we read, "pulled down the idolatrous images from the Market Cross; they brake down the organ in the Cathedral and dashed the pipes with their pole-axes, crying in scoff, "Harke! how the organs goe"; and after they ran up and down with their swords drawn, defacing the monuments of the dead and hacking the seats and stalls." Indeed, such was their malice that it is wonderful to see ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... were carried to a point near the burying- ground, tried on and concealed. Chunk found it was no easy task to keep even the reckless fellows he had picked up to the sticking point of courage in the grewsome tasks he had in view, but his scoff, together with their mutual aid and comfort, carried them through, while the hope of speedy freedom inspired them to what was felt ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... taste that I cannot get rid of at my pleasure, not a desire that I do not scoff at, not a hope that does not make me smile or laugh. I ask myself why I stir, why I go hither or thither, why I give myself the odious trouble of earning money, since it does not ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a tendency to scoff, or to laugh, at the eugenic movement. It was regarded as an attempt to breed men as men breed animals, and it was thought a sufficiently easy task to sweep away this new movement with the remark that love laughs at bolts and bars. It is now beginning to be ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to hope that with the same natures, the same passions, the same understandings, no better proof against deception, we, like they, are not entangled in what, at the close of another era, shall seem again ridiculous? The scoff of Cicero at the divinity of Liber and Ceres (bread and wine) may be translated literally by the modern Protestant; and the sarcasms which Clement and Tertullian flung at the Pagan creed, the modern sceptic returns upon their own. Of what use is it to destroy an idol when another, or the same ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... may 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 ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... assistance which I ever had; deprived by time of my patron and friends; a kind of stranger in a new world, where curiosity is now diverted to other objects, and where, having no means of ingratiating my labours, I stand the single votary of an obsolete science, the scoff of puny pupils ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... sees more than you or I; He who lives the golden dream lives fourfold thereby; Time may scoff and worlds may laugh, hosts assail his thought, But the visionary came ere the builders wrought; Ere the tower bestrode the dome, ere the dome the arch, He, the dreamer of the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... most sumptuous furniture, equipage, and apparel, though without taste or discernment; they indulged their criminal passions to the most scandalous excess; their discourse was the language of pride, insolence, and the most ridiculous ostentation; they affected to scoff at religion and morality, and even to set heaven at defiance. The earl of Nottingham complained in the house of lords of the growth of atheism, profaneness, and immorality; and a bill was brought in for suppressing blasphemy and profaneness. It contained several articles seemingly calculated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... rolled up half smothered from his huge chest, were deeper and more diabolical by far than their own. He even jeered at them; but, however disgusting his frown, there was something truly apalling in the dark gleam of his scoff, which threw them at an immeasurable distance behind him, in the power of displaying on the countenance ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... Presently they began to scoff at their companion. "Your eyes are wearied with long watching," they told him. "They have played you false. Come not to us with ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... never be able to keep any. But, nevertheless, the devil and thy time of life are against thee: and six to one thou failest. Were it only that thou hast resolved, six to one thou failest. And if thou dost, thou wilt become the scoff of men, and the triumph of devils.—Then how will I laugh at thee! For this warning is not from principle. Perhaps I wish it were: but I never lied to man, and hardly ever said truth to woman. The firs is what all free-livers cannot say: the ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... lieutenant, taking turns. The thing was in its way a little triumph. A few of the visitors were deaf, and hugged the belief that they were the victims of a new kind of fancy-fair swindle. Of the others, many who came to scoff remained to take raffle tickets; and one of the phonographs was finally disposed of in this way, falling, by a happy freak of the ballot-box, into the hands of Sir William Thomson.' The other remained in Fleeming's hands, and was a source of infinite occupation. Once it was sent to London, 'to ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be hampered by mere connoisseurship in the perpetration of his duty—therefore, passe, for the execution—but he should not compromise his master's reputation for brilliancy, and print things that he who runs may scoff at. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... likely to be based on substantial grounds. But then, as Brooks had observed, or, rather, inferred, Bill was not exactly an expert on finance, and this new deal savored of pure finance—a term which she had heard Bill scoff at more than once. At any rate, she hoped nothing disagreeable would come ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... any Nation ever bred, I mean Archbishop Tillotson; "I know not how it comes to pass, says he, that some Men have the Fortune to be esteem'd Wits, only for jesting out of the common Road, and for making bold to scoff at those things, which the greatest Part of Mankind reverence—. If Men did truly consult the Interest, either of their Safety or Reputation, they would never exercise their Wit in such dangerous Matters. Wit is a very commendable ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... 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 ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... hurried them to destruction; for a long time they could not gain the territories for which they fought, and, when at last gained, they could not keep them: their expeditions, therefore, have been the scoff of idleness and ignorance, their understanding and their virtue have been equally vilified, their conduct has been ridiculed, and their cause ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... me—but the Power which brought ye here Hath made you mine. Slaves, scoff not at my will! The Mind—the Spirit—the Promethean spark,[at] The lightning of my being, is as bright, Pervading, and far darting as your own, And shall not yield to yours, though cooped in clay! Answer, or I will ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Gath know their sorrowful doom, Nor Askelon hear of their fate; Their daughters would scoff while we lay in the tomb, The ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... gunner, who was apt to scoff, With jokes most aptly timed, Said Sam might any day go off, 'Cause he was ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... so idiotic as these guessers put forth in the name of science, scientists would have a great time ridiculing the sacred pages, but men who scoff at the recorded interpretation of dreams by Joseph and Daniel seem to be able to swallow the amusing interpretations ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... what is man, That thou art mindful of him? Though in creation's van, Lord, what is man? He wills less than he can, Lets his ideal scoff him! Lord, what is man, That thou art ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... philosophy? Hast thou not said, 'Be virtuous, be good, be just, for the sake of mankind: but there is no life after this life'? Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous and misshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou done to me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this world, the hopes of another! Is there no other life? Well, then, I want thy gold, that at least I may hasten to make the best ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... For Mr. Pericles said: "If that they will go 'so,' I will be amused." He presented a top-like triangular appearance for one staggering second. The Tinleys did not go 'so' at all, and consequently they lost the satirical man, and were called 'the ballet-dancers' by Adela which thorny scoff her sisters permitted to pass about for a single day, and no more. The Tinleys were their match at epithets, and any low contention of this kind obscured for them the social summit they hoped to attain; the dream whereof was their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... are. I want you here—here where the pain is hardest," and she clasped her arms tightly over her heaving bosom. Then her pride returned again, and with it came thoughts of Arthur Carrollton. He would scoff at her as weak and sentimental; he would never take beyond the sea a bride of "Hagarish" birth; and duty demanded that she too should be firm, and sanction his decision. "But when he's gone," she whispered, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... trumpets, skepticism would slip into society. It would be useless for Glanvill and More to call aloud, or for the people to rage. The classes who mingled in the worldly life of the capital would scoff; and the country gentry who took their cue from ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... venomous fight, men who had never turned a card in their lives, and who doubted the rumors current in the sporting world until actually in the room and listening to the faro-dealer's cold and impassive account of the men and the battle. And more often than not these curious souls, who came to scoff, ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... has gone to church for the purpose of quizzing, or of staring out of countenance some preacher of rather more than usual energy and zeal, have known one of this band pierced by 'a dart from the archer,' convinced that religion is 'the one thing needful,' and though he came 'to scoff, remaining to pray.'" [47] ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... told 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 not, all her mummeries would avail her nothing. You set them up for a deal, I fancy, but ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... received congratulations on your joining the church, by those belonging to it; soon will it be known to those who will scoff at it. But Christians and worldlings will look for consistency; and if it be wanting, the last will be the first to mark it. A decided character will soon deliver you from all solicitations to what may ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... the blushes creep still higher, knew a rude impulse to slap the Young Doctor. All of her desire to confide in him died away, as suddenly as it had been born. He was the man who had said that the people who lived in poverty are soulless. He would scoff at the Volskys, and at her desire to help them. Worse than that—he might keep her from seeing the Volskys again. And, in keeping her from seeing them, he would also keep her from making Bennie into a real, wholesome boy—he would keep her from showing Ella the dangers of the precipice ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... shall 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
... sufficed. It had its own boulevards, restaurants, cafes, concerts, theatres, palaces, shops, gardens, museums, and churches. There was no need to leave it, and if you were a proper amateur of the Quarter, you never did leave it save to scoff at other Quarters. Sometimes you fringed the Latin Quarter in the big cafes of the Boulevard St. Michel, and sometimes you strolled northwards as far as the Seine, and occasionally even crossed the Seine in order to enter the Louvre, which lined the other bank, but you did not go any farther. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... as we used to do in the Fourth Reader Class, when we all with one accord turned against "Teacher's Pet." Teacher's Pet might be dowered with all the virtues, but we of the commonality would have none of them. We chose to scoff at an excellence ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... and occupied were they with these incessant alarms. But Rigby, on whom devolved the plan and conduct of the siege, seeing that their affairs were in no thriving condition, but that rather they were the scoff and jest of the garrison, who daily taunted them from the walls, determined at all hazards to raise his cannon. For this purpose a considerable number of the peasantry and poorer sort in the neighbourhood, and for miles round, were driven like beasts to their ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... One 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 us. Such had been oftentimes the case with ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... nor Jupiter we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or scoff. Off, would-be tyrant, off!!!" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... good to you, because you never thought of the chances of another raid being made on your aunt's opals. But perhaps you might have your mother go over and see Miss Alicia. She could mention what you thought, and even if the old lady did pretend to scoff at the idea, it would put a flea in her ear, so perhaps she'd keep an eye on ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... even to repeat the language of it in the pages of a novel. In endeavouring to depict the characters of the persons of whom I write, I am to a certain extent forced to speak of sacred things. I trust, however, that I shall not be thought to scoff at the pulpit, though some may imagine that I do not feel all the reverence that is due to the cloth. I may question the infallibility of the teachers, but I hope that I shall not therefore be accused of doubt as to the thing to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Mr. Krech simply. "Just the sort of blasted fool I would be in your place, or that nine out of ten men would be. Because the threat is directed at you, you scoff ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... receive it, even from those who may not assent to the dogma of its creed; and where such respect exists, it produces a decorum in manners and language often found wanting where it does not. Sectarians will not venture to rhapsodise, nor infidels to scoff, in the common intercourse of society. Both are injurious to the cause of rational religion, and to check ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... inextricable Gordian knot, which his sword could not divide. He dared not approach the Sacrament, he dared not pray, and sometimes he felt wild impulses to tread down in riotous despair every fragment of a religious belief which seemed to live in his heart only to torture him. He had heard priests scoff over the wafer they consecrated,—he had known them to mingle poison for rivals in the sacramental wine,—and yet God had kept silence and not struck them dead; and like the Psalmist of old he said, "Verily, I have cleansed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... event,—small parties carrying only grain come in once or twice a week,—the citizens abandoned even their favourite game of ball, with an eye to speculation. We stood at "Government House," over the Ashurbara Gate, to see the Bedouins, and we quizzed (as Town men might denounce a tie or scoff at a boot) the huge round shields and the uncouth spears of these provincials. Presently they entered the streets, where we witnessed their frantic dance in presence of the Hajj and other authorities. This is the wild men's way of expressing their satisfaction that Fate has enabled them to ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... said, "but I've got an appetite. I could scoff iron-filings an' horseshoe nails an' thank you kindly, ma'am, for ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... a mercurial and nervous temperament, and this fact perhaps may account for the anomaly of a mountain-boy who was a poor shot. Andy was the scoff ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... discussed Anarchist principles as opposed to those of legal Socialism. Nekrovitch and others often joined in the discussion, and very animated we all grew in the course of debate. Nekrovitch smiled sympathetically at my whole-hearted and ingenuous enthusiasm. He never made any attempt to scoff at it or to discourage me, though he vainly attempted to persuade me that Anarchism was too distant and unpractical an ideal, and that my energies and enthusiasm might be more advantageously expended ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... of the Lord Hastings?" asked Alwyn, breaking silence. "Nothing, I trow and trust, that arraigns the poor lady's honour, though much that may scoff at her simple faith in a nature so vain and fickle. 'The tongue's not steel, yet it cuts,' as the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... do I loss receive. But did you not so envy[363] Cepheus' daughter, For her ill-beauteous mother judged to slaughter. 'Tis not enough, she shakes your record off, And, unrevenged, mocked gods with me doth scoff. 