"Cynically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Helene cynically, "she will warn you to beware. She will hunt up all my offences against holy ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and Dougal spat cynically. "It seems they're a dour crop to shift. Sir Erchibald was sayin' that him and the lassie had been to the Chief Constable, but the man was terrible auld and slow. They persuadit him, but he threepit that it would take a long time to collect his men and that there ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... there I didn't hardly think I'd last out." He prepared to taste that most delicate pleasure of the host: making fun of his guests in the relaxation of midnight. As the door closed he yawned voluptuously, chest out, shoulders wriggling, and turned cynically ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... declined to say what he meant to do. When, however, they saw the abject terror of the Faith Healer as he begged not to be left alone with Tim—for they had not meant death, and Ingles thought he read death in Tim's ferocious eyes—they laughed cynically, and left it to Tim to uphold the honor of ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... brother, in a biography, completely frank up to this point, now grows reticent, except to release the wife of all blame. So you must satisfy your curiosity by imagining some abnormal state of mind, which you will regard cynically or pityingly, as your manner ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... of both sexes, and when, as often happened, supper ended, and a choice company of half-drunken women and wholly drunken men reeled through the open doors into the room where the three Louis reigned, Gonzague, who himself kept always sober, was no more than cynically amused by the contrast between the noisy and careless crew who had invaded the chamber and the sinister gravity with which the portraits of the three Louis regarded ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... wonder," remarked Malcolm, cynically, as he delivered the message, "for I heard him a' through the wee hours walkin' and walkin' up and doun, for a' the world like a wolf in a cage. And eh, but he's ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Involved were the city engineer and one J. K. Thompson, Contractor, and J. F. Claybrook, lumber man and dealer, all in collusion. All this was in the headlines—in neat, modest type. Below came the bald facts stating the amounts of money involved which somehow she did not notice and a somewhat cynically weary paragraph at the end remarking that the people were having quite too much of this sort of thing and that the courts should ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... look down on that kind of love seven years ago," he thought, cynically. But he didn't say so; no matter what his thoughts were, he was always kind to Eleanor. Lily, over in Medfield; Lily, in the small, secret house; Lily, with the good-looking little boy—blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, blond-haired!—the ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Cynically assured, therefore, at bottom of his own power with this ebullient nature, the squire was quite prepared to make external concessions, or, as we have said, to pay his price. It annoyed him that when Elsmere would press for allotment land, or a new institute, or a better supply of water for the village, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the gloom upon Owen's face—it is always pleasing to think that one is distinctive. And turning from Sir Owen to Innes, Ulick told him how, finding himself in London, he had availed himself of the opportunity to run down to see him. Owen sat criticising, watching him rather cynically, interested in his youth and in his thick, rebellious hair, flowing upwards from a white forehead. The full-fleshed face, lit with nervous, grey eyes, reminded Owen of a Roman bust. "A young Roman emperor," he said to himself, and he seemed to understand ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... up to the Holidays. I hope that you will enjoy them. Nancy is having no end of a gay time, and knows how really good a time she is having, I do believe. She is the rarest combination of old woman and baby I have ever known, cynically wise, almost, and soft innocence. She has a dozen beaux and is extravagant about, and to, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... pen between his teeth, raised himself slowly on his legs, and shading his eyes with his hand from the severe perspective of six feet, gazed admiringly down upon his work. Rupert, with his hands in his pockets and his back to the window, cynically ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... looking men in the world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair; bright, laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,—fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet in these decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will grow to. He is often ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... society and humanity by a large proportion of our population," he would have cynically observed to any caviller, "is by dying and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... many owe their wives to their success in life," I retorted cynically. At which he stared ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... seems "vice" is to be explained as "illusions of the physical senses." That is precisely what every sinner would like to believe. "I have done that, says my memory. I cannot have done that, says my pride, and remains obdurate. In the end, my memory gives in." So wrote Nietzsche, keenly and cynically observant of his kind. As a matter of fact, men would give almost anything to be able to convince themselves that they "have not done that"—not necessarily from pride, but in order to be rid of shame, of remorse, of self-contempt; ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... remember my strong, old, rooted belief that I shall die by drowning? I don't want that to come true, though it is an easy death; but it occurs to me oddly, with these long chances in front. I cannot say why I like the sea; no man is more cynically and constantly alive to its perils; I regard it as the highest form of gambling; and