"Sarcasm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... draw the Britishers. 'Amurrcans' don't understand me. They try to draw me, but they might just as well try to draw one of these wooden cigars in my hand. Their sarcasm runs off me like this rain, and I keep on smiling. They laugh at the Britishers journeying thousands of miles to see this place, just as the English smile at the Americans pilgrimaging to Stratford-on-Avon. Why, it's real cheap to find natives ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... few things more annoying than to find one's positive convictions met with incredulity. I could not help feeling impatience at the turn that affairs had taken. I was not proof against the civil sarcasm of the chairman's manner. Most intolerable of all, however, was the quiet smile lurking about the corners of Benjamin Somers's mouth, and the half-triumphant, half-malicious gleam in the eyes of the under-secretary. The man was evidently puzzled and somewhat alarmed. His looks ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... kind Miss Rolls intensely, and would have loved to let loose upon her somewhat obtuse head the sarcasm of which at that moment she felt herself a past mistress. She wanted to be rich and important and have Miss Rolls, poor and suppliant, at her mercy. Horrified, she saw by the searchlight of her own anger dark ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... to say, except to entreat you to pardon my somewhat serious utterances because of the many painful reminiscences which your good-natured sarcasm has brought to my lips, although softened by the kindly and genial terms in which you have received me, and I beg you to accept the grateful expression of my heartfelt gratitude for this ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... remarks about nothing ever happening in Brussels were not intended as sarcasm. I thought Belgium was the one place where I could be sure of a quiet time, and here we are right in the centre of it. Even if nothing more happens we have had enough excitement to last me for some time. ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... "At best, sarcasm is out of season; at worst, the season 's out of it," sez Hammy to me: "and furthermore, good friend, in life, as on the stage, your part must be a role of actions, not of words." I used to say over the things ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... whatever wit the sentence may have possessed—and witty we must suppose it was, since Plutarch evidently thinks it a capital joke. In corroboration of this interpretation of an allusion which has a little perplexed the commentators, we may observe, that ten years before, Pericles had judged a sarcasm upon the age of Elpinice the best way to silence her importunities. The anecdote is twice told by Plutarch, in vit. Cim., c. 14, and in vit. Per., ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... familiarly, plump. Birotteau's face, round and ruddy, proclaimed a kindly nature barren of ideas, while that of the Abbe Troubert, long and ploughed by many wrinkles, took on at times an expression of sarcasm, or else of contempt; but it was necessary to watch him very closely before those sentiments could be detected. The canon's habitual condition was perfect calmness, and his eyelids were usually lowered over his orange-colored ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... sarcasm. "Dead in the west. Common spot for the aurora. Particularly on the edge of the South Seas, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of sarcasm in Gouache's voice as he imputed to Del Ferice the savage enthusiasm of a revolutionist. But when Gouache, who was by no means calm by nature, said anything in a particularly gentle tone, there was generally a sting in it, and Del Ferice reflected upon the mean traffic ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... this point to his favourite method of always contradicting Plato, has no particular liking, as we have said, for democracy. He does not spare it though he does not imitate Plato's scathing sarcasm. ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... shall attempt to point out. Amongst savage races, and in the less polished ranks of civilized life, men who disagree, or have any grudge against one another, resort to physical blows or coarse invective. In polite and educated circles, these weapons are replaced by sarcasm and innuendo. There are, of course, many advantages gained by the substitution of this more refined mode of warfare, but the mere fact that the intellectual skill which it displays gives pleasure to the bystanders, and wins social applause, renders its employment far more frequent than, on ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... said Patches, with bitter sarcasm, "poor Yavapai Joe is not so much different from hundreds of men that I know. By their standards ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... a lord, freend, Robby, ye'll be Lord Preserve Us?"—"You are very impertinent Mr. C—k," replied the nettled judge expectant; "I am sure you may find a waur."—There never, perhaps, was, or will be, comprehended so much pithy meaning and bitter sarcasm in a single syllable, as that which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... quite acceded to this. As far as buying and selling were concerned he would have acceded to anything that would have made his father happy. "I won't say a word against this fellow, since you are so fond of him," continued the Squire. Ralph, though his father paused, made no reply to the intended sarcasm. "But you must allow that he had a reason for writing such ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... under his eyes more pronounced than before, but with the unchanging look of determination, Selwyn helped the younger man on with his coat, and handed him his hat and stick. 