20 But by my pain to purge her perjuries, Cozened, I am the cozener's sacrifice. God is a name, no substance, feared in vain, And doth the world in fond belief detain. Or if there be a God, he loves fine wenches, And all things too much in their sole power drenches. Mars girts ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... to turn aside this appeal which I now make to you with a laugh or a sneer. This is the Lord's word, and the word of the Lord is not to be put aside with a sneer. Do not scoff at this as a water of salvation. You certainly will not scoff at the word ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... quietly, "and I have, alas, no son to chastise you as you deserve. But the season of old age is the season of prophecy! Listen, Martin de Vaux," pointing towards me, "you shall taste the bitterest dregs of sorrow and remorse in the days to come, for this your evil deed. You may scoff, both of you,—you may say to yourselves that an old man's words are words of folly,—but the day will come! It is writ in the book of fate, and my eyes have seen it! Pile sin upon sin, and pleasure upon pleasure; say to yourselves, ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of things, against the prevalence of sects and schism, but who at the same time, as Milton shrewdly intimates, dreaded more the rending of their pontifical sleeves than the rending of the Church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with the "Defence of Unlicensed Printing" before him? Who scoff at Quakerism over the "Journal" of George Fox? Who shall join with debauched lordlings and fat-witted prelates in ridicule of Anabaptist levellers and dippers, after rising from the perusal of "Pilgrim's Progress?" "There were giants in those days." And foremost amid that band of liberty-loving ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Isab. Ay me, poor soul, when these begin to jar! [Aside. K. Edw. Return it to their throats; I'll be thy warrant. Gav. Base, leaden earls, that glory in your birth, Go sit at home, and eat your tenants' beef; And come not here to scoff at Gaveston, Whose mounting thoughts did never creep so low As to bestow a look on such as you. Lan. Yet I disdain not to do this for you. [Draws his sword, and offers to stab Gaveston. K. Edw. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... indeed, are steam-engines, macadamized roads, man-traps that break no bones, patent cork-screws, and detonating fowling-pieces, safety coaches and cork legs, but luxuries, at which a cynic would scoff; yet how could a modern Englishman get on without them? It is perfectly true that our Henries and Edwards contrived to beat their enemies unassisted by these inventions. Books, likewise, which were a luxury scarcely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... did the damsel rebuke and scoff at Sir Beaumains, and would not suffer him to sit at her table. "I marvel," said the Green Knight to her, "that ye thus chide so noble a knight, for truly I know none to match him; and be sure, that whatsoever he appeareth now, he will prove, at the end, of noble ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... with them, they have much endured; Scoff not at their fond hopes and earnest plans, Though they may seem to thee wild dreams and fancies. Perchance, in the rough school of stern Experience, They've something learned which Theory does not teach; Or if they greatly err, deal gently still, And let their error but ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... religion to the stage. Mr. Martyn had lived in London and his love of music had taken him to the Continent, but he had been something of a Nationalist, whereas Mr. Moore had lost few opportunities to scoff at the country his father had striven so unselfishly to aid. What of Mr. Moore that was not French in ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... feelings to escape from his controul or management; his word was esteemed in the council as the word of wisdom; his warning of danger was regarded as the cry of the owl. Never did he mock the wretched, or laugh, or scoff at the insane; he was always respectful to the aged; and he daily cried to the Master of Life, from the high grounds, with clay spread thick upon his hair, and at every successful hunt offered, to the same Great Judge and protecting guide of man, the best part ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... and Prospects of Society—"a beautiful book," says the reviewer, "full of wisdom and devotion—of poetry and feeling; conceived altogether in the spirit of other times, such as the wise men of our own day may scoff at, but such as Evelyn, or Isaak Walton, or Herbert would have delighted to honour." The work is in general too polemical and political for our pages; but we may hereafter be tempted to carve out a few pastoral pictures of the delightful country round Keswick, where Dr. Southey ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... exclaimed; "ay, possibly! but would the scorn of any other man so have crushed self-esteem? The injuries of the wicked do not sour us against the good; but the scoff of the good leaves us malignant against virtue itself. Any other man! Tut! Genius is bound to be indulgent. It should know human errors so well—has, with its large luminous forces, such errors itself when it deigns to be human, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Yorke in his antagonist's ear with a sinister smile, "rotten manners! for just that, my buck, I'll make you scoff 'muffin' ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... of prayer went up, and there were none to scoff, when the aged man bent his knee, and lifted his heart to God in prayer, beseeching him, for Jesus Christ's sake, to have mercy upon their souls. Many prayed in that hour of trial that never prayed before. It was an hour that closed the scorner's lip, and made ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... Christians who scoff at such emotions, without endeavouring to understand them, would do well to remember that whatever truth there is in the dogma of the immorality of the soul, is dependant upon this proposition, ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... him, and the consequences which will follow their conduct here, and witnessed their parents' deep concern, and earned cries to God in their behalf can forget them—they must, they do, at times, affect them. While any thing of this nature remains, there is hope. Some, who in early life, scoff at warning and counsel, are afterwards brought to repentance: And such often testify, that impressions made by parental faithfulness in their tender years, were the means of their awakening and amendment. This should encourage those whose children ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... Still subjugates us all, They scoff at our opinion, Our purposes miscall; Will no deliverer appear, And is it vainly, as we fear, We hold our meetings every year Within St. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... needs a perito is a perrito (little dog)!" exclaimed Father Damaso, with a scoff. "One would have to be more of a brute than the natives, who erect their own houses, if he did not know how to build four walls and put a covering over them. That's all that a ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... called to mind the ill omen of his breaking his lance against the gate of Elvira when issuing forth so vaingloriously with his army, which he now saw clearly had foreboded the destruction of that army on which he had so confidently relied. "Henceforth," said he, "let no man have the impiety to scoff at omens." ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... now balancing MACARTNEY'S hat by brim on tip of his nose. Looks easy enough when done by an expert; those inclined to scoff at the accomplishment should try it themselves. Opportunity came suddenly, and unexpectedly. No ground for supposing GORST had been practising the trick in the Cloak-room before entering House. No collusion; all fair and above-board—or, rather, above nose. Came about as incident ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... their eyes, diminished in mirth, twinkled at each other from out their ruddy wrinkles, as if wit had volleyed between them. In short, the House with the Green Shutters was on every tongue—and with a scoff in ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... Lucas answered quietly, "that for you marriage is the only end. The love of a good woman would be your salvation. Yes, you may scoff. But—whether you admit it or not—it is the truth. And you ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... outcast and felt his outrage and his shame; I brooded with him over all his wrongs; I felt within my breast the poison shaft of hate, and clinched like him my fist, scowled, and vengeance swore on them who drove my despair and misery to crime by scoff and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... my secret. Mr. Lovelace, whose pride already so ill brooks 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 generally it ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... last, with strange gentleness, "insult me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn! but come, come. Let us make haste. It is to be to-morrow, I tell you. The gibbet on the Greve, you know it? it stands always ready. It is horrible! to see you ride in that tumbrel! Oh mercy! Until now ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... he hasten'd off With his new purchases, the infant caught, And bid the mother, with a heartless scoff, Fling it away: said he, "'Tis good for nought; None of this lumber can we have, the road Is long enough to tread ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Exeter Hall the saint may chide, The sinner may scoff outright, The Bacchanal steep'd in the flagon's tide, Or the sensual Sybarite; But NOLAN'S name will flourish in fame, When our galloping days are past, When we go to the place from whence we came, Perchance to find ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Cleopatra's, and Lindenberg became the Theatre of the most unbridled debauchery. Not satisfied with displaying the incontinence of a Prostitute, She professed herself an Atheist: She took every opportunity to scoff at her monastic vows, and loaded with ridicule the most ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... hope that with the same natures, the same passions, the same understandings, no better proof against deception, we, like they, are not entangled in what, at the close of another era, shall seem again ridiculous? The scoff of Cicero at the divinity of Liber and Ceres (bread and wine) may be translated literally by the modern Protestant; and the sarcasms which Clement and Tertullian flung at the Pagan creed, the modern sceptic returns upon their own. Of what use ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of his eccentricity, of his ignorance of the world, of his neglect of all the customs of society, of the disgrace he cast on the artist's profession by his dress, which was beneath his station, and by his frugality, which was almost penury. He cared nothing for scoff and reproach. Regardless of the world's comments, he gave himself up to his art. Unweariedly did he haunt the galleries; hour after hour, day after day, he stood before the works of the great masters, striving to penetrate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... needs must come! Even now[115:1] (Black Hell laughs horrible—to hear the scoff!) 160 Thee to defend, meek Galilaean! Thee And thy mild laws of Love unutterable, Mistrust and Enmity have burst the bands Of social peace: and listening Treachery lurks With pious fraud to snare a brother's life; 165 And childless widows o'er the groaning land ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... obviously just come from one of those elaborate finishing schools in which the daughters of rich people are turned into hothouse plants by sycophants and parasites and sent out into the world the most perfect specimens of superautocracy, to patronize their parents, scoff at discipline, ignore duty and demand the sort of luxury that brought Rome to its fall. With admiration and amusement she watched her say good-by to one woman after another as the various tables broke up. It really gave her quite a moment to see ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... 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, and no ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... He looked so great and high, So noble was his manly front, So calm his steadfast eye,— The rabble rout forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through all the people crept, And some that came to scoff at him Now ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... defenceless girl with these baseless fabrications, this manufactured filth, is inconceivable. How any man, in his right mind or out of it, could sit down and coldly try to persuade anybody to believe it, or listen patiently to it, or, indeed, do anything but scoff at it and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... But 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 "William ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... many an unfortunate female, who has once strayed into the thorny paths of vice, would gladly return to virtue, was any generous friend to endeavour to raise and re-assure her; but alas! it cannot be, you say; the world would deride and scoff. Then let me tell you, Madam, 'tis a very unfeeling world, and does not deserve half the blessings which a bountiful Providence showers ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... school—for he kept a goblin school— declared everywhere that a wonder had been wrought. For now, they asserted, one could see, for the first time, how the world and the people in it really looked. Now they wanted to fly up to heaven, to sneer and scoff at the angels themselves. The higher they flew with the mirror, the more it grinned; they could scarcely hold it fast. They flew higher and higher, and then the mirror trembled so terribly amid its grinning that it fell down out of their hands ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... people with bad whisky, because he can always depend on the Salvation Army or the Church of England to negotiate a redemption for him in consideration of a trifling percentage of his profits. There is a third condition too, which must be fulfilled before the great teachers of the world will cease to scoff at its religions. Creeds must become intellectually honest. At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world. That is perhaps the most stupendous fact in the whole world-situation. ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... "Sir Knight, we have in this land of Scotland an ancient saying, 'Scorn not the bush that bields you'—you are a guest of my father's house to shelter you from danger, if I am rightly informed by the domestics. Scoff not its homeliness, nor that of its inmates—ye might long have abidden at the court of England, ere we had sought your favour, or cumbered you with our society. Since your fate has sent you hither amongst us, be contented with such fare and such converse as we can afford ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... of a gentleman very well known, some air of philosophy in it? He married, being well advanced in years, having spent his youth in good fellowship, a great talker and a great jeerer, calling to mind how much the subject of cuckoldry had given him occasion to talk and scoff at others. To prevent them from paying him in his own coin, he married a wife from a place where any one finds what he wants for his money: "Good morrow, strumpet"; "Good morrow, cuckold"; and there was not anything wherewith he more commonly and openly entertained ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Padre Vicente tried to scoff at the reality of it, or the continuance of it. The men pointed to the palsied man, and prayers were remembered by many who were not pious. Indian witchcraft was not ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Vicentio been inclined to scoff at this apparition as a heretical innovation, there was still the story of Concepcion, the Demon Vaquero, whose terrible riata was fully as potent as the whaler's harpoon. Concepcion, when in the flesh, had been a celebrated herder of cattle and wild horses, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... see why you girls always scoff so at Harold Wilkins," said Fred, slightly aggrieved, "he is generally thought a lot of by girls. All Mrs. Gordon's sisters ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... mine were pained sore. Say gods: if she unpunished you deceive, For other faults why do I loss receive. But did you not so envy[363] Cepheus' daughter, For her ill-beauteous mother judged to slaughter. 'Tis not enough, she shakes your record off, And, unrevenged, mocked gods with me doth scoff. 20 But by my pain to purge her perjuries, Cozened, I am the cozener's sacrifice. God is a name, no substance, feared in vain, And doth the world in fond belief detain. Or if there be a God, he loves fine wenches, And all things too much in their ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... fool to the top of one's bent; laugh at, grin at, smile at; poke fun at. satirize, parody, caricature, burlesque, travesty. turn into ridicule; make merry with; make fun of, make game of, make a fool of, make an April fool of[obs3]; rally; scoff &c. (disrespect) 929. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... see GORST just now balancing MACARTNEY'S hat by brim on tip of his nose. Looks easy enough when done by an expert; those inclined to scoff at the accomplishment should try it themselves. Opportunity came suddenly, and unexpectedly. No ground for supposing GORST had been practising the trick in the Cloak-room before entering House. No ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... acts this, as he should do, with an artful Innocence and Chearfulness in his Countenance, it is incredible what an Effect it may have upon the greater part of a Multitude, amongst whom Christianity is not scoff'd at, and Pretences to Purity are in Fashion. Those who were any ways devout on that Day, which he points at, or can but remember that they wish'd to be Godly, will swallow with Greediness whatever such a Preacher delivers to them; and applauding every Sentence before it ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... Negroes' eyes to the hitherto forbidden glories of modern civilization and take care that the spiritual was not lost sight of in the new maze of world wonders. Withered indeed must be the soul that could scoff at such moral heroism, and yet that is just what Mr. Dixon does. He suggests that the people who produced a Washington and a Jefferson hardly needed missionaries to perform work among the Negroes ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... his neighbour's worth presume; But still let Nature's garb prevail— Esop has left this little tale: A Daw, ambitious and absurd, Pick'd up the quills of Juno's bird; And, with the gorgeous spoil adorn'd, All his own sable brethren scorn'd, And join'd the peacocks—who in scoff Stripp'd the bold thief, and drove him off. The Daw, thus roughly handled, went To his own kind in discontent: But they in turn contemn the spark, And brand with many a shameful mark. Then one he formerly disdain'd, "Had you," said he, "at home ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved False to their fathers' memory, false to the faith they loved; If she can scoff at Freedom, and its Great Charter spurn, Must we of Massachusetts from truth and ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... feeling too deeply to be conscious of the rudeness in the scoff. "So you figure it out like that—do you? And you get some satisfaction out of that way of looking at it? The scheme of things is very fine, but he must pay the penalty of his own oversight, weakness—carelessness—whatever you choose ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... o' yer wages; she 's dreadful close," chuckled Captain Pharo, as we tucked the bag of meal away on the carriage floor. "See when ye'll scoff in my sails, and block up the ship's channel ag'in! Now then; touch and go is a good pilot," and we struck off on a divergent ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... "I thought it would be so fine to stay behind and be able to scoff the cabin grub just as I pleased. I just stayed for the grub, ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... I take up my tale, I want to anticipate the doubting Thomases of psychology, who are prone to scoff, and who would otherwise surely say that the coherence of my dreams is due to overstudy and the subconscious projection of my knowledge of evolution into my dreams. In the first place, I have never been a zealous student. I graduated last of my class. I cared more for athletics, and—there ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... 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 by the ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... Don't scoff—please. You see, there's a big future in this business. My father growled at first, but he's come clean around. The land was mine, and we are using it this way. The American public are going in for this thing. They want amusement and they ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... 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 so fiercely at Boyet? ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... 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
... would be more than she could bear. There was no deceit in him, no falsehood—as yet; but perhaps when he grew up he would cheat her too. He would pretend to love her and betray her trust; he would kiss her, and then go away and scoff at her; he would smile, and smile, and be a villain. Such words were not in Lucy's mind, and it was altogether out of nature that she should even receive the thought: which made it all the more terrible when it was poured into her soul. And it cannot be told what ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... mere man would disdain to build a thing so poor and incomplete. A mere human engineer who constructed an engine whose workings were perpetually at fault—which went wrong when called upon to do the labor it was made for—who would not scoff at it and cast it aside as a piece of ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a firm position," Mrs. Halliday resumed. "Even if he were poor, his wife would take a leading place in the Holm country. People pretend to scoff at such things, ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... of the Cornell Menorah Society. About thirty new members were enrolled, bringing our membership list up to one hundred. This number includes five members of the faculty and about a score of graduates. Several men who had come to the meeting to scoff stayed to enroll. The subsequent meetings have also been well attended. Our organization is gaining greater and greater ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie. But a woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous. To our great good fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection, characteristically Oriental, for yourself. Oh, you may scoff, but it is evident. She was employed to get this letter placed in my ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... answer. Their power would be even greater than atomic power. There's another source I've heard mentioned, but most people scoff at it. That's the use of electromagnetic fields in space. The earth has its magnetic field, of course, and so does the ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... gentlemen of name and coat armour. But Sir Hew being dead, and buried with his fathers, the matter may be broached as among friends and persons of honour. The ground of our dispute, as ye know, was an unthinking scoff of Sir Hew's, he being my own third cousin by the mother's side, Anderson of Ettrick Hall having intermarried, about the time of the Solemn League and Covenant, with Anderson of Tushielaw, both of which houses ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... curses, as they rolled up half smothered from his huge chest, were deeper and more diabolical by far than their own. He even jeered at them; but, however disgusting his frown, there was something truly apalling in the dark gleam of his scoff, which threw them at an immeasurable distance behind him, in the power of displaying on the countenance the worst ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... attention to Mami's precepts and the Prophet's versus. The sinner was a scrupulous follower in the presence of the faithful; but when their backs were turned, I know few who relished a porker more lusciously, or avoided water with more scrupulous care. Yet why should I scoff at poor Ali? Joseph and I had done our best ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... yourself, and then you got nearly beside yourself with fright and anger, and said it was the devil. And now for the third time the same sort of thing has happened. What is the good of telling you about it? You'd only scoff and jeer as you did before, although on this occasion it is your own life that has been ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... so he traveled, preaching three or four times a day, and riding from twenty to fifty miles. At London he preached on the "heaths," and thousands upon thousands who never entered a church heard him. That phrase, "They came to scoff and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 not wish ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... o'er her bright and beauteous brow Shade after shade is passing now, Like clouds across the pale moon glancing, As thought on rapid thought advancing, Thrills through the maiden's trembling breast, Not doubting, and yet not at rest. Not doubting! Man may turn away And scoff at shrines, where yesterday He knelt, in earnest faith, to pray, And wealth may lose its charm for him, And fame's alluring star grow dim, Devotion, avarice, glory, all The pageantries of earth may pall; ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... man, That thou art mindful of him? Though in creation's van, Lord, what is man? He wills less than he can, Lets his ideal scoff him! Lord, what is man, That thou art ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... before—"May a curse rest upon this hand and upon that head!" she exclaimed; "may the hand work its own evil, and the head its own destruction! May the child of your love poison your peace, and make you a scoff, and a by-word, and a shame! May the wife of your bosom ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... cried Ellen, and swoon'd in his arms, But the PAINT-KING, he scoff'd at her pain. "Prithee, love," said the monster, "what mean these alarms?" She hears not, she sees not the terrible charms, That work ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... this message was as a heavy yoke upon me, so that I wept bitterly at the thought of what I should have to pass through. While I wept, I heard a voice say, "weep not, some will laugh at thee, some will scoff at thee, and the dogs will bark at thee, but while thou doest my will, I will be with thee to the ...
— Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman • Anonymous
... Progress and Prospects of Society—"a beautiful book," says the reviewer, "full of wisdom and devotion—of poetry and feeling; conceived altogether in the spirit of other times, such as the wise men of our own day may scoff at, but such as Evelyn, or Isaak Walton, or Herbert would have delighted to honour." The work is in general too polemical and political for our pages; but we may hereafter be tempted to carve out a few pastoral ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... 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 went into Bostock's, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... years, have tried to tame the ancient families perched aloft like wary ravens on their crag; the said families were always willing to accept invitations to dinners and dances; but as to admitting the strangers to their own houses, they were inexorable. Ready to scoff and disparage, jealous and niggardly, marrying only among themselves, the families formed a serried phalanx to keep out intruders. Of modern luxury they had no notion; and as for sending a boy to Paris, it was sending him, they thought to certain ruin. Such sagacity will give ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... smoke Without annoying Shes with our cheroots, And being badged as "brutes"? If a poor fellow may not snatch a whiff (Without the feminine sniff) Upon the "Bus-roof," where in thunder's name Shall he draw that same! The ladies, climb, sit, suffocate, and scoff, Declare they are "smoked off," Is there no room inside? If smoke means Hades, We, "to oblige the ladies," Have taken outside seats this many a year, Cold, but with weeds to cheer Our macintosh-enswathed umbrella'd ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... Morehouse that led him on and on. So he told, too, of Dryad Anderson's purchase of the bleak old place on the hill and her reason. But when it came to her wild fury against the paper that had dared to scoff at the boy he paused. For a second he calculated the wisdom of exhibiting the bit of a red bow that had been entrusted him. It, without a doubt, would be the only passport he could hope for to a share of the glory, when it was all over. For ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... purified? And if it should be answered, through and under Christianity, the fool in his heart would scoff and say: 'What woman thinks of religion in her youthful courtship?' No; but it is not what she thinks of, but what thinks of her; not what she contemplates in consciousness, but what contemplates her, and reaches her by a necessity of social (? ideal) ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... most interesting and significant expressions of humanity. Yet books are thickly peppered with humbug. "Travellers' stories" have been the scoff of ages, from the "True Story" of witty old Lucian the Syrian down to the gorillarities—if I may coin a word—of the Frenchman Du Chaillu. Ireland's counterfeited Shakspeare plays, Chatterton's forged manuscripts, George Psalmanazar's forged ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... been one of those That danced for bread in flesh-color'd hose, With Rosina's pastora bevy, The jeers it had met,—the shouts! the scoff! The cutting advice to "take itself off" For ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... dice, and something seems to say, a fortunate one in store; and, if so——, but 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 it, I fear also, for my character for sound ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... 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, and are immediately ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Bradford's records, to have died in the general sickness which attacked the crew while lying in Plymouth harbor. The brief narrative of his sickness and death is all that we know of his personality. The writer says: "He was a proud young man, and would often curse and scoff at the passengers," but being nursed when dying, by those of them who remained aboard, after his shipmates had deserted him in their craven fear of infection, "he bewailed his former conduct," saying, "Oh! you, I now see, show your love like Christians ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... answered; 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 wise ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... man," he said quietly, "and I have, alas, no son to chastise you as you deserve. But the season of old age is the season of prophecy! Listen, Martin de Vaux," pointing towards me, "you shall taste the bitterest dregs of sorrow and remorse in the days to come, for this your evil deed. You may scoff, both of you,—you may say to yourselves that an old man's words are words of folly,—but the day will come! It is writ in the book of fate, and my eyes have seen it! Pile sin upon sin, and pleasure upon pleasure; say to yourselves, 'let us eat and be merry, for to-morrow we shall ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whose love, first foolish, widening scope, Knows suddenly, with music high and soft, The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope; Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft Together, within ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... roads,—but also new roads to destruction, as is now plainly evident in the misfortunes of many. True, you have lessened our taxes to the public; but, too, you have increased those to ourselves;—prosecutions, protests, and failures are no blessing to a community. And you dare scoff at the man in his grave whom the whole parish blesses! You dare say he lies in our way,—yes, very likely he lies in your way. This is plainly to be seen; but over this grave you shall fall! The spirit which has reigned over you, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... you make of the 'means of grace'! Why, certain of your own poets have said, 'And fools who came to scoff remained to pray.'" ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... 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 need ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... 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 truth. ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 and ridicule. One circumstance was very gratifying and cheering to me, namely, the ocular proof which I possessed that the books which I disposed of were read, and with attention, by those to whom I disposed of them, and that many others participated in their benefit. In the streets of Aranjuez ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... to tell the Rimbolts himself, but he was most anxious they should know, and desired Jeffreys to do the dirty work himself. There was something almost amusing in the artlessness of the suggestion, and had the subject been less personally grievous, Jeffreys could have afforded to scoff at the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... the beasts which perish, exposed to a thousand inconveniences against which there is no guard but that of a clear and unbiased reason, but it renders him also base and abject when under misfortunes, the sport and contempt of that wicked and debauched part of the human species who are apt to scoff at despairing misery, and to add by their insults to the miseries of those who sink under ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... its apparent animosity. To discover the life that completes and contents our own is not given to many of us poor mortals. Here and there some fortunate individuals have made that discovery—but they are rare—and not given to boasting on the subject; yet though worldly wise folk scoff at love as a myth, I question whether they could name any other passion of the heart which has occupied so important a place in the world's history, which has given life to all that is great and divine in art, or inspired such deeds of heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom. Before its patient ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... have been telling you of my ambitions! Mean of them! They might have known you'd scoff. All boys do, but I fail to see why if a girl has brains she should not use them as ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... without such cause from you, as I will not suppose possible, you find my affections veering but a point, may I become a proverbial scoff ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... more than decorate the assembly with his good-tempered smile, was a most necessary feature of it, and Dick Tryon was more often than not to be found there also, though whether he came to scoff or bless, no one was quite certain. His position in the circle of Mrs. Hading's satellites had never been clearly defined. He was supposed by some people to be hopelessly in love with Gay Liscannon, and that supposition alone was enough ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... believes that the righteousness of Christ is its own, and that its sin is no longer its own, but that of Christ; but, on account of its faith in Christ, all its sin must needs be swallowed up from before the face of the righteousness of Christ, as I have said above. It learns, too, with the Apostle, to scoff at death and sin, and to say, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. xv. 55-57). For death is ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... reader, say! Don't run the bluff that you are on, Or proudly scoff at every toff Who rattles off ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... rose up music and song, And they ate and drank and were merry: but amidst the glee of the cup They felt themselves tangled and caught, as when the net cometh up Before the folk of the firth, and the main sea lieth far off; And the laughter of lips they hearkened, and that hall-abider's scoff, As his face and his mocking eyes anigh to their faces drew, And their godhead was caught in the net, and no shift of creation they knew To escape from their man-like bodies; so great that day was ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... blood of the East in her veins and the influence of the West in her life. She is rebellious, rude and irreverent. Only this morning, when I gave warning what vengeance the great Buddha would send upon her for impiety, did she not toss her red head and laughingly scoff in my face." At this point I arose and rang for tea and my visitor continued: "Ah, I tremble at her daring. It is her foreign blood, her training. It will curse ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... 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 Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... her, came with better grace from those who had the power to enforce them; and, with a brutal scoff, the Croatian bade her merit their indulgence by frank discoveries and voluntary confessions. He insisted on knowing the nature of the connection which the imperial colonel of horse, Maximilian, had maintained with the students of Klosterheim; and upon other discoveries, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the desk. I further stated that I was at a 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 of the discourse. After giving ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... he tossed the book into the open bag on the further side of the room, rose, and stretched himself. Deering stifled an impulse to scoff at his silk pajamas as hardly an appropriate sleeping garb for one who professed to have taken vows of poverty. Hood ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... it. Sometimes I have spoken of these things to my mother, but she does not see as I do. I dare not tell my father all I think, and Juste is so much a creature of moods that I am never sure whether he will be sensible and kind, or scoff. One can not bear to be laughed at. And as for my sister, she never thinks; she only lives; and she looks it—looks beautiful. But there, dear Lucie, I must not tire you with my childish philosophy, though I feel no longer a child. You would not know your friend. I can not tell what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... got an appetite. I could scoff iron-filings an' horseshoe nails an' thank you kindly, ma'am, ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... trifle unnerve me; and yet, coming as it does after all these alarms, it has an additional significance, for I cannot doubt either Mr. Manson's story or that of the mate, now that I have experienced that which I used formerly to scoff at. ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we be true children of those old worthies, whom Tacitus saw worshipping beneath the German oaks; we shall have but one answer to that scoff:— ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... a rush of joy would suddenly fill her heart, and make her cheek glow. She moved among people with a conscious dignity quite unlike that which had only satisfied her need of distinction. She spoke more softly, exercised more patience, smiled where she had been wont to scoff. Miss Nunn was altogether a more ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... Christian gentleman, and cherish his past relations to me, yet I have in these letters written to him, and of him, just as I would have done had he lived in France or Germany, a stranger to me, and given to the world the refined scoff of the one, or the ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... time of his canonization (1189), but from that time forward ambition, avarice, and luxury made such inroads upon the solitude of Grammont that its monks became the byword and scoff of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... journeyings through life, and plans formed, which were never to be realized. And perhaps all was for the best; for we are all creatures of circumstance. Not one in a thousand follows out his plans through life. Half of our existence is imaginary; and wise-acres may scoff as much as they please at what they term 'castle-building,' I believe all mankind indulge in it more or less; and it is an innocent, harmless pastime, which injures no one. I consider it the 'unwritten poetry,' the romance of life, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... he began with the worthiest, namely, Guido Guerra; and in regard to the description of this man it is to be dwelt upon a little by the reader, because scoff at Dante, because, when he might have described this very distinguished man by his distinguished ancestors and his distinguished deeds, he does describe him by a woman, his grandmother, the Lady Gualdrada. But certainly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Jesus Christ face to face, and have your whole outer and inner history, as it is known to God, minutely revealed to your own mind, and to the assembled jury of the universe? Will your thinking, or saying, that the whole is a fiction, make it so? Will your scoff at God's revelation of the future prevent the dead from rising, or the Judge from appearing? Will a foolish jest, or a proud callousness, or a subtle argument, or a brave indifference to what others fear, enable you, on the resurrection morning, to shut your ears against the sound ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... his prime, would rest with Macdonald. The presidency of the Executive Council, which was offered him, unless joined to the office of prime minister, was of no real importance. Some party friends throughout the country {40} would misunderstand, and more would scoff. He had parted company with his loyal personal friends Dorion and Holton. If, as Disraeli said, England does not love coalitions, neither does Canada. For the time being, and, as events proved, for a considerable time, the Liberal party would be divided and helpless, because the ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... England; for if civilization depends on bringing the highest quantity of rational enjoyment within the reach of general society, England is wholly superior in civilization to the shivering splendours of the Continent. Foreigners are beginning to learn this; and those who are most disposed to scoff at our taste, are the readiest to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... reached his ear. The very act of advising to the commission of a crime is of itself unlawful. The presumption of law is that advice has the influence and effect intended by the adviser, unless it is shown to have been otherwise; as that the counsel was received with scoff, or was manifestly rejected and ridiculed at the time it was given. It was said in the argument that Jewett's abandoned and depraved character furnishes ground to believe that he would have committed the act without such advice from Bowen. Without doubt he was a hardened and depraved ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... the prisoner free, Was pang, and scoff, and scorn to thee; Yet love, through all thy torture glowed, And ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... can tell how hard it is to climb The steep, where Fame's proud temple shines afar! Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime Has felt the influence of malignant star, And waged with Fortune an eternal war! Checked by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown, And Poverty's unconquerable bar, In life's low vale remote has pined alone, Then dropt into the grave, unpitied ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... country would never have been written in glory. But let us not forget that the pioneers were mostly men of deep piety, whose rugged strength was rooted in true faith and the fear of God. Let those who scoff at religion, remember that without it our country would never have become what it is today. The fear of God is not only the beginning of wisdom, but also the keynote to prosperity and a ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... considered herself as having fallen a victim to love; and could she only save her daughter from a similar error she might yet by her means retrieve her fallen fortune. To implant principles of religion and virtue in her mind was not within the compass of her own; but she could scoff at every pure and generous affection; she could ridicule every disinterested attachment; and she could expatiate on the never-fading joys that attend on wealth and titles, jewels and equipages; and all this she did in the belief that she was acting the part of a most wise and tender ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... can tell, suh!" said Chatz, in a solemn manner; and somehow none of the boys seemed quite as ready to scoff at the Southerner's superstitious ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... not all, are commissioned with the rest, Heaven blesses, and Fortune aids the struggle: but where you send out a general and an empty decree and hopes from the hustings, nothing that you desire is done; your enemies scoff, and your allies die for fear of such an armament. For it is impossible—ay, impossible, for one man to execute all your wishes: to promise, [Footnote: Chares is particularly alluded to. The "promises of Chares" passed into a proverb.] and assert, and accuse this or ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... crowd had assembled from all parts of the State:—many enthusiastic, more doubtful, and some decidedly inclined to scoff. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... escape from his controul or management; his word was esteemed in the council as the word of wisdom; his warning of danger was regarded as the cry of the owl. Never did he mock the wretched, or laugh, or scoff at the insane; he was always respectful to the aged; and he daily cried to the Master of Life, from the high grounds, with clay spread thick upon his hair, and at every successful hunt offered, to the same Great Judge ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... never seemed to the eye more peaceful than on a certain November evening in the year 1591: and this although many a one within its walls resented the fineness of the night as a mockery, as a scoff alike at the pain of some and the fury ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... 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. ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... promises you that his precepts will lead you to happiness, though he uses neither flattery, nor bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. I scoff at Cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... begin, dear love, where we left off; Tie up the broken threads of that old dream, And go on happy as before, and seem Lovers again, though all the world may scoff. ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... whispered aside in her delicate ear, A sentence of warning,—it might be of fear: "Don't stand in a draught, if you value your life." (Nothing more,—such advice might be given your wife Or your sweetheart, in times of bronchitis and cough, Without mystery, romance, or frivolous scoff.) But hark to the music: the dance has begun. The closely-draped windows wide open are flung; The notes of the piccolo, joyous and light, Like bubbles burst forth on the warm summer night. Round about go the dancers; in circles they fly; Trip, trip, go their feet as their skirts ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... events: The best is Christmas day, But every holiday presents Its special round of play, And looking back on boyhood now And all the charms it knew, One day, above the rest, somehow, Seems brightest in review. That day was finest, I believe; Though many grown-ups scoff, When mother said that we could leave ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... concerning Life and its obligations. They were often startling, particularly as she made no secret of the fact that she and her husband never "got on." Between puffs of cigarette smoke she would scoff at the laws of marriage and speak with much leniency of divorce. Her sympathies were invariably with offenders, and Joyce thought her rather too fond of the society of men. Meredith feared and disliked her. The fear was on his wife's account, lest she should be contaminated. "I have ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... and power passed over for a nameless, haunted, dumb thing, a stray from some other world into a world of men, women, and the children they rear to follow them. She scorned Mabilla for flinching so much, she scorned her for not flinching more. That Mabilla could be desirable to Andrew King made her scoff; that Andrew King should not know her dangerous kept her awake ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... sometimes with great vigour. Such had been the case with Mrs Winterfield. No woman ever lived, perhaps, with more conscientious ideas of her duty as a woman than Mrs Winterfield of Prospect Place, Perivale. And this, as I say it, is intended to convey no scoff against that excellent lady. She was an excellent lady unselfish, given to self-restraint, generous, pious, looking to find in her religion a safe path through life a path as safe as the facts of Adam's fall would allow her feet to find. She was ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... such pranks to draw people who scoff? It is They to whose critical words you are deaf. Though in your country you are not a prophet, is This how you make one, that's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... and Cassander, taking upon himself the command, had found a letter of Demades's, formerly written by him to Antigonus in Asia, recommending him to come and possess himself of the empire of Greece and Macedon, now hanging, he said, (a scoff at Antipater,) "by an old and rotten thread." So when Cassander saw him come, he seized him; and first brought out the son and killed him so close before his face, that the blood ran all over his clothes and person, and then, after ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... pondering on the frailty Of happiness, hope, and mirth, The ascending sun with derisive scoff Hurled its golden lances and smote me off From the bulge ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... got nearly beside yourself with fright and anger, and said it was the devil. And now for the third time the same sort of thing has happened. What is the good of telling you about it? You'd only scoff and jeer as you did before, although on this occasion it is your own life that ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... how now, saucy Jade; Sure the Wench is tipsy! How can you see me made [To him. The Scoff of such a Gipsy? Saucy ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... you any where, There's no respect of persons there; Then comes the Coffee-man to greet you, With welcome Sir, let me entreat you, To tell me what you'l please to have, For I'm your humble, humble slave; But if you ask, what good does Coffee? He'l answer, Sir, don't think I scoff yee, If I affirm there's no disease Men have that drink it ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... somewhat, although I have been at pains to cut out extraneous matter. It is also true that many will not believe him in these days, for out of their puny volition they will analyze, and out of their discontent they will scoff. But to those I say, Go to your microbes, your statistics, your volts, and your bicycles, and leave me the ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... Italy as elsewhere. Let it burn. The cross, accounted still adorable, Is Christ's cross only!—if the thief's would earn Some stealthy genuflexions, we rebel; And here the impenitent thief's has had its turn, As God knows; and the people on their knees Scoff and toss back the crosiers stretched like yokes To press their heads down lower by degrees. So Italy, by means of these last strokes, Escapes the danger which preceded these, Of leaving captured hands in cloven oaks,— Of leaving very souls within the buckle Whence bodies struggled ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... 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