yet I love the sea as much as I hate gambling. Fine, clean emotions; a world all and always beautiful; air better than wine; interest unflagging; ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man, cynically. "You have the pleasure, then, which your dear friend Joanna there never enjoyed, of seeing your own prophecy accomplished; and I, for my part, have three hundred pounds to solace myself with for what ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... understand that he had some sort of vague diplomatic appointment. He had drifted across Bobby's life afterwards in a shadowy way, seeming to have nothing special to do, but to know a great many people and to take life as a sort of a joke. He talked lightly and cynically about serious things, and used foreign expressions with great ease and fluency. It was characteristic of him that since the War he made frequent use of German idioms, and when conversation turned upon passing events he professed ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... the fireplace and poked the fire into a blaze. Then, throwing my hat on the table and lighting a cigarette, I regarded Julian cynically. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... are out of the wood, Dandy Mrs. Kit has jilted two men, and may a third, so you'd better not brag of your wisdom too soon, for she may make a fool of you yet," said Charlie, cynically, his views of life being very gloomy about ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... opinion,' said the Puddin' cynically, 'them puddin'-thieves are too clever for you; and, what's more, they're better eaters than you. Why,' said the Puddin', sneering at Bill, 'I'll back one puddin'-thief to eat more in a given time than three Puddin'-owners ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... poverty that awaits her. Then the pilgrim discloses to her that he it is who is the King of Gaul, and Cordelia marries him. Instead of this scene, Lear, according to Shakespeare, offers Cordelia's two suitors to take her without dowry, and one cynically refuses, while the other, one does not know why, accepts her. After this, in the old drama, as in Shakespeare's, Leir undergoes the insults of Goneril, into whose house he has removed, but he bears ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... of the world in his later years, save that part of it which at odd intervals found its way to the delights of Leasowes; indeed, he was not of a temper to meet the world upon fair terms. "The generality of mankind," he cynically says, "are seldom in good humor but whilst they are imposing upon you in some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... not swing on this hinge. I had my occupations—there were a goodly number of needy folk to be looked after; there was my reading; my music; my friends, and other pleasures, and altogether I felt I was very well off. Not that I was cynically opposed to marriage; I intended to marry, if the right man called, but if he did not I was content to end life as I had begun it—in ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... scramble," he kept breaking out Of silence to say. "I don't blame the boys, but it's plain to me they see that my going will let them move up one. Mason cynically voiced the whole thing today: 'I can say, "Sorry to see you go, Bloom," because your going doesn't concern me. I'm not in line of succession, but some of the other boys don't feel so. There's no divinity doth hedge an editor; nothing but law prevents the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... their melancholy indifference, and tiger hunts which had, by their duration and magnificence, threatened to disrupt the efficiency of the British military service,—whimsical excesses, not understandable by his intimate acquaintances who cynically arraigned him as the fool ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... foreign communists, people in nearly every free country who will serve Moscow's ends. Thus the masters of the Kremlin are provided with deluded followers all through the free world whom they can manipulate, cynically and quite ruthlessly, to serve the purposes ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... this crime of confiscating property, and who set the example of arrests of this sort, is named Eynard. He is a general. On December 18, he placed under sequestration the property of a number of citizens of Moulins, "because," as he cynically observed, "the beginning of the insurrection leaves no doubt as to the part they took in the insurrection, and in the pillaging in the department of ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... Frumentaria.] Having satisfied his conscience by the performance of what no doubt seemed to him sacred duties, Caius at once set to work to build up his new constitution. It is commonly represented that in order to gain over the people to his side he cynically bribed them by his Lex Frumentaria. Now if this were true, and Caius were as clear-sighted as the same writers who insist on the badness of the law describe him to have been, it is hard to see how they can in the same breath eulogise his goodness and nobleness. ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... no less true that the pagan vices spread themselves out cynically under the protecting shadow of religion. Popular souses of eating and drinking were the obligatory accompaniments of the festivals and sacrifices. A religious festival meant a carouse, loads of victuals, barrels of wine broached in the street. These were called the Dishes, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... of France fallen so low that it sends its women to intercede for the lives of its men? But, perhaps," he added cynically, "it ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... better than Adam de la Halle. Adam wrote also for the court, or at least for Robert of Artois, Saint Louis's nephew, whom he followed to Naples in 1284, but his poetry was as little aristocratic as poetry could well be, and most of it was cynically—almost defiantly—middle-class, as though the weavers of Arras were his only audience, and recognized him and the objects of his satire in every verse. The bitter personalities do not concern us, but, at Naples, to amuse Robert of Artois and his court, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... is