'I am sorry you won't stay,' he said calmly, 'for your abuse and sarcasm are nothing to me. When I took this step I foresaw the consequences, and, believe me, I have suffered so much already that the loss of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... old man, perceiving at once the sarcasm of my remark, "you are right. I shall never beat ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... her. He tried kindness, while I helped him with sarcasm. He tried hauteur and then a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... that the Russian authors pursued the enemies of learning with sarcasm, they heaped up eulogies, which bordered on idolatry, on Peter I, and, after him, on his successors. In these praises, which were excessively hyperbolical, there was always some sincerity. Peter had, in fact, in his reign, paved the way for European civilization, and ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... shop, during which direct allusion was made to a burglary in Baltimore in January, made a good foundation for procedure. Judge Wandell pondered, and then Mr. Hummell pushed his side energetically, using tons of cold sarcasm and barrels of withering scorn. It was the sapling shielding the blasted oak, one of the youngest, and certainly the smallest counselor thundering forth in behalf of the ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... of the individual only, but of all those by whom she has been educated, and their predecessors even up to the first mother that lived. Shakespeare saw that the want of prominence which Pope notices for sarcasm, was the blessed beauty of the woman's character, and knew that it arose not from any deficiency, but from the exquisite harmony of all the parts of the moral being constituting one living total of head and heart. He has ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... that hour its legislative triumph was assured. In the course of the protracted debate which followed, Disraeli, with all the virulence of a disappointed place-hunter, attacked Sir Robert Peel with bitter personalities and barbed sarcasm. On this occasion, throwing decency and good taste to the winds, and, to borrow a phrase of his own, 'intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity,' and with no lack of tawdry rhetoric and melodramatic emphasis, he did his best to cover with ridicule and to reduce to confusion one of ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Face was blasted away. In this mountain solitude there was a shade of reason in giving that solemn countenance of stone the name of St. Anthony, as a good representative of monastic life; and, by a quiet sarcasm, the full-length ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... roof, but in the north wing which I had supposed was uninhabited. My janitor tells me this. By chance, he is almost sober this evening. The butcher on the rue de Seine, where I bought your meat, knows you, and old Cabane the baker identified you with needless sarcasm. They tell me hard tales of your mistress which I shall not believe. They say she is idle and vain and pleasure-loving; they say she is hare-brained and reckless. The little sculptor on the ground floor, who was buying ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... Sarcasm had turned to fury by the time the end of the sentence was reached, and, as Jenny, overcome by conflicting emotions, was about to sink into the nearest chair, she darted forward ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... five years behind their time. Sometimes Blackwood is fifty years in the rear, but that is a detail of circumstance. Five or fifty, it does not matter, so long as it is well in the rear." Such gentle sarcasm merely emphasizes the fact that Blackwood's has always aimed to be more than a magazine of belles-lettres. The publishers celebrated the appearance of the one thousandth number in February, 1899, by almost doubling ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... dissipates opposition as naturally as the mind tone provokes a quarrel. Even a hot argument can be ended without any lasting ill-feeling if the disputants conclude with hearty expressions of good will for one another. The same words spoken in head tones would increase the antagonism by suggesting sarcasm or insincerity. The resonant chest tone suggests that it comes from the speaker's heart. The hearer's heart makes his mind believe the heart message conveyed by the emotional pitch of ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... of a Juvenal, without his vulgarity and obscenity; all the burning indignation which the Latin is so peculiarly capable of expressing, with all the vigor and stateliness by which the same language is equally characterized. Tacitus has been sometimes represented as a very Diogenes, for carping and sarcasm—a very Aristophanes, to blacken character with ridicule and reproach. But he is as far removed from the cynic or the buffoon, as from the panegyrist or the flatterer. He is not the indiscriminate admirer that Plutarch was. Nor is he such ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... this dictionary evidently sympathizes with modern romanticists and light literature in general, for we find "academicien" defined as "litterateur suranne." One is always inclined to suspect sour grapes of giving the flavor to French sarcasm concerning the Academy, and is reminded of Piron's epigram in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... succeeded, without effort, in winning the appreciation of a man highly placed in the world of fashion and finance. The conceit induced an odd feeling of embarrassment. To dispel it she took up his words in a vein of playful sarcasm. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Clapperton, ignoring this bit of sarcasm, "if he was well enough off to buy a cake of soap once a term, it wouldn't be so bad. I believe when he wants a wash he goes down to Mrs Wisdom and borrows ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... first one pocket and then the other into Kenner's cupped palm. With heavy sarcasm he felt in his watch pocket and produced a nickel slipped there after paying street-car fare. He held it out to young Kenner between his finger and thumb, still gazing ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... drivers and guides, consisted of four men—Major Abaza, chief of Asiatic exploration, Dodd the young American, whom we had engaged in Petropavlovsk, Viushin (view'-shin) a Cossack orderly, and myself. The biting sarcasm directed by Mithridates at the army of Lucullus—that if they came as ambassadors they were too many, if as soldiers too few—would have applied with equal force to our small party made up as it was ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... without much thanks; but his mother treated him almost as a stranger, and the dour James, while not unwilling to draw out his account of himself, would look him up and down from under his bushy grey eyebrows, and often interpose with some sarcasm on his 'foine' ways of speaking, or his 'gen'leman's cloos.' Sandy was ill at ease. He was really anxious to help, and his heart was touched by his mother's state; but perhaps there was a strain of self-importance in his manner, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to nine Tarrant sat resolutely at his table, and covered a few pages with the kind of composition which now came most easily to him,—a somewhat virulent sarcasm. He found pleasure in the work; but after nine o'clock his thoughts strayed to matters of personal interest, and got beyond control. Would the last post of the evening bring him an answer to a letter ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... [20] Verily, Peters's sarcasm savors as much of truth as humor when, speaking of bundling, he says: "The Indians who had this method of courtship among them in 1634, are the most chaste set of people in the world. Concubinage and fornication are vices ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... should happen, then at least I might hope to win a little of your affection?" he said, trying to smile, to hide his feelings, for her sarcasm had cut ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... made her extremely tremulous and wretched. I was the more impressed by these quavers in her because I also knew that she had sufficient strength of character to upset a kingdom, if she chose; that she could use a sceptre of keen sarcasm which made heads roll off on all sides; that there was nothing which her large, lustrous eyes could not see, and nothing they could not conceal. To think, then, that she trembled beside a steam-engine made her ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... half-white, "Bill Ragsdale," whom I mentioned in one of my earlier letters, and who is certainly the most "notorious" man in Hilo. He has a remarkable gift of eloquence, both in English and Hawaiian: a combination of pathos, invective, and sarcasm; and his manner, though theatrical, is considered perfect by his native admirers. His moral character, however, has been very low, which makes the outburst of feeling at ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... almost impervious to sarcasm, he was now beginning to exhibit visible signs of uneasiness, the consciousness dawning upon him that his eccentricity was not receiving the ovation it merited. It was with a palpable relief that he heard the first warning ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... this matter, surely you can. If I can bear the shame of telling, you can at least bear that of listening. Remember that knowing—knowing what you know, or at least what you have heard—you could come here and propose marriage to me!' This she said with a cold, cutting sarcasm which sounded like the rasping of a roughly-sharpened knife through raw flesh. Harold groaned in spirit; he felt a weakness which began at his heart to steal through him. It took all his manhood to bear himself erect. He dreaded what was coming, as of old the once- ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... he had the high art to keep his style direct, unaffected, almost severe. No frills, no literary graces, no flashes of wit except an occasional restrained touch of sarcasm: the writing was in the purest style and of a classic simplicity. The typical reader of The Patriot had a friendly and rather patronizing feeling for the editorials: they were generally deemed quite ordinary, "common as an old shoe" (with an approving accent from the commentator), comfortably devoid ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... mother, with sarcasm that could not sustain itself even by a smile letting Mrs. Burton into the joke, "going ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... into the voice of the taxi-cab driver when he stopped his vehicle in Madison Avenue and sought Curtis's further commands. No longer did he address his patron with a species of good-humored tolerance, almost of sarcasm; his mental attitude had now become one of respect, even of hero-worship. A little later, while smoking a thoughtful pipe in his own cozy flat somewhere near Second Avenue, he tried to explain this curious ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... do for cheating agents de change on the Bourse—for squabbling politicians in the Chambers—for mincing dandies in the salons—for the sarcasm of Scribe-ish comedies, or the coarse drolleries of Palais Royal farces, but for poetry the French language was extinct. All modern poets who used it were faiseurs de phrase—thinking about words and not feelings. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... mother, my fair heroine?" said Barclay, in a tone of sarcasm bordering on contempt. "What will become of her if you persist in the rejection of the only person in the wide world on whom you have any claim? She is old, feeble, broken in health and spirit. Ah! will not your proud heart faint when you ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... most noble Prince," replied the astrologer with sarcasm. "Shall I tell you of that reward? It would be my death by slow torture. Moreover, it is impossible, for if you would know the truth, she ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... he told the wittiest stories in the world, without omitting any thing in them but the point. This omission did not arise from the want either of memory or of humour, but solely from a deficiency in the malice natural to all jesters. He could not persuade his lips to repeat a sarcasm hurting even the dead or the ungrateful; and when he came to the drop of gall which should have given zest to the story, the milk of human kindness broke its barrier despite himself, and washed it away. He was a fine wreck, a little ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... discouraged novices believe that the bromide of the rejection slip—"rejection implies no lack of merit"—is simply a piece of sarcasm. It is nothing of the sort. In tens of thousands of instances it is a solemn fact. Don't sulk and berate the editors who return your manuscript, but carefully read the contribution again, trying to forget for the moment that it is one of your own precious "brain ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... Lasnes appeared to hesitate again—as if doubting the propriety of the movement. Bonaparte eyed him with a look of ineffable contempt; and added—almost fixing his teeth together, in a hissing but biting tone of sarcasm—"Est-ce que je t'ai fait trop riche?" Lasnes dashed his spurs into the sides of his charger, turned away, and prepared to put the command of his ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... going till later on: luckily for the convenience of your family," he continued, taking base refuge in sarcasm. As he spoke he felt that she was looking at him, and he turned his eyes to hers in order not to appear to be avoiding them. Their glances met for a second, and perhaps let them into each other's meanings more deeply ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... When he spoke again he seemed to have wholly regained his usual composure. The note of passion had passed from his tone. His cheeks were once more of waxen pallor. The deliberately-chosen words fell with a chill sarcasm from his lips. ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at least one characteristic, the attention to relatives in the remotest degree of kin. On the bench, like the judges in Redgauntlet, Hume, Kames, and others, he affected the racy Doric; and his 'Scots strength of sarcasm, which is peculiar to a North Briton,' was on many an occasion lamented by his son who felt it, and acknowledged by Johnson on at least one famous occasion. In the Boswelliana are preserved many of old Auchinleck's ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... hastily, remained standing before Mlle. Moriaz, and contemplated her in silence; finally she said, in tones of the most cutting sarcasm: "Ah! you do not believe me, my dear. Decidedly you do not believe me. You are right; you should not put faith in an old woman's childish chatter. No, my darling, there is no Samuel Brohl: I dined yesterday at Maisons with the most authentic of Counts Larinski, and nothing remains ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... Perception of the disjunction or incongruity of ideas; the analytical faculty. Uses: Separation of compound or general ideas into those that are elementary or more simple; knowledge of characteristic differences and discrepance. Abuses: A disposition to jest or ridicule; irony, sarcasm, and satire, without respect to truth, or the circumstances of person, place, or time. Organ, on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... unless they would likewise empty their offal upon our tables? What must we think of that board, which has advised the repeal of every law we have hitherto made to prevent this deluge of wickedness overwhelming us; and with this cruel sarcasm, that these laws were against the public utility, for they tended to prevent the improvement and well peopling of the colonies! And what must we think of those merchants, who, for the sake of a little paltry gain, will be concerned in importing and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... expect the homage due to a superior being, these salutations are awkward. The ladies of England peculiarly excel in this species of annihilation; and while they continue to drown puppies, as they daily do, in a sea of sarcasm, I think no true Englishman will hesitate one moment in giving them the preference for tact and manner over all the vivacious French, all the self-possessing Italian, and all the tolerant German women. This is a claptrap, and I have no doubt will ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... the writers of satire stands Count Roger Rabutin de Bussy, whose mind was jocose, his wit keen, and his sarcasm severe. He was born in 1618, and educated at a college of Jesuits, where he manifested an extraordinary avidity for letters and precocious talents. The glory of war fired his early zeal, and for sixteen years he followed the pursuit of arms. Then ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... then—that I concealed nothing; the desires and emotions which are usually kept as a private fund I displayed and exhausted. My audacity shocked those who possessed this fund. My candor was called anything but truthfulness; they named it sarcasm, cunning, coarseness, or tact, as those were constituted who came in contact with me. Insight into character, frankness, generosity, disinterestedness, were