... 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 of ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... am I? The victim of infidelity and you, the bearer of a cursed existence, the scoff and scorn of the world, the monument of a broken vow and a guilty life, a being scourged by the scorpion lash of conscience, blasted by periodical insanity, pelted by the winter's storm, scorched by the summer's heat, withered by starvation, hated by man, and touched into my ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... with Mammon of Unrighteousness, among the magistrates of the Gentiles, and among their mighty men; and it shall come to pass that Darsie Latimer shall be delivered, even if it were at the expense of half my substance." And I said, "Nay, my brother, go not, for they will but scoff at and revile thee; but hire with thy silver one of the scribes, who are eager as hunters in pursuing their prey, and he shall free Darsie Latimer from the men of violence by his cunning, and thy soul shall be guiltless of evil towards the lad." But he answered and said, "I will not ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... hearer lives over again the finely shaded mood of the poet. Take the words of a lyric for what they say, and they say nothing most of the time. And that is true of philosophers. You must penetrate the ponderous vocabulary, the professional cant to the insight beneath or you scoff at the mountain ranges of words and phrases. It is this that Bergson means when he tells us that a philosopher's intuition always outlasts his system. Unless you get at that you remain forever ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... be sure thou dost not invite wild Lemminkainen.' At this the servant asked why she was not to ask Lemminkainen, and Louhi answered: 'Lemminkainen must not come, for he loves war and strife, and would bring disturbance and sorrow to our feast, and scoff at our maidens.' ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... where a portion of our citizens, though not all, are commissioned with the rest, Heaven blesses, and Fortune aids the struggle: but where you send out a general and an empty decree and hopes from the hustings, nothing that you desire is done; your enemies scoff, and your allies die for fear of such an armament. For it is impossible—ay, impossible, for one man to execute all your wishes: to promise, [Footnote: Chares is particularly alluded to. The "promises of Chares" passed into a proverb.] and assert, and accuse ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... on and ceased to scoff. Money is a great dignifier, and Jim and 'Lias were making money. There had been some sniffs when the latter had hinged the front gate and whitewashed his mother's cabin, but even that had been accepted now as a ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... which is by plain institution ... a qualification, of the communicants. Now these think it not enough to charge the churches, which require & expect such accounts, with exceedingly provoking the Lord. But of the tears dropt by holy souls on those occasions, they say with a scoff, 'whether they be for joy or grief, we are left in the dark.'" [Footnote: Collection of Some of the More Offensive Matters, p. 6.] But the suffering divines found peace in knowing that Christ himself would inflict the punishment ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... with him by laughing at him and trying to cover him with ridicule. But in his presence those who come to scoff remain to pray. Such men really ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... my Lord Prince, your Highness is young. When you are as old as I am, you will not scoff at Ceremony. This is the pleasantest day that I have spent since your Highness's wedding-day. I thank you greatly, and will do my best, ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... becoming matter not only of emotional intuition, but established scientific fact: and no modern sociologist, no psychologist who realizes how unknown in origin and how intimate in interpenetration are the forces that control our destiny, can afford to scoff at her. She had longed inexpressibly for outward martyrdom. This was not for her, yet none the less really did she lay down her life on the Altar of Sacrifice. The evils of the time, and above all of the Church, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society—"a beautiful book," says the reviewer, "full of wisdom and devotion—of poetry and feeling; conceived altogether in the spirit of other times, such as the wise men of our own day may scoff at, but such as Evelyn, or Isaak Walton, or Herbert would have delighted to honour." The work is in general too polemical and political for our pages; but we may hereafter be tempted to carve out a few pastoral pictures of the delightful country ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... us believe, that the world is made in 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, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... eye. We wanted to scoff, and there was something, something perhaps in Clayton's voice and manner, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... find a whole new world of those who despise the honours and prizes of the commercial machine, and who care not for the shows, diversions, pleasures, and gambles provided for commercial slaves. But it will not cause those of that world to falter if the great multitude of their fellow-men scoff at them or think that they ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... misfortunes of many. True, you have lessened our taxes to the public; but, too, you have increased those to ourselves;—prosecutions, protests, and failures are no blessing to a community. And you dare scoff at the man in his grave whom the whole parish blesses! You dare say he lies in our way,—yes, very likely he lies in your way. This is plainly to be seen; but over this grave you shall fall! The spirit which has reigned over you, and at the same ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... But who, fifty years ago, could have imagined that to-day women would be steadily monopolizing learning, teaching, literature, the fine arts, music, the church and the theater? And yet that is the condition at which we have arrived. We may scoff at the way women are doing the work, and reject the product, but that does not alter the fact that step by step women are taking over the field of liberal culture as opposed to the field of ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... stupidity of these open and generous people, they get on better than the 'fellow of some soul' And this, though he is not particularly eager to get on, wounds his pride. Goodness therefore annoys him. He is always ready to scoff at it, and would like to strike at it. In ordinary circumstances these feelings of irritation are not vivid in Iago—no feeling is so—but ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... black shaggy brows tremendously ferocious; and his curses, as they rolled up half smothered from his huge chest, were deeper and more diabolical by far than their own. He even jeered at them; but, however disgusting his frown, there was something truly apalling in the dark gleam of his scoff, which threw them at an immeasurable distance behind him, in the power of displaying on the countenance ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... Jewish Letters, published at Newcastle in 1746. (The Dublin edition of 1753 I have not seen.) Though d'Argens's purpose in Letter 35 may have been to advertise his own novel, what he had to say is interesting. Like many others, he could scoff at the heroic romances and yet borrow and quietly modify the doctrines of Ibrahim and Clelie. He proposed a still more "advanced" vraisemblance and decorum—psychological analysis tinged with cynicism ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... Anstice would have deemed it his duty to scoff at such superstition; but to-night, his nerves unstrung, by the happenings of the last few days, his bodily vigour at a low ebb, his mind a chaos of miserable, hopeless memories and fears, Chloe's words woke a quite unexpected response ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... figurehead never came together, and the old wood-carver left it to his daughter, in lieu of other property. It has not been wholly unproductive, Mrs. Bruce fancies, for the casual passers-by, like those who came to scoff and remained to pray, go into the shop to ask questions about the Sea Queen and buy chops out ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Shantung question in Europe was of much less significance. The eyes of every small nation of Europe were upon Fiume, which was regarded as the touchstone of Allied professions of justice. If the Allied leaders permitted Italy to take Fiume, the small nations would scoff at all further professions of idealism; they would take no further interest either in the Conference or its League. Whereas, on the other hand, the small nationalities of Europe knew and cared little about the justice ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... age.[835] Catullus wrote of death as "nox perpetua dormienda"; Lucretius, of course, gloried in the thought that there is no life beyond. In the following century the learned Pliny could write of death as the relapsing into the same nothingness as before we were born, and could scoff at the absurdities of the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... notice how men are invading our precincts now-a-days. They used to scoff at such a meal as afternoon tea, and now most of them take it as regularly as they stream out of the trains on Saturday afternoons with pink papers under their arms—such elevating literature! Indeed there is quite a fuss ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... approached, and still the traitor allowed him to suffer. And there was the hate and scorn of man, the clamor for vengeance from society, the condemnation of the jury who had prejudged his case, the sneer of the paid advocate, the scoff of the gaping crowd, to whom the plea of noblesse oblige and stainless honor and perfect truth seemed only maudlin ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... who witnessed the scene on Tuesday evening must feel about it very much as we do, and those who came to scoff, if they did not exactly remain to pray, at least left the Music Hall with feelings of cordial liking, and, perhaps to their own surprise, of respect for ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... some cause to complain; but alas, slander, calumny, and disgrace, are no other way injurious than as they are interpreted; nor otherwise evil, than as they are thought to be so: what harm is it then if all persons deride and scoff you, if you bear but up in your own thoughts, and be yourself thoroughly conceited of your deserts? And prithee, why should it be thought any scandal to be a fool, since the being so is one part of our nature and essence; and as so, our not ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... of us are asking, "What is the way out?" As for myself, I confess to being only a student. I have no word of sneer or scoff for any mail's honest thinking, who is sincerely trying to uplift his brothers and sisters; and yet I must say that, as yet, I have not been able to become a disciple of any of the new systems that have been presented. ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... tried spreading plastic wax where the beasts would walk on it, in pathways or before dens. How they did scoff! The simplest ground squirrel knew too much to venture on my waxen snare; around 'it, or if hemmed in, over it, with a mighty bound they went; but never a track ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... Goldsmith's "travelling over one's mind," with power to travel no farther. Browning, too, had been "found out by Society"; was the guest at noble houses, and I suppose became somewhat lofty in his views. No one could scoff so loudly and violently as could Forster, at what is called snobbishness, "toadying the great"; though it was a little weakness of his own, and is indeed of everybody. However, on some recent visit, ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... who scoff at such emotions, without endeavouring to understand them, would do well to remember that whatever truth there is in the dogma of the immorality of the soul, is dependant upon this proposition, that time, ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 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 to ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... father!" Iskender blurted out the truth at last. "I know not how my patron would regard it. On him I depend entirely for the present. I have heard him scoff at all who change the faith that they were born in. Wait a little, I beseech thee, until ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... in his society, and I can say, as many others have said, that William, since the day of his conversion, was never heard to utter an unkind word about any one, or do anything that could give the enemies of the Lord Jesus an opportunity to scoff at his profession of loving the Lord with all his heart. He was never a very strong man physically while we knew him, and so was unable to go on the long tripping or hunting expeditions with him more vigorous comrades. He suffered much from inward ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... 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
... thy blessed teachings, but when man's promises prove false, and the head bows before the endless strife, and woes overwhelm us like a flood, there is relief, there is light, there is life in Thee. The wicked may jeer, the learned may scoff, the powerful may despise, the favored may turn away, but there comes the time when learning, gifts, wealth, power, beauty and all the world can give turn to ashes, and they have no boon compared to Thine. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." The pampered monarch, the dying ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... rather, we should say, in the capital, for of that we speak,) are unaffectedly so, for they have no worldly benefit to hope for from their piety; the great majority have no religion at all, and do not scoff at the few, for scoffing is the minority's weapon, and is passed always to the weaker side, whatever that may be. Thus H. B. caricatures the Ministers: if by any accident that body of men should be dismissed from their ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mind 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, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... store; and, if so——, but 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 it, I fear also, for my character ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... the power of wealth, that it commands the ear of greatness and the eye of beauty, gives spirit to the dull, and authority to the timorous, and leaves him from whom it departs, without virtue and without understanding, the sport of caprice, the scoff of insolence, the slave of meanness, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... flung the linen napkin on the floor, and, dropping the hand which had shaded his face, turned to La Mothe with what seemed a challenge in his eyes, almost a defiance: it was as if he said, Scoff if you dare! And yet in the little heap of interwoven, fine steel rings there was nothing to move either laughter or contempt, and if the quaint velvet mask which lay beside the coat of mail was effeminate in the tinsel of its ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... was equivalent to reducing the former wages of their labour, or of the produce of their land—the effects of which were speedily felt and comprehended by them, although some of the officials, who imposed it, might scoff at the causes they assigned, and reiterate their crude and erroneous notions of political economy, to prove that it could not affect them, but must be paid by the great merchants, or by the consumers of their produce in Europe. They quite forgot that these could be supplied with the ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... with some asperity, "Sir Knight, we have in this land of Scotland an ancient saying, 'Scorn not the bush that bields you'—you are a guest of my father's house to shelter you from danger, if I am rightly informed by the domestics. Scoff not its homeliness, nor that of its inmates—ye might long have abidden at the court of England, ere we had sought your favour, or cumbered you with our society. Since your fate has sent you hither amongst us, be contented with such fare and such converse as we can afford you, and scorn ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... felt at the recollection. "I admit that it was a very striking scene. It was very good," I added, religiously, referring to the corn. Mr. Rollin ought to know, I thought, that I had come to Wallencamp on a mission, and that if he wished to scoff at the ways of its defenceless inhabitants, he shouldn't look to find a confidante ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... at ten o'clock—encamped to our joy—so here we are with "piled arms," "saddles off," and "horses picketed." As we came into camp we heard once again the Mausers of the snipers afar off. We have rigged up a sun shelter and have just dined, our "scoff" (Kaffir for "grub") being bread and ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... multitudinous changes; in fact, without change, we could have no