above everything. Then, in the second place, when they discovered that in the world outside them there was something known as a "moral conscience," not understood by them, but still to be reckoned with, they cynically denied the charges. Finally, when they were driven from this second trench, when simple negation became impossible, they had perforce ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... went away, while Harris, sprawling cynically on a solitary chair down in the parlour with straight open legs, awaited the ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... impression on Dorothea. He sat next to her at the table, and began to rub his feet against hers. Finally he succeeded in getting his left foot on her slipper. She tried to pull her foot back, but the more she tried the harder he bore down on it. She looked at him in amazement; but he smiled cynically, and in a few minutes they were desperately intimate. After dinner they withdrew to a hidden corner, and you could ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... I have no hesitation in saying that a skilful and judicious combination of Russian with the sign-language is a good deal more intelligible to a Cuban fisherman than either Pidgin-English or Volapuek. Voltaire once cynically remarked that "paternosters will shave if said over a good razor." So Russian will convey a perfectly clear idea to a Cuban fisherman if accompanied by a sufficiently pictorial pantomime. I tried it repeatedly ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... again suddenly and cynically—the bitter laugh of a man who hides his soul; and Larpent leaned back in his chair again, as if he recognized that ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... that Lady Dawn would return. Now that she was gone, he was invaded with his old loneliness. The dead lords eyed him cynically from their canvases. Through leaded panes the moonlight fell. It seemed the sorcery of her spirit. The perfume of the rose-garden was her breath. How pale she had made his dream of Terry! How trivial she made all women look when she stood beside them! There was nothing in this ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... it were by intuition;" and early one morning he rose from bed and tried to begin an essay upon immortality, apparently in a state of semi-delirium. On his last day he sacrificed, as Chesterfield rather cynically observes, his cock to AEsculapius. Hooke, a zealous Catholic friend, asked him whether he would not send for a priest. "I do not suppose that it is essential," said Pope, "but it will look right, and I heartily thank you for putting me in mind of it." A priest was brought, and Pope received ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... He smiled cynically as he shouldered his way through the slowly moving crowd—that kaleidoscope of the humanities which congregate but do not blend; which coagulate wherever the trial of science, speed, and stamina serves as an excuse for putting fortune to ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... quill pen to his liking, he would write a few lines carefully, kill a number of flies, take a peep at Alban from beneath his shaggy brows and then resume the cycle of his labors. Alban pitied him cynically. This labor of docketing scarred backs seemed wretchedly monotonous. He was really glad when the fellow spoke to him, in as amazing a combination of tongues ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... wander, not two but one, farther into the forest, ardently believing in themselves; they are not hypocrites. The somewhat bedraggled figure of Joanna follows them, and the nightingale resumes his love-song. 'That's all you know, you bird!' thinks Joanna cynically. The nightingale, however, is not singing for them nor for her, but for another pair he has espied below. They are racing, the prize to be for the one who first finds the spot where the easel was put up last night. The hobbledehoy is sure to be the winner, for she is ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... the Dark Ages matrimony seems to have given your sex the same privileges," philosophized her companion cynically. ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... cynically. "Oh, you have always been ready to rush in!" he said. "Doubtless your weakness ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... was cheaper for the Government to give him a title than a pair of shoes," observed Dan, cynically. "Why, you are going in for luxury! Is that pile of oak shingles for your roof? We made ours of rails ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Horace cynically. "It's nothing to her discredit, far from it. You remember the night you suggested that she might live by the sale of her pictures, and I scoffed at you and said that all the pretty little pictures she could paint in a year wouldn't keep her in gowns? Well, you ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... Tennyson to Emerson: "One of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of dusky hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades such ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... home and racked his brains how to pay butcher and grocer. Others of the fraternity were by no means so nice. He knew of some who would not stir a yard unless their fee was planked down before them—old stagers these, who at one time had been badly bitten and were now grown cynically distrustful. Or tired. And indeed who could blame a man for hesitating of a pitch-dark night in the winter rains, or on a blazing summer day, whether or no he should set out on a twenty-mile ride for which he might never see ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... has ceased to love him as she has discarded her "white wimples," which, if she marries this inferior person, she may long for once again! And he adds, rather cynically, for a blessed soul in Purgatory, that through her one ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... other is a devil of a laugh, mostly made of chuckles that seem to bubble off a Bell-brew of disillusionment, and you get the impression that he is laughing at himself—cynically laying bare the vanity and fallibility of his own ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... I say this of the new voices, I hope that no