sometimes given me. Veronica alone was ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... speech in which what is meant is contrary to the literal meaning of the words—in which praise is bestowed when censure is intended—is called irony. Irony is a kind of delicate sarcasm ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... braggart manner from the carriage window, crying out against the iniquity of stock-jobbing, and the shame it cast upon all. Until this point he had been allowed to say on, but when he thought fit to add that his own hands were clean, and that he had never dabbled in shares, a voice uttered a cutting sarcasm, and all the crowd took up the word, at which the Marechal, ashamed and confounded, despite his ordinary authority, buried himself in his carriage and finished his journey across the Place Vendome at a gentle trot in the midst of a hue and cry, which ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... his allusion to personal conduct one of her two hands dropped from his arm, and now, as she repeated the words, there was a little sting of sarcasm ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... having, I suppose, become wearisome), the sciences are confined to certain and prescribed authors, and thus restrained are imposed upon the old and instilled into the young; so that now (to use the sarcasm of Cicero concerning Caesar's year) the constellation of Lyra rises by edict, and authority is taken for truth, not truth for authority. Which kind of institution and discipline is excellent for present use, but precludes all prospect of improvement. For we copy the sin ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... within signalled the conductor. He stopped the car, and the lady, who had risen with her escort, remained chatting with a friend before she got out. The conductor snapped his bell for starting, with a look of patient sarcasm. "See that?" he asked Lemuel. "Some these women act as if the cars was their private carriage; and you got to act so too, or the lady complains of you, and the company bounces you in a minute. Stock's ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... weaknesses, and the strokes of sarcasm she could adroitly parry; but for persistent magnanimity she was no match, and recoiled before it like the traditional Fiend at sight of the Santo Sudario. Watching her companion's quiet countenance, she saw a shadow drift over it, betokening neither anger nor scorn, but serious regret; and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... writes that in the local charitable dispensary a surgical operation was performed on a patient who died in two hours, and that a similar operation on a pregnant woman resulted in her death. It adds, with delicate sarcasm, that "the Chief Medical Officer should get his salary increased." The idea that Englishmen deliberately want to depopulate India is one that is sedulously propagated. Thus the Jhang Sial jeers at British "generosity" which has "converted India, one of the richest countries in ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... copy of the "Cit des Dames" at Munich is another portrait of Christine. The book is an Apology for the feminine sex, and it is well thought out. It appears that the conversation of the time was not always free from rather severe sarcasm concerning the ladies. We learn from Du Verdier that the continuator of the Romance of the Rose narrowly escaped most condign chastisement from some of the insulted sex at the French Court for the base insinuations in his poem against the character of women. Christine herself heartily disapproved ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... himself there. He had found himself, had lost that craven fear of the Speaker that paralyzes most new members. He knew when to speak and when to be silent; and when he spoke unsuspected gifts of biting sarcasm, clever characterization, convincing scorn of the uneducated minister type came to his aid. His tongue played round his victims, unequipped as they were with his vast experience of reality, vaguely discursive, on the surface as are most lawyers, at a loss ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... so much, it is surprising that you don't know it all, Mr. Broffin," she commented, with gentle sarcasm. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... of the splenetic and unmanly being who could presume to taint with the venom of his envy, the preparations made by the virtuous and highly distinguished lady at whose shrine this humble tribute of admiration was offered.' This last was a piece of biting sarcasm against the INDEPENDENT, who, in consequence of not having been invited at all, had been, through four numbers, affecting to sneer at the whole affair, in his very largest type, with all the adjectives ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... manners he carried eccentricity to an extravagant extent, was brusque and curt in speech, often to the verge of insult, laconic in his despatches, and—a soldier in grain—treated with stinging sarcasm all whose lack of activity or of courage invited his contempt. It was by this spirit that he incurred the enmity of the Emperor Paul, when, in his half-mad thirst for change, the latter attempted to change the native dress of the Russian soldier ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the present state of her health she must not go on walking so much as she has done." He added, with a faint twang of sarcasm, "What wonderful thing is it that I cannot be ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... human progress is possible only because the benevolent instincts of the heart are permanent, while the reasonings of the head are shifting. "When God," says Montesquieu, "endowed human beings with brains, he did not intend to guaranty them." And the sarcasm of the French philosopher is fully justified, when we reflect that nothing mean, base, or cruel has ever been done in this world, which has not been supported by arguments. To the mere head every historical event, whether ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... it an heir-loom," said Sir Robert, with sarcasm too fine for his antagonist; "leave it from father to son of your descendants, like our family diamonds ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the way home had Dirk been on the point of consigning it to the gutter. He carry home a flower! If it had been a loaf of bread he thought it would be more consistent. Someway he recognized a fine sarcasm in the thought that he, who had never in his life contributed towards the necessities of the family, should carry to that dreary home a flower! Yet the fair lily did its work well during that long walk from East Fifty-fifth Street to the shadow of the alley. It made Dirk Colson tell it fiercely ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... we must know the secrets of the French and Spanish cabinets[55], and that Parliament was pleased to approve the treaty of peace without calling for the correspondence concerning it. How just this sarcasm on that Parliament may be, I say not; but how becoming in the author, I leave it to his ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the people within much regretted the delay, however those who had been lingering outside might feel themselves ill-used by a pause in the executions, which had now become a popular amusement; for the crowd instantly pushed forward to witness another trial of sarcasm between me and my judges; but this the new ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... said Phoebe, with merry sarcasm. "And was it, then, Guy who brought me these same lines of Jacques the melancholy?" And she pointed to the ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... without a negative; and then the house being resumed, the debate was cut short by the impatience of the majority to go and drink her majesty's health. This seeming violence gave occasion to a very long protest, drawn up by sir Archee Mac Sarcasm, in which he contrived to state the claim of the departed foetus so artfully, that it produced a civil war, and gave rise to those bloody ravages and massacres which so long laid waste the ancient kingdom of Kilkenny, and which were at last terminated by a lucky accident, ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... in Mr. Robert, tossing back the letter, "you answer the lady in your own direct and lucid way. You might suggest that we are neither highwaymen nor the Associated Charities, using any little whim of sarcasm that occurs to you." ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... place Paulsberg so high that I consider him alone able to do what is needed," said Irgens with thinly veiled sarcasm. ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the honorable member may, perhaps, find that in that contest, there will be blows to take as well as blows to give; that others can state comparisons as significant, at least, as his own, and that his impunity may possibly demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may possess. I commend him to a prudent husbandry ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... oblivious to sarcasm just then. He was gazing at the daguerreotype in a sentimental sort of way, blowing the dust from the glass, and tilting it up and down so as to bring it to ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... my own family; though it would have scarcely fetched any thing to have been sold to a butcher. And if this should meet the eye of the worthy justice, he will take it as it is meant, and not as any sarcasm at him, though the said justice is one of the number who was induced to sign the infamous order to exclude my female friends from visiting me; which I would fain hope he did against his own judgment, and I am sure, from the personal ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... asking me." There was not a tinge of sarcasm or bitterness in these words, nothing but gratitude. "I am getting on perfectly well. I have worked, have made myself independent, and am now employing eight or ten workwomen, I ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... I did not care to face the sarcasm of the great van Manderpootz; therefore I would work in secret. I would visit his laboratory at such times as he had classes or lectures, and I would use the attitudinizor to study the viewpoint of Carter, and to, as it were, practice that ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... runs," said De Chauxville, with easy sarcasm. "But who found him on the steppe? Who buried ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... quailed under Molly's biting sarcasm. He was unprepared for this change of front on the part of his mistress. His pretention of love were not sufficient to create in ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... said so until I shut him up with some rather peremptory sarcasm. The bearers, who had to stumble in the dark under heavy burdens, were good-natured and joking. This we appreciated. One can never tell whether or not he is popular with a native until he and the native are caught in ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... of sarcasm naturally caused some amusement at the expense of the rival proprietor, but in less than an hour he neatly turned the tables by pasting the following retort ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... at the Prince; but there was no sarcasm in his look or tone. Max was never more of an artist than in his adaption of manner to theme. Sadly, almost dejectedly ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... with fire and eloquence because she spoke with authority, Seth too talked with a bitter brilliance that won the crowd and held it against its will. With biting sarcasm and horrible accuracy Seth drew a picture of Fanny as made Green Valley smile and laugh before it could catch itself and realize the ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... is the natural mode of expressing surprise, and also— though not so frequently—of sarcasm, contempt, mockery, etc. In using this stress the voice, with more or less explosive force, touches strongly and distinctly on both the opening and closing points of a sound or vowel, and passes slightly and almost imperceptibly over the ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... tuh meet up with me, yuh say?" the other observed, with sarcasm in his tones. "Wall now yuh see me, p'raps yuh don't jest like my looks. If so be I thort them coward hounds up-river sent yuh down hyah tuh spy on us, an' inform thet rail-rid sheriff how he cud git tuh cotch us on the sly, I'd jest lay a cowhide acrost ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... head directed to the audience, remarked, that he perceived the young gentlemen were for once provided with a parson admirably suited to their capacities, and with these words left them to swallow his well-timed sarcasm. On another occasion, a ram was placed in the pulpit, with his head turned to the door by which the minister usually entered. On opening the door, the animal, diving between the legs of the fat shepherd, bolted down the pulpit stairs, carrying on his back the sacred load, and with ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... The first stroke sounded, and Time, true to the signal, moved his scythe. The day of the month and the day of the week announced themselves in print through the glass pedestal next; Midwinter applauding their appearance with a noisy exaggeration of surprise, which Miss Milroy mistook for coarse sarcasm directed at her father's pursuits, and which Allan (seeing that she was offended) attempted to moderate by touching the elbow of his friend. Meanwhile, the performances of the clock went on. At the last ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... its kindliness, the voice was masterful, the voice of the thoroughbred, when he gets in earnest. Brenton longed to stiffen himself against the mastery, but he could not. His ineffectual effort lent an edge of sarcasm ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... relief, at least to her mother's mind, when young Mrs. Harcourt returned, and without a word took up the reins again. No one disputed her claims. Now and then there would be a lazy protest from Audrey—a concealed sarcasm that fell blunted beneath the calm amiability of the elder sister. Geraldine was always perfectly good-tempered; the sense of propriety that guided all her actions never permitted her to grow hot in argument; ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to go to house-keepin', if he can git the right kind of a house-keeper; he wants an old one. If it was a young one, I guess he wouldn't have any great trouble, if he went about it the right way." Bolton's sarcasm was merely a race sarcasm. He was a very mild man, and his thick-growing eyelashes softened and shadowed his grey eyes, and ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... her queerly. She was not prone to sarcasm, she had not been given to sentimentalism in the past; she had taken the border-life as it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to it, or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any phase of ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the halter on that calf behind there. The mother hasn't enough to keep it alive. There's har'ly a dollar's wort' of hide on its bones, but I'll take it to save it droppin' on the road." Or, he would try sarcasm: "Well, we'll be shuttin' her down in the spring. Then ye can go round be Walter's Ferry and see if they'll trust ye there." Or: "Why wasn't ye workin' on the Ditch last winter? Settin' smokin' your poipe in the tules, the wife and ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... while ago Mr. Asquith referred with sarcasm and reproof to those who talk of peace. But, for once, his meaning was not clear. If he meant that to suggest peace to the enemy at this stage is both dangerous and ridiculous, he will be approved by the nation. But if he meant that terms of peace must not ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Forthwith, a dozen eager hands were laid on him, a rope was passed under his armpits, and the free end thrown over a rafter of the office. By this means he was hauled from the ground and swung suspended, a butt of sarcasm and abuse for Ramani Babu's myrmidons. After enduring this humiliation for an hour or so, he was let down and a final demand made on him for the arrears of rent. On his again asserting inability Ramani Babu ordered his hut to be levelled with the ground and pulse to be sown on its site, as a punishment ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... it in a minute," asserted Lidgerwood, in good-natured sarcasm. "It is so dark here in the canyon that I'm afraid some of you might fall overboard or get hit by the ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... philosophy in the injunction to love our enemies, for they are often our best friends in disguise. They tell us the truth when friends flatter. Their biting sarcasm and scathing rebuke are mirrors which reveal us to ourselves. These unkind stings and thrusts are often spurs which urge us on to grander success and nobler endeavor. Friends cover our faults and rarely rebuke; enemies drag out ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... could you have kept afloat if the fog had not lifted?" he inquired with gentle sarcasm. To which, adroitly adjusting hair and kerchief, she made no answer. So he added: "There is supposed to be a difference between mature courage and the fool-hardiness ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... off, with the 'Aye-men, is it?" he enquired with deep sarcasm. "But you would not be feenishing it after all. If ye're bound and deturmined to put a tail on the end o' the hime, why don't ye sing awl that's in the book. You would be leaving ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... moments in silent thought, one small foot tapping nervously the while, a sure sign of irritation with her. At last she said, slowly, and with an undertone of sarcasm, that she made ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... he pointed to the door leading to the more distant apartments, and in the short laugh which accompanied his last words there was sarcasm—almost hatred. At the same moment he met Cara's eyes, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... Dolly, with withering sarcasm; "oh, a most amazing masterpiece, I'll be bound! His worship the French Ambassador is a kitten at diplomacy beside you, sir. An hour and a half, did you say, sir? Gemini, the Secretary of State and his whole corps could not have composed the like in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Besides, my affection for you is so great that I feel that I couldn't do without you; oh, I couldn't, I couldn't possibly!" And the old man actually chuckled himself into a fit of coughing at his grim sarcasm. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... of an affair which had so spirited a beginning, the company, with derisive scoffing and muttered sarcasm, resumed their places; all save the morio, who stood glaring ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... at the sarcasm of the remark, and as it, was expressed with no lack of bitterness, it could not but cut him keenly. Still preserving that calm self-possession which a full consciousness of his power imparted, he smiled instead of frowning ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... quickly, and looked towards her kinsman. He was standing near the table, with folded arms, and his fine face expressing all the sarcasm and contempt that a countenance so singularly calm and gentleman-like, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... built castles but he always built churches. He received an elementary education from the chaplains of his uncle, the Bishop of St. David's; he seems to have been slow at learning when a child, and his tutors goaded him on not by the birch rod, but by sarcasm—by declining "Stultus, stultior, stultissimus." His higher education was not obtained in Wales, and it is singular that he does not notice any place of learning in Wales in all his writings. He studied at Gloucester, and then at Paris, the greatest ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... career of Sir Alexander Boswell was brought to a sudden termination. Prone to indulge a strong natural tendency for sarcasm, especially against his political opponents, he published, in a Glasgow newspaper, a severe poetical pasquinade against Mr James Stuart, younger of Dunearn, a leading member of the Liberal party in Edinburgh. The discovery of the authorship ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... really be in earnest was something that I had already felt; and it was destined to beset me, as it did now, again and again. My first thought was that, of course, he was trying a bit of cheap irony on me, a mixture of the feeble sarcasm and false sentiment that makes us smile when we find it in the philippics of the industrial agitators. For a moment I did not know but I had fallen victim to a walking delegate on his vacation, who was employing his summer leisure in going about the country in the guise of a traveler from Altruria, ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... sting of the prelate's delicate sarcasm. At bottom, beneath this make-believe Florentine all-angelicalness, with long curly hair and mauve eyes which grew dim with rapture at sight of a Botticelli, there was a thoroughly practical, business-like young man, who took admirable care of his fortune and was even somewhat miserly. However, he ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... gone to their rooms," said the bridegroom. "If these gentlemen don't object to our waiting here," he went on with a fine and wasted sarcasm. ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... crouch and bend as if he were going to spring upon the audience, a long, skinny finger would be shaken before their faces, or pointed as if to drive his words into their hearts. His speech was a torrent of epigram, sarcasm, invective. He was bitter; if you knew nothing about the man or his cause, you would find this repellent and shocking. You had to know what his life had been—an unceasing conflict with oppression; he had got his Socialist education in jail, where he had been sent for trying to ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... was the young man's condition in poverty, when they had no love along with a silent dinner of herbs; when his mother-in-law grudged each morsel which his poor old father ate—when a vulgar, coarse-minded woman—as Mrs. Mackenzie was—pursued with brutal sarcasm one of the tenderest and noblest gentlemen in the world; when an ailing wife, always under some one's domination, received him with helpless hysterical ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... my secret," returned Dalibard, gloomily; "and since the madness I indulged is forever over; since I have so schooled my heart that nothing, despite your sarcasm, save an affectionate interest which I may call paternal rests there,—let us pass from this painful subject. Oh, my dear pupil, be warned in time; know love for what it really is, in the dark and complicated history of actual life,—a brief enchantment, not to ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