cognisance of our surroundings, we should have no consciousness of living. We have become so accustomed to certain sensations that we are apt to take them, as facts, and scoff at the suggestion that they are non-realities. I propose, however, to show that what we perceive are not Realities, and true conception of our surroundings depends upon the knowledge which we can bring to ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... hand upon her arm "Dear Mabel, this no more shall be; Who scoffs at you must scoff ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... other engaged in active duties. All was done with religious gravity and decorum. If we went out, the make-believe continued even in the street; the two hermits would say the Rosary, using their fingers to count on, so as not to display their devotion before those who might scoff. One day, however, the hermit Therese forgot herself—before eating a cake, given her for lunch, she made a large Sign of the Cross, and some worldly folk did not repress ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... him! no, ma'am, be not afraid;—my father! how shall I meet him? how go back to Lyons? the scoff of the whole city! Cruel, cruel, Claude [in great agitation]. Sir, ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... shalt thou change them, said the prophet, And the raiment that was flesh is turned to dust; Dust and flesh and dust again the likeness of it, And the fine gold woven and worn of youth is rust. Hours that wax and wane salute the shade and scoff it, That it knows not aught it doth nor aught it must: Day by day the speeding soul makes haste to doff it, Night by night the pride of life resigns ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... shall look backward with scorn and derision And scoff the old book though it uselessly lies In the dust of the past, while this newer revision Lisps on of a hope and a home in the skies? Shall the voice of the Master be stifled and riven? Shall we hear but a tithe of the words He has said, When so long He has, listening, ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... Chichester was besieged by Waller and taken after ten days. His soldiers, we read, "pulled down the idolatrous images from the Market Cross; they brake down the organ in the Cathedral and dashed the pipes with their pole-axes, crying in scoff, "Harke! how the organs goe"; and after they ran up and down with their swords drawn, defacing the monuments of the dead and hacking the seats and stalls." Indeed, such was their malice that it is wonderful to see ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... at the cadets): Here are the rebels! Ay, Sirs, on all sides I hear that in your ranks you scoff at me; That the Cadets, these loutish, mountain-bred, Poor country squires, and barons of Perigord, Scarce find for me—their Colonel—a disdain Sufficient! call me plotter, wily courtier! It does not please their mightiness to see A point-lace collar on my steel cuirass,— And they enrage, because ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... Her neighbours scoff, and her menace, But saddened friends grieve at her sore disgrace, Love, through their heart, in fervour rills, Each one respects this plaintivest of girls; And many a pitying soul a prayer said, That some great miracle ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... keep our cattle.... Our comic prints do an 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
... the Pater Noster and Ave Maria. Carbajal, to rid himself of the ghostly father's importunity, replied by coolly repeating the words, "Pater Noster," "Ave Maria"! He then remained obstinately silent. He died, as he had lived, with a jest, or rather a scoff, upon his lips.5 ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... 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 phantoms far o'er ocean's wave, Thence ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... man!" she exclaimed; "ay, possibly! but would the scorn of any other man so have crushed self-esteem? The injuries of the wicked do not sour us against the good; but the scoff of the good leaves us malignant against virtue itself. Any other man! Tut! Genius is bound to be indulgent. It should know human errors so well—has, with its large luminous forces, such errors itself when it deigns to be human, that, where others may scorn, genius ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who snarl out suchlike dirges, which any laundryman with a little sense would scoff at, think themselves great theologians ... Not that I want the kind of theology which is customary in the schools nowadays consigned to oblivion; I wish it to be rendered more trustworthy and more correct by the accession of the old, true learning. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... could please. Those things would scarce be proper now. But they are gone, I know not how, And woman's written on your brow. Time draws his finger o'er the scene; But I cannot forget between The Thing to me you once have been Each sportive sally, wild escape,— The scoff, the banter, and the jape,— And antics ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... could be forged out of slander and falsehood was used against him by "Liberals", who employed their Christianity as an electioneering dodge to injure a man whose sturdy Radicalism they feared. Over and over again Mr. Bradlaugh was told that he was an "impossible candidate", and gibe and sneer and scoff were flung at the man who had neither ancestors nor wealth to recommend him, who fought his battle with his brain and his tongue, and whose election expenses were paid by hundreds of contributions from poor men and women in every part of the ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... gazed at her much puzzled. He could not divine what her look signified—whether she spoke in earnest or in jest. There were purpose and feeling, banter and scoff, playing, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... had the patience to accompany me through these pages devoted to Miss Dickinson will surely own, whether in scoff or praise, the essentially American nature of her muse. Her defects are easily paralleled in the annals of English literature; but only in the liberal atmosphere of the New World, comparatively unshadowed by trammels of authority and standards of taste, could they have co-existed with so ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... shrill fanatic upon the platform be a contemptuous jest to my Lady Cavaliere, this fairer lady remembers John clad in goat-skins and crying in the wilderness. I wish, she says, that mankind might sit at a sumptuous table, but I shall not scoff at the wooden spoon that feeds its hunger. She hangs one picture upon her wall: it is Christ sitting at meat with publicans and sinners. And so season after season, year after year, she carries her sympathy, her hope, her steady faith to all the pioneers. She is not a poet, but the world is ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... if so well off He deems himself in worldly goods, That at unseen beatitudes He blindly flings an aimless scoff. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... know and love their business. No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect we hear too much of it in literature. The weather is regarded as the very nadir and scoff of conversational topics. And yet the weather, the dramatic element in scenery, is far more tractable in language, and far more human both in import and suggestion than the stable features of the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... and poor, Greeks and barbarians, kings and slaves. And he who boasts of his descent from Amphitryon in the twenty-fifth generation, may, if he pleases, add as many more, and double that again, and our philosopher only laughs at his inability to do a larger sum. Such is the man at whom the vulgar scoff; he seems to them as if he could not mind his feet. 'That is very true, Socrates.' But when he tries to draw the quick-witted lawyer out of his pleas and rejoinders to the contemplation of absolute ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... take a savage delight in gazing on this sad pilgrimage. At the foot of the glacier, which stood out sheer and steep before me, I felt so depressed, and my nerves were so overwrought, that I said I wished to turn back. I was thereupon met by the coarse sarcasm of my guide, who seemed to scoff at my weakness. My consequent anger braced up my nerves, and I prepared myself at once to climb the steep walls of ice as quickly as possible, so that this time it was he who found difficulty in keeping up with me. We accomplished the ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... hate into contempt, and perhaps give a touch of pity. 'Behold the man!' as he meant it, was as if he had said, 'Is this poor, bruised, spiritless sufferer worth hate or fear? Does He look like a King or a dangerous enemy?' Pilate for once drops the scoff of calling Him their King, and seeks to conciliate and move to pity. The profound meanings which later ages have delighted to find in his words, however warrantable, are no part of their design as spoken, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... sat with the Gods at their golden tables, I had tasted of all earth's bliss, "both living and loving!" But now Paradise barred its doors against me; I was driven from her presence, where rosy blushes and delicious sighs and all soft wishes dwelt, the outcast of nature and the scoff of love! I thought of the time when I was a little happy careless child, of my father's house, of my early lessons, of my brother's picture of me when a boy, of all that had since happened to me, and of the waste of years to come—I stopped, faultered, and was going to turn back once more to make ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... when Chilvers was extolled, stung him so keenly that he rushed into any distraction to elude the thought. When he was suffering shame under the gaze of Buckland Warricombe he remembered Chilvers, and shrank as before a merited scoff. But the sensation had not been abiding enough to affect his conduct. He had said to himself that he should never come in contact with the fellow, and that, after all, community of religious profession meant no more, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... we fear not scoff or smile At meek attire of blue and grey, For the proud wrath that thrills our isle Gives faith and force to ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... fought several tough fights with certain lads who had dared to scoff at his red hair. Sam Jefferson, who lived down on the quay, still bore the marks of one such battle in the absence of two front teeth. But he did not take affront from womenkind. He looked over their heads, and went his way in ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... those without imagination—scoff at the idea that love can be born in a moment, but such is often the case, for all their ill-advised jibes. A man may be brought into contact with the loveliest and most brilliant of women, yet remain ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... we were painted"?—Faith, no word of black was said; The lightest touch was human blood, and that, ye know, runs red. It's sticking to your fist today for all your sneer and scoff, And by the Judge's well-weighed word you cannot ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... of satisfaction to the board of 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 went into ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... foolish and vain thing to scoff at business and those who do it in the market places, and to shout out the old war cries of our fathers, in the face of a generation which sings the song of capital, or groans in heavy labour beneath the banners of their copyrighted trade marks; and ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... all! caps off! Old Blue-light's going to pray. Strangle the fool that dares to scoff! Attention! 'tis his way! Appealing from his native sod In forma pauperis to God; "Lay bare Thine arm—stretch forth Thy rod! Amen!" That's ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... illiterate as his accent and his general air of uncouthness seemed to imply. In his speech, the broad vowels of the Lancashire dialect were grafted on to the clipped staccato of a Cockney. He would scoff at anyone who told him that knives and forks had precise uses, or that table-napkins were not meant to be tucked under the chin. In England, especially in the provinces, some men of affairs cultivate these minor defects, deeming ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... something to scoff, I'm starvin'," groaned Nippers, "but we'll hafta lay low till the bloody tub pulls out or we'll get caught ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Free Gold Mining Company, his objection was likely to be based on substantial grounds. But then, as Brooks had observed, or, rather, inferred, Bill was not exactly an expert on finance, and this new deal savored of pure finance—a term which she had heard Bill scoff at more than once. At any rate, she hoped nothing ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of the cup They felt themselves tangled and caught, as when the net cometh up Before the folk of the firth, and the main sea lieth far off; And the laughter of lips they hearkened, and that hall-abider's scoff, As his face and his mocking eyes anigh to their faces drew, And their godhead was caught in the net, and no shift of creation they knew To escape from their man-like bodies; so great that day was ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... and high, So noble was his manly front, So calm his steadfast eye,— The rabble rout forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through all the people crept, And some that came to scoff at him Now turned aside ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... wooden spoons must needs apply the old ethics, even against the new teachers themselves. Every truth has to fight for recognition, to prove itself not a lie. The brilliant and impatient young men who scoff at conventions because the people who hold them are unreal—not persons, feeling and passing moral truths through their own soul, but parrots—forget that just because the people are unreal, their maxims are real; that they do not ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... railer may say of the mighty science, in which, by Heaven's blessing, I have advanced so far that I would not call the wisest of living artists my better or my teacher—I say, howsoever yonder reprobate may scoff at things too holy to be apprehended by men merely of carnal and evil thoughts, yet believe that the city beheld by St. John, in that bright vision of the Christian Apocalypse, that new Jerusalem, of which ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... proved to the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour of sorrow? Scoffing will not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they must give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, and venerate, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... a baffled, angry, selfish man, at whose mercy she would be, with only one word to speak in self-defense and justification; and it was much to be feared that he would, considering the circumstances, reject and scoff at even that. The one word was—she loved him! and, if there be any redeeming virtue in it, let her, in Heaven's name, have the benefit thereof. She can rely on ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... old, Pierrot, But I do not laugh As in harlequinade You totter down the path. Now you are old, Pierrot, And drool to your guitar, I do not cast you off. Though your love songs are as feeble as a winter fly's I do not scoff. Exultant I cast back on you What you gave me, And bind you with the unasked love That has ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... genius, we must try to recognize, both what is still imperfect, and what is grandly and unwontedly successful. There is no great work of art, not excepting even the Iliad or the Parthenon, which is not open, especially in point of ornament, to the scoff of the scoffer, or to the injustice of those who do not mind being unjust. But all art belongs to man; and man, even when he is greatest, is ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... in her own Epilogue when she speaks of 'fat Cardinals, Pope Joans, and Fryers'; and Lord Falkland's scoff in his Prologue to Otway's The Soldier's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... 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 learn the fate ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... comfort her, spoke of her children, in whom her own youth lived again, even attempted to scoff at her a little, declaring that she was fishing for compliments ... but she quite seriously begged him to leave off, and for the first time he realised that for such a sorrow, the despondency of old age, there is no comfort or cure; one has to wait till it passes off of itself. He proposed ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... end of the sixth month there happened to me what, looking back, I consider to be the greatest piece of good fortune of my life. I received a literary introduction. Some authorities scoff at literary introductions. They say that editors read everything, whether they know the author or not. So they do; and, if the work is not good, a letter to the editor from a man who once met his cousin at a garden-party ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... the vision sees more than you or I; He who lives the golden dream lives fourfold thereby; Time may scoff and worlds may laugh, hosts assail his thought, But the visionary came ere the builders wrought; Ere the tower bestrode the dome, ere the dome the arch, He, the dreamer of the dream, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... 