one will imagine that I speak cynically or even in sympathetic irony. It may well be that those who use the phrase "Life-Urge" in reality mean very nearly what I mean when I speak of "the Grace of Heaven." They, indeed, may be more honest and more sincere than I am in their reticence of language and in their determination not to ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... ruddy and cheerful, quite his old self, in fact. Evidently the sea air and the change had assuaged his grief to a considerable extent, and Giles could not help remarking cynically on his quick recovery. "I thought you were fond of Daisy," ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... robbery?" I asked cynically. "Lawyers may feel their way amid the intricacies, but no one else can hope to. I'm stealing now when ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... existence? Why couldn't life be simple and straightforward with people like his father and himself and that girl Maggie alone somewhere with nothing to interfere? Life was never just as you wanted it, always a little askew, a little twisted, cynically cocking its eye at you before it vanished round the corner? He didn't seem to be able to manage it. Anyway, he wasn't going to have that fellow ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... in mind, he stood well back beyond the outer fringe of that frantic, swaying, cursing crowd, and cynically watched its proceedings. The scene upon which he gazed was precisely what he had expected from the moment when those three ill-omened lights had burst through the fog and told him that the Golden Fleece ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... when he rises and goes forth in the morning, there sure enough are the blue hills, only now they have changed places with him, and smile across to him, distant as ever, from the old home whence he has come. Such a story might have been very cynically treated; but it is not so done, the whole tone is kindly and consolatory, and the disenchanted man submissively takes the lesson, and understands that things far away are to be loved for their own sake, and that the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... intended, asking, justly enough, on what privilege his visitor rested such a demand and why he himself was disqualified from offering his wares to the highest bidder. "Surely you wouldn't hawk such things about?" cried Mr. Locket; but before Baron had time to retort cynically he added: "I'll ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... herself. And in 1809, after thirty-four years of marriage, and when she must have been nearing fifty, an island Chastelard, of the name of Kanihonui, was found to be her lover, and paid the penalty of life; she cynically surviving. Some twenty years later, one of the missionaries had written home denouncing the misconduct of an English whaler. The whaler got word of the denunciation and, with the complicity of the English consul, sought to make a crime of it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cynically. "A consultation, will rectify it," was all he said. "A conference will show you ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... said, and Creede laughed silently as he reined Bat Wings into the trail. But just as they started to go one of the men by the scales hailed them, motioning with his hand and, still laughing cynically, the foreman of the Dos ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... hole—into that hole under his, eyes—was all that was wanted! that he had been making a noise for nothing, and because he had not the wit to hit on a simple contrivance! Then, too, his jest about the geese—this woman had put a stop to that! He inspected the hollow cynically. A man might instruct him on a point or two: Old Tom was not going to admit that a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tiny box-office where Ryan had stood two hours before and cynically waited for his sport to begin. It was empty now, offering a perfect refuge. Varney followed and stood with his hand on the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to bed. And two of the Englishwomen who knew him quite well teased him and said how beautiful his bride was and how strange-looking, and what an iceberg he must be to be able to come out to supper and leave her alone! And they wondered why he then smiled cynically. ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... grinned cynically, and we meanwhile mounted to our seats, Hawkesbury and Whipcord being in front, and I, much to my disgust, being placed beside Masham on ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... him to give juster laws to the women of Piedmont, who, in all that appertained to the right of inheritance, were greatly inferior to men. M. de Cavour laughed, half cynically, as at an expression called forth by a certain esprit de corps; but afterwards he discoursed seriously on the difficulties which, particularly amongst an agricultural population, stood in the way of an equal ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... supper table she told Hinpoha that after school was out she was to go West and live with Aunt Grace, and then sat cynically watching the unbelieving delight which flashed into her face at this announcement. But after the first flush of rapture Hinpoha reconsidered. In her mind's eye she saw Aunt Phoebe living on alone, unloving and unloved, to ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... start railing at the culprit, while the crowd listened as silently and attentively as though he had been saying something worthy to be heard and heeded, rather than foully and cynically miscalling ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... her. Perhaps, as the novels tell us, love is a wonderful thing——" She looked at Micky with a comical expression in her queer eyes. "I should say it must be if it's reformed that man," she added cynically. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... note of this wild music lingering in the old Commoner's soul, he sat as if dreaming, laughed cynically, turned to ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... the body as he spoke. "Well done, my men," he continued, "we have made a good beginning. Forward—by the King's command." He mounted his horse and rode out of the court-yard, followed by Nevers, who cynically exclaimed as he looked at the body, "Sic transit gloria mundi." Tosinghi took the chain of gold—the insignia of his office—from the admiral's neck, and Petrucci, a gentleman in the train of the Duke of Nevers, cut off the head ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... type, making room for such an idealist as Crawley as well as for sleek bishops and ecclesiastical wire-pullers. Neither his young women nor his holy men are overdrawn a jot: they have the continence of Nature. But they are not cynically presented. You like them and take pleasure in their society; they are so beautifully true! The inspiration of these studies came to him as he walked under the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral; and one is never far ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... oar first," said Mac, cynically. "Ye micht fall in again, Harry, and I'll just be makin' siccar that ane of us twa gets hame ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... Congress as delegates, and that the thousands of workers who will watch its work, should understand why the resolutions arrived at by the Paris, Brussels, and Zurich International Congresses with regard to the Anarchists should be enforced. The Anarchists who cynically declare Workers' Congresses "absurd, motiveless, and senseless" must be taught once and for all, that they cannot be allowed to make the Congresses of the Revolutionary Socialists of the whole world a playground for ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... git to North Wilkesboro'," Zeke answered, to the obvious relief of the assembly, as he opened the bag. While he was busy stowing the shoes, the onlookers commented cynically on the ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... his mouth cynically. "Huh! Then it's good-bye tools, I suppose. I'm no churchmember, thank God, but I've heard that once the Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all hell can't pry ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... sir," retorted Mervyn, cynically; "which plainly requires that I shall have no doubt, which the evidence of the witness can clear up, unsifted and unsatisfied. I happened to think it of some moment to ascertain, if possible, whether more persons than one were ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of Marie Antoinette. Some of them, in coarse language, criticized her assumed infidelities; others, with a polite sneer, affected to defend her. But the result of it all was dangerous to both, especially as France was already verging toward the deluge which Louis XV. had cynically predicted ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... more about it, then," he cynically observed; "if you love your lamb better than both your father and your mother, keep it, and good ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... these decisions, but with a carefully fostered readiness to sacrifice their lives for them if necessary; 600,000 men and women who are persuaded that by their way alone is humanity to be saved; who are persuaded (to put it as cynically and unsympathetically as possible) that the noblest death one can die is in carrying out a decision of the Central Committee; such a body, even in a country such as Russia, is an enormously strong embodiment of human will, an instrument of struggle capable of working something very like miracles. ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... neighbours and ourselves. But even as the senseless changes rang, And I help'd ring them, in my secret soul Grew weariness, disgust, and self-contempt; And more disturb'd in spirit, I retraced, More cynically sad, my homeward way. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... beginning, have men said of women, though neither so many nor so bitter, as the witty Frenchman cynically remarks, as the things women have said of one another. Poor Eve has paid very dear for that apple: the only wonder is, that she was not made responsible also for the Flood: but we have not got the whole ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... 'quite.' And he smiled. He seemed to fail to realise that Sir John Pleydell was in deadly earnest, and really harboured the implacable spirit of revenge with which he cynically credited himself. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... reputation, and we know that you are well disposed toward France. How do you feel toward la Commune?" Mr. Washburn hesitating a moment, the man added, cynically, "Perhaps you would like to add a stone to our barricades." He made as if he would open the door of the carriage; but Mr. Washburn answered, holding back the door, "I take it for granted, Monsieur, that I have your permission to drive on, as I have something very important to attend to at my ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... He laughed a little cynically as he laid his letters down on his desk and proceeded to open them—in which occupation he was presently interrupted by the opening of the side-door and the entrance of Mr. ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... was once more all in flames: the English and Burgundians had entered and then abandoned Paris—Duke Philip cynically leaving that city, which he had promised to give up to Charles, to its own protection, in order to look after his more pressing personal concerns: while Bedford spread fire and flame about the adjacent country, retaking with much slaughter many ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... relatives'll turn up now," said Just, cynically. "People he never heard of. I'll bet he won't know this woman ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... down, provided that the interests of the common people were not too sharply set in antagonism to their own interests. Here were the privileged, who did what they liked on the condition of not offending each other. Here the populace was honestly and cynically and openly regarded as a restless child, to be humoured and to be flattered, but also to be ruled firmly, to be kept in its place, to be ignored when advisable, and to be ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... cynically. "What do you expect of a savage? When an Arab sees a woman that he wants he takes her. I only follow the customs of ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... cent. at least, is not made for that unknown quantity—woman. Third: it is beneficial to remember that one man rarely knows everything. Other morals will doubtless present themselves, and at the end the cynically-inclined person may reflect upon the adage about the frying-pan and ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... shall be able to indulge in day-dreams now. I shall not grow old cynically. There are unselfish, true-hearted, valiant women. There are women who will not marry men for position, name, fame, power, money; no, nor for anything but love. How do I know? Because you don't love me, my dear. But you do love Nicholas Jelnik. You had not ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... prince, nor anything that can in any way help the inquirer to a conclusion; whilst, on the subject of the strangling, not another word does the Master of Ceremonies add to what has above been quoted. That he should so coldly—almost cynically—state that Alfonso was strangled, without so much as suggesting by whom, is singular in one who, however grimly laconic, is seldom reticent—notwithstanding that he may have been so accounted by those ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... redistribution of property, and declaring England a republic. "You would never have burned your capital," he said to O'Meara at St. Helena; "you are too rich and fond of money." The London mob, he believed, would have joined him, for, as he cynically argued, "the canaille of ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... half a dozen lovers, since men grow weary and change and women, in loneliness or desperation, change also. Never would I let myself sink to the degrading level of sex complaisance that is sadly or cynically accepted by many women, self-supporting and self-respecting, in many American cities, simply because they cannot combat conditions that have been created and perpetuated ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... sure I did," was the answer, cynically delivered, accompanied by a short, sharp laugh. "When I have settled other accounts, and put all my affairs in order, I shall save the provost-marshal the trouble of further seeking the slayer. And you didn't know then, Sylvia, when you lied so glibly to ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... believe in your honor," sneered Pine cynically. "It is a selfish quality in this case, which can only be gratified by preserving silence. If Agnes knew that I was a true Romany tramp, she might run away with Lambert, and as you want him to be your husband, it is to your interest to hold ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... tears for the westering sun to dry, only strangely quenched eyes, more green than blue, for Malcourt to study, furtively; only the pale oval of a face to examine, curiously, and not too cynically; and a mouth, somewhat colourless, to reassure without conviction—also without self-conviction. This was all—except a pair of slim, clinging hands to release when the time came, using discretion—and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Beachcombing is a nicely adjusted, if not quite an exact art. Not once but several times has the libertine Neptune scandalously seduced punts and dinghies from the respectable precincts of Brammo Bay, and having philandered with them for a while, cynically abandoned them with a bump on the mainland beach, and only once has he sent a punt in return—a poor, soiled, tar-besmirched, disorderly waif that was reported to the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Jack spoke wildly, cynically, and desperately. Old Fletcher listened to these words with a face so full of astonishment and horror, that it has haunted me ever since. And so we turned away, and we left that stricken old man looking after us in amazement and horror too ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... here suggested cynically that perhaps he dreaded cold feet, but her husband ignored this. To what he felt to be the commonplaceness of her outlook he had long since ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... Women like this are bound to get in. Everyone there knew her. She had a bad reputation in the city. Symeon felt humiliated to have such a person in his house. This Nazarene certainly knows all the worst people, reflected the young Pharisee cynically. ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... girl dancing passed and repassed me, and my glance rested on her idly, even cynically. For she seemed so happy, and at that time happiness won my languid wonder, if ingenuously exhibited. To be happy seemed almost to be mindless. But by degrees I found myself watching this girl, and more closely. Another dance began. She joined it with another partner. ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... he said?" Chia Lien interposed cynically. "But to acknowledge him as a son is no easy question to settle!" and with these words, he walked in; whereupon Pao-y smilingly said: "To-morrow when you have nothing to do, just come and look me up; but don't go and play any devilish pranks with them! I've ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... two hundred employees of the factory with many of their wives and children were gathered in the factory yard. At first they seemed cynically amused by what they called Moore's bluff. By mid-afternoon, however, after repeated assurances from Roger that his father was going to be a farmer, the crowd became surly. A strange man got up and made a speech. He said that capitalists like Moore should be destroyed, that men such as ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... of the great Oliver; for Oliver, as will be presently seen, and all his tribe were fed upon no other food than the possessions of the Church. Cromwell, in his business of suppressing the great houses, embezzled quite cynically—if we can fairly call that "embezzlement" which was probably countenanced by the King, to whom account was due. Indeed, it is plainly evident from the whole story of that vast economic catastrophe which so completely separates the England we know ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... to Leicester Ralegh's sudden favour on his return from Ireland. A few months before he was, we have seen, soliciting the Earl for a change of employment. His introduction at Court may have been the answer. Sir Henry Wotton, adopting the view, cynically surmised that Leicester wished to 'bestow handsomely upon another some part of the pains, and perhaps of the envy, to which long indulgent fortune is obnoxious.' By others, whom Scott has partly followed, the Earl of Sussex has been credited with the elevation of Ralegh, as a counterpoise to Leicester. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... sure. He had some experience of Government officials, and of official methods, and knew more of red tape than Peppermore did. As for Tansley, who came in soon after, he was cynically scornful. ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... divided equally. Later on each might find an opportunity to force rearrangements. Such an alliance might temporarily suspend, but it would not end, the individual ambitions of each governing clique. The idea may not have presented itself so cynically to the man who first conceived it, but that was the spirit in which it was later on acceded to by the Governments of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... here looking the place over inch by inch through our glasses, when an ejaculation of disgust from Kongoni called our attention. There at another spot that confounded beast sat like a house cat watching us cynically. Either we had come too soon, or she had heard us and retired to what she considered a safe distance. There was of course no chance of getting nearer; so I sat down, for a steadier hold, and tried her anyway. At the shot she ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... and he told her somewhat doggedly, but not unkindly, to cease. "Do you know what the bells are ringing for?" he asked cynically, after a short pause. ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... "Have you," she asked cynically, "always been so straight that you don't know what temptation means? Have you never wanted anything so much ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... the duties of professions and vocations, a relative or opposite, touching the frauds, cautels, impostures, and vices of every profession, which hath been likewise handled; but how? rather in a satire and cynically, than seriously and wisely; for men have rather sought by wit to deride and traduce much of that which is good in professions, than with judgment to discover and sever that which is corrupt. For, as Solomon saith, he that cometh to seek after knowledge with a mind to scorn and censure shall ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... He has blue, honest, direct-gazing eyes with small humour wrinkles at the corners. I never knew a man with fewer theories, or with a simpler devotion to the thing at hand, whatever it may be. At everything else he smiles, not cynically, for he is too modest in his regard for his own knowledge; he smiles at everything else because it doesn't ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... something," said the mountaineer. "He has ears like a rat for hearing. What a pretty picture!" cynically. "All the world loves a ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... money finds friends for men, and has great (he said the greatest) power among Mankind, cynically adding, "A mighty person indeed is a rich man, especially ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... his cigar into the corner of his hard mouth. He was squinting cynically across the rolling golf course. What he saw there checked his talk. He opened his eyes to get a clearer view. His impression grew definite and unmistakable. There, half playing and half sporting, like young lambs upon the close-cropped turf, were Kenyon Adams and Lila Van Dorn! They were ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... for others and falling into it yourself," Millar remarked cynically. "However," he went on, "things are not so bad. I have reliable information that the ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... the little nook which I occupy in it, and whence I and a fellow-lodger and friend of mine cynically observe it, presents a strange motley scene. We are in a state of transition. We are not as yet in the town, and we have left the country, where we were when I came to lodge with Mrs. Cammysole, my excellent landlady. I then took second-floor apartments at No. 17, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... multiplication table, and forget his fragments of the Athanasian Creed. Let the wheat and tares be planted together, and trust to the superior vitality of the more valuable plant. The sentiment might be expressed sentimentally as easily as cynically. We may urge, like many sceptics of the last century, that Christianity should be kept "for the use of the poor," and renounced in the esoteric creed of the educated. Or we may urge the literary and aesthetic beauty of the old training, and wish it to be preserved to discipline the imagination, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Mery and his desire to help the oppressed Jews, always inhibited by inherited powerlessness to act; the carefree, art-centered, egotistical Kowalski; the adolescent romanticism and sympathetic insight of Mery; the cynically idealistic and self-sacrificing Dr. Lazarus—these constitute the real substance and artistic worth of the book. The pictures of contemporary Russian Jewish life are of marked interest, especially to the western reader. The following passages are descriptive of the Grube or ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... said, cynically, "of a truth a man brave in the day can be turned into a quaking coward at night; you have but to present him a danger substantial enough to quicken his imagination. These Greeks have withstood you stoutly; try them now with your ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... moreover, his vanity as an intellectual man provoked him to extraordinary exertions in cases wherein he fancied he might win for himself the glory of strengthening and verifying matters which in themselves perhaps lacked almost the elements of existence. "Spiritual truths," he once cynically remarked to Sainte-Beuve, whom, by the way, he detested, "will take care of themselves; it is the nursing of spiritual falsehood which needs all the care of the clergy." On the Sunday in question he had surpassed himself. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... allegorical figure." Here the unhappy being succeeds in his purpose. The story takes place in mocking, careless Paris, "that branch establishment of hell"; a cashier, on the eve of embezzlement and detection, cynically accedes to Melmoth's terms, and accepts his help—with what unlooked-for results, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... of joint,' and everything looks yellow because his own biliary system is out of order. That is the beginning of the book, and there are hosts of other things in the course of it as one-sided, as cynically bitter, and therefore superficial. But the end of it is: 'Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter; fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.' In his journey from the one point to the other my text is the first ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it will last," Brooks' neighbour remarked, cynically. "The manufacturers are like a lot of children with a new toy. What about the Colonies? What are they going to ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... meant it, of course—he wasn't awaiting her at all, as he had promised—and when she finally comes to him he speaks coldly, cynically, denying his words, pretending he knows nothing. It—it's a rather clumsy way of getting out of it, seems to me. Anyway he saw that his joke had been carried too far. It—it hasn't proved such a very good one, has it? It—it has turned ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... are kindly and courteous people, and felt, I am sure, that they were both receiving and conferring benefits. They will like to describe me and my house, and they will feel that I am pleased at being received on equal terms into county society. I don't put this down at all cynically; but they are not people with whom I have anything in common. I am not of their monde at all. I belong to the middle class, and they are of the upper class. I have a faint desire to indicate that I don't want to cross the border-line, and that what ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that Claire could do to keep from exclaiming aloud, as it burst upon her astonished senses that this poor, huddled creature was none other than the grande dame of the railway carriage, the haughtily indifferent, cynically amused personage who had seemed so supremely superior to the agitations of the common ruck! Strange what changes a few hours' conflict with the forces of Nature could ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... must settle accounts with this gentleman, but I don't want to use this," he added thoughtfully, as he pushed up the safety-catch and dropped the weapon in his pocket; "we might be able to gas him. Anyway, you can do no more good or harm," he said cynically. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... Zangiacomos who often were anything but musicians by profession. While he was staring at the poster, a door somewhere at his back opened, and a woman came in who was looked upon as Schomberg's wife, no doubt with truth. As somebody remarked cynically once, she was too unattractive to be anything else. The opinion that he treated her abominably was based on her frightened expression. Davidson lifted his hat to her. Mrs. Schomberg gave him an inclination of her sallow head and incontinently sat down behind a sort of raised counter, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... other Brook had hitherto managed to keep clear of any entanglement which could hamper his life, probably by virtue of that hardness which he had shown to poor Lady Fan, and which had so strongly prejudiced Clare Bowring against him. His father said cynically that the lad was canny. Hitherto he had certainly shown that he could be selfish; and perhaps there is less difference between the meanings of the Scotch and English words ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... steeds, but bestriding them as if "'twas not their habit often of an afternoon." All which,—the bad teeth, pallid skins, and rustic toilets of the fair, and the very moderate horsemanship of the brave,—privates, standing at ease in the ranks, take note of, not cynically, but as men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... The word died with a prolonged echo at the end of the hall, the faces regarding him, hopefully, cynically, wearily, were alike arrested, engrossed. Six hundred eyes were turned slightly upward. With an even graceless flow that reminded Anthony of the rolling of bowling balls he launched himself into ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... who have the fullest opportunity of studying them is shown by the fact that the Administration are pledged to refuse admission to the tables to any subject of the Prince of Monaco, or to any French subject of Nice or the department of the Maritime Alps. The proclamation of this fact cynically stares in the face all who enter the Casino. The local authorities will not have any of their own neighbours ruined. Let foreigners, or even Frenchmen of other departments, care ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... John's enemies spoke apart, and John watched them cynically. He knew well what they intended, and that he had ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... was feeling hurt and bewildered. He could not understand her mood. He had come up expecting to be soothed and comforted and she was like a petulant iceberg. Cynically, he recalled some lines of poetry which he had had to write out a hundred times on one occasion at school as a punishment for having introduced a white ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... on his own account, and unknown to Mrs. Nightingale and Fenwick, made confidential reference to Scotland Yard, that Yard smiled cynically over the Chicago storekeeper, and expressed the opinion that probably Fenwick's game was a similar game, and that things of this sort were usually some game. The doctor observed that he knew without being told that nine such cases out of ten ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... he laughed cynically, "I'll make use of you and your intelligence fast enough—when I want them. You were cavilling at ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward |