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 ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... saw de shirt, He jus' was mad enough To tink he got to hold review Widout his best Dutch ruff. Ma'am said she 'lowed it was de calf Dat had done chawed it off; But when de General heard dat ar, He answered with a scoff; He said de marks warn't don' of teef, But plainly dose ob shears; An' den he showed her to de do' And cuffed me on ye years. And when my ma'am arribed at home She stretched me 'cross her lap, Den took de lace away from ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... greased And known hereafter by the marke of thumbe; At which, my little booke, be ye well pleased, For booke, like mouthe, unopened is dumbe. And there be some, perchance, will bidde you off To Conventre, or Yorke, or Jericho; But be not you, my booke, abashed by scoff, For I will teach you where you boun to go,— Which is in Gloucestershire, there unto Bisley, Where the church spire is spied long afarre; It is not either uncouth, square, or grisly, But soareth high, as if to catch a starre; Where shall the brother of the Christian Yeare, Keble, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... next can close to the fire and blinked at it hard. "I'm damned if he hasn't sent three tins of plum pudding. Never mind, we'll manage to scoff some of it between us. You're in luck's way this trip, Jack, and ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... communication with Paris, scarcely connected by wretched roads with the sub-prefecture, or the chief city of their own province, these towns regard the new civilization as a spectacle to be gazed at; it amazes them, but they never applaud it; and, whether they fear or scoff at it, they continue faithful to the old manners and customs which have come down to them. Whoso would travel as a moral archaeologist, observing men instead of stones, would find images of the time of Louis ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... remember that the ass can kick, And that when kicking, asses never bray, So gird your armor on and lop each head Who hath at your dilemma dared to scoff. ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... said Lake, with a sly scoff, though he seemed to me a good deal scared. 'We hear no complaints, however, and fancy he must be tolerably ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... half smothered from his huge chest, were deeper and more diabolical by far than their own. He even jeered at them; but, however disgusting his frown, there was something truly apalling in the dark gleam of his scoff, which threw them at an immeasurable distance behind him, in the power of displaying on the countenance the worst ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... 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
... were slain. You boast of your strength and power. See, you follow the motion of my hand, as a dog would. See, you kneel before me, and prostrate yourself in the dust at my feet, at my bidding. Lie there, and think well whether you are able to scoff any more. You kneeled to the king of your own will; you kneel to me at mine, and though you had the strength of a hundred men, you must kneel there till I ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... spoke of her children, in whom her own youth lived again, even attempted to scoff at her a little, declaring that she was fishing for compliments ... but she quite seriously begged him to leave off, and for the first time he realised that for such a sorrow, the despondency of old age, there is no comfort or cure; one has to wait till ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... Christian. As he was a Local Preacher and a Class Leader, I was much in his society, and I can say, as many others have said, that William, since the day of his conversion, was never heard to utter an unkind word about any one, or do anything that could give the enemies of the Lord Jesus an opportunity to scoff at his profession of loving the Lord with all his heart. He was never a very strong man physically while we knew him, and so was unable to go on the long tripping or hunting expeditions with him more vigorous comrades. He suffered much from inward pain, but ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... generous nature as the hours and the days passed and the end approached, and still the traitor allowed him to suffer. And there was the hate and scorn of man, the clamor for vengeance from society, the condemnation of the jury who had prejudged his case, the sneer of the paid advocate, the scoff of the gaping crowd, to whom the plea of noblesse oblige and stainless honor and perfect truth seemed only maudlin sentimentality ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... drudgery of the fields; in it he must live his life, and fulfil his mission. The more he wrote the more he accustomed himself with the idea of being an author. He knew that the critic-folk, deep read in books, might scoff at the very suggestion of a ploughman turning poet, but he recognised also that they might be wrong. It was not by dint of Greek that Parnassus was to be climbed. 'Ae spark o' Nature's fire' was the one thing needful for poetry that was ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... destruction, as is now plainly evident in the misfortunes of many. True, you have lessened our taxes to the public; but, too, you have increased those to ourselves;—prosecutions, protests, and failures are no blessing to a community. And you dare scoff at the man in his grave whom the whole parish blesses! You dare say he lies in our way,—yes, very likely he lies in your way. This is plainly to be seen; but over this grave you shall fall! The spirit which has reigned over you, and at the same time until now over us, was not ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... lover of Hounds; I have followed many a pack of dogs many a mile, and heard many merry Huntsmen make sport and scoff ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... his amazing power of influencing other men. The members of the Scriblerus Club laughed at the Dean's project, but so powerful was his eloquence, that 'those who came to scoff remained to subscribe.' Moreover, with Sir Robert Walpole as Prime Minister, he actually obtained a grant from the State of L20,000 in order to carry out the project, the king gave a charter, and to crown all, Sir Robert put his own name down for L200 ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Virtue's holy brow, A wreath of scorn I sought to twine— And bade her minions mocking bow, With sweeter vows at pleasure's shrine— Or if I mirrored to the thought, With glorious truth the charms of earth, While yet the trusting fool I taught, To scoff at Him who gave it birth— Or if I filled the soul with light, And bore its buoyant wing in air— To plunge it down in deeper night, And mock its maniac wanderings there— I did but wield the wand of power, That God intrusted to my clasp, And not, the tyrant of an hour— Will I resign ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... not mean to worship, mother mine. A great curiosity drew me—I desired to see with my own eyes, and hear with mine own ears, this adoration of the Christ, at which my teachers scoff. But I was caught up in a mighty wave of organ-music that surged from this low earth heavenwards to break against the footstool of God in the crystal firmament. And suddenly I knew what my soul was pining for. I knew the meaning of that restless ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... reached the sticking point only a half hour before, was the result of considerable deliberation. He had argued with himself and had made up his mind to find out for himself just what these people did. He was finding out, certainly. His motives were good and he had come with no desire to scoff, but, for the life of him, he could not help feeling like a criminal. Incidentally, it provoked ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... lake, which other people thought so lovely, was, in that mind which affected to scoff at the unseen, a distinct creation of ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... had their brains dashed out, they would have some cause to complain; but alas, slander, calumny, and disgrace, are no other way injurious than as they are interpreted; nor otherwise evil, than as they are thought to be so: what harm is it then if all persons deride and scoff you, if you bear but up in your own thoughts, and be yourself thoroughly conceited of your deserts? And prithee, why should it be thought any scandal to be a fool, since the being so is one part of our nature and essence; and as so, our not being wise can no more reasonably be imputed ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... quietly, "that for you marriage is the only end. The love of a good woman would be your salvation. Yes, you may scoff. But—whether you admit it or not—it is the truth. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... (looking at the cadets): Here are the rebels! Ay, Sirs, on all sides I hear that in your ranks you scoff at me; That the Cadets, these loutish, mountain-bred, Poor country squires, and barons of Perigord, Scarce find for me—their Colonel—a disdain Sufficient! call me plotter, wily courtier! It does not please their mightiness to see A point-lace collar on my steel cuirass,— And they enrage, ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... qualities. You were every day to have added fuel to the flame. You were to have presented Matilda to my arms, more beautiful, more tender, more kind, than she had ever appeared. From this moment then, let the name of trust be a by-word for the profligate to scoff at! Let the epithet of friend be a mildew to the chaste and uncorrupted ear! Let mutual confidence be banished from the earth, and men, more savage than the brute, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... my secret as yet,"—with a faint wan smile. "Let me keep it a little longer. Not even Mrs. Massereene knows of it. Indeed, it is too soon to proclaim my design. People might scoff it; though for all that I shall work it out. And something tells me ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... to the ford to encounter Cuchulain. The mighty warriors of the camp and station considered it not a goodly enough sight to view the combat of Larine; only the women and boys and girls, [4]thrice fifty of them,[4] went to scoff and to jeer at ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... devilishly greedy for profits, yet you scoff at us because we go chasing after business. You fetch heaps of money across the sea, and then turn up your sublimely snuffing noses ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... "Don't be angry, Avery! I'm not scoffing. I don't know enough about God to scoff at Him. Tell me! Do you ever get an answer, or are you content to go jogging on like the rest of ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... war I'll scoff, I think I'd best begone!" And when the foe's last gun went off The ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... pleasant, I say, to trace this "certain condescension" in the good old times. Jacob Rathgeb (1592) says the English are magnificently dressed, and extremely proud and overbearing; the merchants, who seldom go unto other countries, scoff at foreigners, who are liable to be ill-used by street boys and apprentices, who collect in immense crowds and stop the way. Of course Cassandra Stubbes, whose mind was set upon a better country, has little good ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of sin? How is this, O Lord, how can it be that such great grace has come to the lot of one who has so ill deserved such things at Thy hands!' He who can read that, and a hundred passages as good as that, and who shall straightway set himself to sneer and scoff and disparage and find fault, he is well on the way to the sin against the Holy Ghost. At any rate, I would be if I did not revere and love and imitate such a saint of God. Given God and His Son and His Holy Spirit: given ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... tell, my fair lord. The Romans of old were a very wise people, yet, certes, they placed their faith in such matters. So, too, did the Greeks, and divers other ancient peoples who were famed for their learning. Yet of the moderns there are many who scoff at all omens." ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... himself. For what will you do if a man speaks about gladiators, about horses, about athletes, or what is worse about men? Such a person is bad, such a person is good; this was well done, this was done badly. Further, if he scoff, or ridicule, or show an ill-natured disposition? Is any man among us prepared like a lute-player when he takes a lute, so that as soon as he has touched the strings, he discovers which are discordant, ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... has been in my room, and nailed Matthew vii. 1, Mark x. 7, and Ezek. xviii. 20, on my wall. He found my diary, and has read it, not to profit by, alas! but to scoff." ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... behind those blackened walls there lurked evil forms. Twilight was coming on as we turned back to our car, and a cold mist was slowly rising from the river. I am not superstitious, and in broad daylight I will scoff at ghosts with anyone, but I should not care to spend a night alone in Termonde. One could almost hear the Devil laughing at the handiwork ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... a perito is a perrito (little dog)!" exclaimed Father Damaso, with a scoff. "One would have to be more of a brute than the natives, who erect their own houses, if he did not know how to build four walls and put a covering over them. That's all that a ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... Nekrovitch and others often joined in the discussion, and very animated we all grew in the course of debate. Nekrovitch smiled sympathetically at my whole-hearted and ingenuous enthusiasm. He never made any attempt to scoff at it or to discourage me, though he vainly attempted to persuade me that Anarchism was too distant and unpractical an ideal, and that my energies and enthusiasm might be more advantageously expended in ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... absolutely revel in wickedness of the vilest description, who take positive delight in inflicting the most horrible indignities upon those who unfortunately happen to fall into their power, who gloat over the unavailing tears and entreaties of their victims, and who scoff at the mere mention of the word 'mercy'. Picture to yourself the very worst that you have ever heard or read of piratical atrocities, and you will be able to arrive at a very accurate conception of the horrors ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... scurrilously indicated. In writing of London and the actors in his "dark speeches," Greene refers to London as Rome and to the Shoreditch Theatre as the "theatre in Rome." In his Penelope's Web he writes: "They which smiled at the theatre in Rome might as soon scoff at the rudeness of the scene as give a plaudite at the perfection of the acting." While it is Burbage's Theatre that is here referred to, it is evident that his quarrel was not now with the actors—whom both he and Nashe praise in their quality—but ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... said her father. "I hope you may always hold to both. I think that those girls who expect to be regarded as advanced, because they scoff at the Bible and at faith, are quite horrid. I also hope that you will not ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... admit that it was a very striking scene. It was very good," I added, religiously, referring to the corn. Mr. Rollin ought to know, I thought, that I had come to Wallencamp on a mission, and that if he wished to scoff at the ways of its defenceless inhabitants, he shouldn't look to find a confidante ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... which I, who must prate, Answered, "Yes, Sir, but changeable rather, of late." He took it, I fear, for he lookt somewhat gruff, And handled his new pair of whiskers so rough, That before all the courtiers I feared they'd come off, And then, Lord, how Geramb[2] would triumphantly scoff! ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... 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 so ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... has become the fashion amongst certain men to scoff at this terrible vice of secret indulgence, and to claim that its evil effects are overrated, are portrayed too vividly. Ask some poor unfortunate whose confidence you may succeed in gaining, and listen ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... live and die without religion. Suppose he had proved to the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour of sorrow? Scoffing will not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they must give us some positive system of truth which we can ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... 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 of the world—a place of wonder and astonishment!—and, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... not the forsaking of these beliefs and superstitious practices which has brought about the decay of the Empire. If you are asking for the temples of your gods to be opened, it is because they are easy to your passions. At heart, you scoff at them and the Empire; all you want is freedom and impunity for your vices. There we have the real cause of the decadence! Little matter the idle grimaces before altars and statues. Become chaste, sober, brave, and poor, as your ancestors were. Have children, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... himself would have acted as some corrosive acid, and stained with patches of absurdity the whole fabric of his dreams. He looked at Father Moran, and saw the priest's eyes lit with sympathy. He knew that he had a listener who would not scoff, who might, perhaps, even understand. He began to speak, slowly and haltingly at first, then more rapidly. At last he poured out with breathless, incoherent speed the strange story of the Armageddon vision, the hopes that were in him, the fierce enthusiasm, the passionate love for Ireland ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... it, of course they will. You surely cannot suppose I should, in cold blood, sit down to write a story in which nobody was to fall in love or be in love! Sir, scoff as you may, love is the one vital principle in all romance. Not only does your cheek flush and your eye sparkle, till "heart, brain, and soul are all on fire," over the burning words of some Brontean Pythoness, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... prayer went up, and there were none to scoff, when the aged man bent his knee, and lifted his heart to God in prayer, beseeching him, for Jesus Christ's sake, to have mercy upon their souls. Many prayed in that hour of trial that never prayed before. It was an hour that ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... a victim to love; and could she only save her daughter from a similar error she might yet by her means retrieve her fallen fortune. To implant principles of religion and virtue in her mind was not within the compass of her own; but she could scoff at every pure and generous affection; she could ridicule every disinterested attachment; and she could expatiate on the never-fading joys that attend on wealth and titles, jewels and equipages; and all this she did in the belief that she was acting the part of a most wise and tender parent! ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... you 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 doff Your ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... eyes, though his face was as impassive as usual. And the worst of it was that it suggested humor, not resentment. Even in the tumult of wounded pride that took her heart by storm, she realized that her fiery vehemence had gone perilously near to a literal translation of the saintly scoff at old Barbariccia. And, now if ever, she must be dignified. Anger yielded to disdain. In an instant she grew ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... at length," continued Ratcliffe, "the most ingenious self-tormentor of whom I have ever heard; the scoff of the rabble, and the sneer of the yet more brutal vulgar of his own rank, was to him agony and breaking on the wheel. He regarded the laugh of the common people whom he passed on the street, and the suppressed titter, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... has the INFLUENZA—a right-down influenza, that sends people to their beds. Those who have triumphed at their exemption in the evening, wake up perhaps in the morning full of aches in every limb, and scoff no longer. . . . Dinner parties are sometimes quite broken up by the excuses that come pouring in at the last moment. Lady John Russell had seven last week at a small dinner of twelve; 1,200 policemen at one time were ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... and showed it to them, but they minded it no more than if he had been only a common man. He drew himself to his height and looked gravely at them and they jovially said: " Hello, Whiskers." American college students are notorious in their country for their inclination to scoff at robed and crowned authority, and, far from being awed by the dignity of the hotel-keeper, they were delighted with it. It was something with which to sport. With immeasurable impudence, they copied his attitude, and, standing before him, made comic speeches, always alluding ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... cannot brook these injuries. Q. Isab. Ay me, poor soul, when these begin to jar! [Aside. K. Edw. Return it to their throats; I'll be thy warrant. Gav. Base, leaden earls, that glory in your birth, Go sit at home, and eat your tenants' beef; And come not here to scoff at Gaveston, Whose mounting thoughts did never creep so low As to bestow a look on such as you. Lan. Yet I disdain not to do this for you. [Draws his sword, and offers to stab Gaveston. K. Edw. Treason! treason! where's the traitor? Pem. Here, here! K. Edw. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... appreciate their work. Sometimes the charm of what they played was too esoteric for my understanding. The sounds were unmeaning to me; not infrequently they were absolutely discordant. But I had confidence enough in the superiority of their intellects over mine not to condemn, still less to scoff. At these times I held my tongue. Genius is ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... 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. He himself, in 1562, ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... but altogether a hopeless one. You have no idea of the condition of the settlers here. You cannot get a hearing. They scoff at such things utterly", ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... harpies fateful. Kitchen never yet Knew a failure greater. Few its end regret. Surely not the Waiter. He his finger had In the pie—or gravy. Did he? Well, 'tis sad. He must cry "Peccavi!" But whoever mixed, Or whoever boiled it, Our opinion's fixed, He, or they, quite spoiled it. 'Tis the general scoff, Butt of chaff and rudeness. Irish Stew is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... I? The victim of infidelity and you, the bearer of a cursed existence, the scoff and scorn of the world, the monument of a broken vow and a guilty life, a being scourged by the scorpion lash of conscience, blasted by periodical insanity, pelted by the winter's storm, scorched by the summer's heat, withered ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Mercury, nor Jupiter we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or scoff. Off, would-be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... guilty soul passed away without opportunity for repentance; prayers and curses issuing from his lips in horrible confusion up to the last moment of his existence. His death was witnessed by several of his companions in crime; and, while some tried to laugh and scoff away the unwelcome impression which the scene produced upon their minds, there were others who went into the open air and wandered away by themselves to ponder upon this miserable ending ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... Sylvester, and yet is neither the one nor the other, may be too much for your saner moments of credulity. But Mr. STRAUS tells his queer story so plausibly and with so light a touch that even though you may affect to scoff at his dashing improbabilities you cannot escape their attraction. Indeed Mr. STRAUS'S adventure into fields hitherto strange to him has been so successful that I am inclined to ask him to continue ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... because in poem, chronicle, code, legend, 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, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... couple of well-aimed shots, one with a rock as big as a cricket ball, and one with a tomahawk, laid them out, and they became the prize of the successful marksmen. The nigger "boy" has to be paid one pound a week and his "scoff," and, taking him all in all, in spite of his faults, which are many, I verily think he ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... "both living and loving!" But now Paradise barred its doors against me; I was driven from her presence, where rosy blushes and delicious sighs and all soft wishes dwelt, the outcast of nature and the scoff of love! I thought of the time when I was a little happy careless child, of my father's house, of my early lessons, of my brother's picture of me when a boy, of all that had since happened to me, and of the waste of years to come—I stopped, faultered, and was going ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... Owen will tell you, with eyes full of scorn, Threadbare is my coat, and my hosen are torn: Scoff on, my rich Owen, for faint is thy glee When the maid of Llanwellyn smiles ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... seems to me that they'll insult Pasha—scoff at him. 'Ah, you peasant!' they'll say. 'You son of a peasant! What's this mess you've cooked up?' And Pasha, proud as he is, he'll answer them so——! Or Andrey will laugh at them—and all the comrades there are hot-headed and honest. So I can't help thinking that something will ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... now, saucy Jade; Sure the Wench is tipsy! How can you see me made [To him. The Scoff of such a Gipsy? ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... made in 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 ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 "William Russell"(1)was a ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... royal tapestries. The servants of the suitors came also and cut wood for the fires. Eumaios arrived early, driving three fat hogs. He saluted Odysseus and asked him if he were well treated by the suitors, or if they continued to scoff at him. Odysseus answered him: "May the gods punish the ruthless men who perpetrate such wrongs in a stranger's home." While they were talking together the goatherd joined him, and repeated the sneers and abuse of the preceding ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... him would be more than she could bear. There was no deceit in him, no falsehood—as yet; but perhaps when he grew up he would cheat her too. He would pretend to love her and betray her trust; he would kiss her, and then go away and scoff at her; he would smile, and smile, and be a villain. Such words were not in Lucy's mind, and it was altogether out of nature that she should even receive the thought: which made it all the more terrible when it was poured into her soul. And it cannot be told what discoveries ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... denunciation await that man who stands unawed before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard of individual excellence, perpetuates ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... of the sacrifice to Fortune. This scene is unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and a secret ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... end of Kenna, so far as Jim was concerned. And, somehow, that last sentence, "I've give me word as a mahn," kept ringing in Jim's ears; it helped to offset the brutalizing effect of many other episodes—that Fighting Bill should scoff at bonds and force, but be bound and helpless by the little sound that ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Simon, "he will bid the Duke of Rothsay take charge of it; and the wild young prince will regard the outrage as something for his gay companions to scoff at, and his minstrels to turn ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 he ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... Hast thou not said, 'Be virtuous, be good, be just, for the sake of mankind: but there is no life after this life'? Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous and misshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou done to me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this world, the hopes of another! Is there no other life? Well, then, I want thy gold, that at least I may hasten to make ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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
... roifle Allus gittin' chaarged; Muster Jarvey's roifle 'il hev to git enlaarged; Muster Jarvey's roifle's Loaded oft—don't scoff; Muster Jarvey's roifle Nivver ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... fleer[obs3]; show up. [i.p.] play upon, play tricks upon; fool to the top of one's bent; laugh at, grin at, smile at; poke fun at. satirize, parody, caricature, burlesque, travesty. turn into ridicule; make merry with; make fun of, make game of, make a fool of, make an April fool of[obs3]; rally; scoff &c. (disrespect) 929. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the time of his canonization (1189), but from that time forward ambition, avarice, and luxury made such inroads upon the solitude of Grammont that its monks became the byword and scoff of the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... horribly world-weary, you care for nothing. You have drained philosophy to the dregs, and scoff at everything." ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... sarcastic persons who scoff at all things it may be a great amusement to detect the secret of a woman, to know that her chastity is a lie, that her calm face hides some anxious thought, that under that pure brow is a dreadful drama. But there are other souls to whom the sight is saddening; ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... his corner, hands clasped in prayer. (He did so night after night unmolested.) The crowd watched curiously—but had anyone dare to scoff they, as Mahieu said, "would a' knocked ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... especially if it be such a virtue, whereunto himself pretendeth. Speech of touch towards others, should be sparingly used; for discourse ought to be as a field, without coming home to any man. I knew two noblemen, of the west part of England, whereof the one was given to scoff, but kept ever royal cheer in his house; the other would ask, of those that had been at the other's table, Tell truly, was there never a flout or dry blow given? To which the guest would answer, Such and ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... not think on't. The scoff was true—I thank her—I thank God— This too I needed. I had built myself A Babel-tower, whose top should reach to heaven, Of poor men's praise and prayers, and subtle pride At mine own alms. 'Tis crumbled into dust! Oh! ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... neighbours and voiced strangely radical sentiments concerning Life and its obligations. They were often startling, particularly as she made no secret of the fact that she and her husband never "got on." Between puffs of cigarette smoke she would scoff at the laws of marriage and speak with much leniency of divorce. Her sympathies were invariably with offenders, and Joyce thought her rather too fond of the society of men. Meredith feared and disliked ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... of bitterness. "Are you satisfied with your pupil?" she added. "I am progressing.... I laugh—when I wish to weep.... But you yourself would not have laughed had you seen the fervor of charming Fanny. She was the picture of blissful faith. Do not scoff at her." ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... the Gospel at Athens he was called a tidings-bringer of new gods, as much to say as of a new religion; "for" (said the Athenians) "may we not know of thee what new doctrine this is?" Celsus likewise, when he of set purpose wrote against Christ, to the end he might more scornfully scoff out the Gospel by the name of novelty: "What!" saith he, "hath God after so many ages now at last and so late bethought Himself?" Eusebius also writeth that Christian religion from the beginning for very spite was ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... yourself; he is not likely to take much notice of you; and it is not for an indolent, freakish midge to scoff at a man whom she does not know, and couldn't appreciate if she ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... every holiday presents Its special round of play, And looking back on boyhood now And all the charms it knew, One day, above the rest, somehow, Seems brightest in review. That day was finest, I believe; Though many grown-ups scoff, When mother said that we could leave Our ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... same time, we would by no means scoff at the counsel of our Ahitophels. A glance at the newspapers of last month, and their interminable advertising columns, is quite enough to convince us that the thing may be overdone. True, not one out of five—nay, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... duty, such as making converts at the Jean Jacques and elsewhere; a glass of beer and a pipe don't cost much. And Heloise is such a house-wife, so thrifty, scolds me if I buy her a ribbon, poor love! No wonder that I would pull down a society that dares to scoff at her—dares to say she is not my wife, and her children are base born. No, I have some savings left yet. War to ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the raised throne of his council chamber. All the Lords of his Council were there and all in black. There was Norfolk with his yellow face who feigned to laugh and scoff, now that he had proved himself no lover of the Queen's. There was Gardiner of Winchester, sitting forward with his cruel and eager eyes upon the table. Next him was the Lord Mayor, Michael Dormer, and the Lord Chancellor. And so round the horse-shoe table against the wall sat all the other ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
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