"Ridicule" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been among the chief actors, has its points of embarrassment as well as advantage. Those who fight the battle can best give what all readers like to know—the impelling motives to action; the struggle in the face of opposition; the vexation under ridicule; and the despair in success too long deferred. Moreover, there is an interest in history written from a subjective point of view, that may compensate the reader in this case for any seeming egotism ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... whose characters so supplemented each other as to constitute in unison a formidable engine of tyranny. Clem—suspicious, revengeful, fierce, watching with cruel eyes every opportunity of taking payment on account for the ridicule to which she had exposed herself; Mrs. Peckover—ceaselessly occupied with the basest scheming, keen as an Indian on any trail she happened to strike, excited by the scent of money as a jackal by that of carrion; ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... highly-wrought imaginative temperament. He had not heard more than those few words, but his mind was quick to take in the whole situation. He could hear the lengthy speeches of ridicule and sarcasm aimed at him from every possible standpoint, and he felt the more determined to live down the scathing thoughts. The man did not hear the reply by Marguerite Verne to her arrogant sister, but he calmly and slowly repeated the words—"God bless you, noble girl!" He still had faith in ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... well-known author published his poems in the year 1777, "Such a one's verses are come out," said I: "Yes," replied Johnson, "and this frost has struck them in again. Here are some lines I have written to ridicule them; but remember that I love the fellow dearly now—for all ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Christians outside of the Episcopal Church, comprising almost all the learning, the evangelistic zeal, and the charitable activity and self-denial of the American church of that time, that heard these unwonted pretensions with indignation or with ridicule; in the Episcopal Church itself they were disclaimed, scouted, and denounced with (if possible) greater indignation still. But the new party had elements of growth for which its adversaries did not sufficiently reckon. The experience of other ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... are echoes of the halcyon days when Steele thought Savage a very fine fellow, made him an allowance and even proposed to become the poet's father-in-law. But the recipient of all this favour was caddish enough to ridicule his patron, a kind friend mentioned the fact to Sir Richard, and the knight shut his doors on the ingrate. Let us, likewise, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... for satire; and the French caricaturists, being no longer allowed to hold up to ridicule and reprobation the King and the deputies, have found no lack of subjects for the pencil in the ridicules and rascalities of common life. We have said that public decency is greater amongst the French than amongst us, which, to some of our readers, may appear paradoxical; ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... done to interrupt, and render everything rational impossible. I know it was Rosamond's contrivance, she looked so triumphant, dressed in an absurd fancy dress, and her whole train doing nothing but turning me into ridicule, and Mrs. Tallboys too. Whatever you choose to call her, you cannot approve of a stranger and foreigner being insulted here. It is that about which I care— not myself; I have seen none of them since, nor shall I do so until a full apology ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the casting out of demons, which showed Him as the Lord of still wider and darker realms, and the Peace-bringer to spirits tortured and torn by a mysterious tyranny. His meek power sways all creatures; His 'word runneth very swiftly.' Winds and seas and demons hearken and obey. Cheap ridicule has been plentifully flung at this miracle, and some defenders of the Gospels have tried to explain it away, and have almost apologised for it, but, while it raises difficult problems in its details, the total effect ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... considered and planned, had indeed made many reflections while in prison as to the inconveniences of leading a debauched life. He did not need Desroches's lecture to understand the necessity of conciliating the people at Issoudun by decent, sober, and respectable conduct. Delighted to attract Max's ridicule by behaving with the propriety of a Mignonnet, he went further, and endeavored to lull Gilet's suspicions by deceiving him as to his real character. He was bent on being taken for a fool by appearing ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... was Dellarme in watching his men and the effect of their fire that he did not notice the two silhouettes on the sky-line, making ridicule of all his care about keeping his company under cover, until the doctor, who alone had nothing to do as yet, touched him on the arm. At the moment he looked around, and before he could speak a command, a hospital-corps man who was near Grandfather Fragini threw himself ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Brandenburg government? For two centuries neither Germans nor foreigners ceased to set their hopes on this new State, and for an equally long time neither Germans nor foreigners ceased to call it—at first with ridicule, and then with spite—"an artificial structure which cannot endure heavy storms, which has intruded without justification among the powers of Europe." How did it come about that impartial judges finally, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... are pretty and diverting fancies. But by the 1690's there had been a clear tendency to associate wit with mirth, and often with satire. By 1726 James Arbuckle could write (A Collection of Letters, 1729, II, 72): "... Satire and Ridicule, which are the main Provocatives to Laughter, still keep their ground among us, and are reckoned the chief Embellishments of Discourse by all who aim at the ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... Lord Brougham is unrivaled among the public men of the day. That his exuberant power of ridicule led him while Lord Chancellor, into some excess of its use, cannot be denied, although a ready excuse can be found in the circumstances of his situation. He might be held to be the representative of liberal principles ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... sadly how he walked through the market at Zion, thought of the past, and only kept back his tears lest the Arab onlookers should see and ridicule his sorrow. Yet another medieval letter-writer, Nachmanides, reaches the summit of sentiment in these lines, which I take from Dr. Schechter's translation: "I was exiled by force from home, I left my sons and daughters; and with the dear and sweet ones ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... you're not 'is sort. 'E's frightened of you. 'E want someone who pat 'is 'ead and let 'im cry on 'is shoulder. You can't 'elp 'im—and you fuss over 'im—you come 'ere and try to put 'is 'eart affaires in order and it's no use at all. C'est ridicule, enfin." ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Is it quite impossible to talk seriously with you? Is there nothing so sacred to you that you wouldn't ridicule it? ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... farce, when the lover wishes to embrace his mistress, he finds the wrinkled visage of the duenna offered to his lips. Sometimes he grew angry, but Diana always had some excellent reason with which to close his mouth. Sometimes she held up his pretensions to ridicule, and at others assumed a haughty air, which always quelled incipient rebellion ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... for instance, a very vain man is an object of ridicule, and generally of distrust. In France he is neither; on the contrary, there appears throughout the kingdom a kind of general agreement, a species of silent understood compact amongst them, that ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... loud-tongued, but have done nothing; there are no great social efforts, no organizations, no practical projects, whether successful or futile, to which they can point. The old 'book-faiths' which you venture to ridicule have been something at all events; and, in truth, I can find no other 'faith' than what is somehow or other attached to a 'book,' which has been any thing influential. The Vedas, the Koran, the Old Testament Scriptures,— those of the New,—over ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... scientific investigation for evidence that the dead still live. Hundreds of people are sufficiently sensitive to have some personal knowledge of the matter. The number is far beyond what it appears to be for two reasons. One is that the average person fears ridicule and keeps his own counsel about his occult experience. The other is the feeling that communications from departed relatives are too sacred and personal for public discussion. Tens of thousands of people have seen ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... the door. What was the use of arguing? But on the threshold a sudden impulse drew him back. "Look here, Denver—I daresay you're right. But will you do just one thing to prove it? Put my statement in the Investigator, just as I've made it. Ridicule it as much as you like. Only give the other fellows a chance at it—men who don't know anything about me. Set them talking and looking about. I don't care a damn whether YOU believe me—what I want is to convince the Grand Jury! I oughtn't to have ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... the wretchedly poor, are thus unskilled and helpless, but a deplorably large class is; and it is this class whose awkwardness and utter ignorance are too often made the theme of unthinking levity and ridicule when the poor exile from home and kindled lands in New York and undertakes housework or anything else for a living. The "awkwardness," which means only inability to do what one has never even seen done, is not confined to ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... the beating of all hearts, or poetry, pulsating in lofty words, brightened faces with enthusiasm, Maryan and the baron laughed inattentively and with contempt; when stupidity, selfishness, or wit called out laughter, or ridicule, they were immovable in cold importance, puffed up and insolent; when the curtain came down at the end, and a deafening, prolonged thunder of applause was heard, their hands rested ostentatiously on the edge of the box. ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... with vintners from the old country, about the feasibility of grape culture in Missouri. He always contended that grapes should succeed well here, as the woods were full of wild grapes, some of very fair quality, and that this would indicate a soil and climate favorable to the vine. They would ridicule the idea, and assert that labor was too high here, even if the vines would succeed, to make it pay; but they could not shake his faith in the ultimate success of grape culture. Alas! he lived only long enough to see the first dawnings of that glorious ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... In moving about from place to place he was the Christian bishop and the agreeable companion as well. His familiarity with subjects outside of theology, and his ready retort upon those who attempted now and then to draw the Church or his office into ridicule, were pleasant features of his life, treasured and handed down to us by the generation ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... ill, my Bob, does it become me to ridicule women with whom I have scarce any correspondence! There are, 'tis certain, handsome women here; and 'tis as certain there are handsome men to keep them company. An ugly and a poor man is society for himself; and such society the world ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the offence of that outrageous utterance against White Fell; and the impulse passed. Then other considerations counselled silence; and afterwards a humour possessed him to wait and see how Christian would find opportunity to proclaim his performance and establish the fact, without exciting ridicule on account of the absurdity of ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... my change of body, natural to increase of age; but in that first edition, there was inserted (without my consent!) a Sonnet to Lord Stanhope, in direct contradiction, equally, to my then, as to my present principles. A Sonnet written by me in ridicule and mockery of the bloated style of French Jacobinical declamation, and inserted by Biggs, (the fool of a printer,) in order forsooth, that he might send the book, and a letter to Earl Stanhope; who, to prove that he was not mad in all ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... forcibly taken from his parents and placed in a Convent School. She explains that not only was this quite right, but that such a course is inevitable in every country in which the Church has power; and that the feelings of the heretic mother whose child is taken from her are a fair subject of ridicule on the part of good Catholics. Can Irish Protestants be accused of bigotry when they contend that these writers mean what they say? English Nonconformists argue that they ought to wait until the time comes and then either fight or leave the country; but the Irish ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... duration for some years to come, which would give him an opportunity of keeping in continued touch with his English and European patients. The English are a practical people, and less sensitive than we to, or more careless of, ridicule, and they are likely to grasp the importance of Dr. Brinkley's work on the instant of his arrival, compelling ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... wisdom. Many stories are preserved of the bitter and unwise words he used in country coteries; how he proposed Washington's health as an amendment to Pitt's, gave as a toast "the last verse of the last chapter of Kings," and celebrated Dumouriez in a doggerel impromptu full of ridicule and hate. Now his sympathies would inspire him with "Scots wha hae"; now involve him in a drunken broil with a loyal officer, and consequent apologies and explanations, hard to offer for a man of Burns's stomach. Nor was this the front of his offending. On February 27, 1792, he took part ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was placed at my left hand. If she had come in before we sat down to dinner I should have made some excuse and gone away, but as we had begun the soup a sudden flight would have covered me with ridicule. I adopted the plan of not looking at her, reserving all my politeness for the lady on my right. When the meal was over Malingan took me apart, and swore to me that he had not invited the Charpillon, but I was not convinced, though I pretended to be ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... be able to foresee danger and measure it, the more chance there is of his brute courage giving way. The more feeling a man has, the more keen he is to feel pain of body, or pain of mind, such as shame, loneliness, the dislike of ridicule, and the contempt of his fellow-men; in a word, the more of a man he is, the more chance there is of his brute courage breaking down, just when he wants it more to keep him up, and leaving him to play the coward and ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... absurd," says the young man, taking now the superior tone that is meant to crush the situation by holding it up to ridicule. "You forget, perhaps, that we shall have to meet sometimes. I suppose the people down here give balls occasionally, and tennis-parties, and that; and when I meet you at them, is it your wish that I shall pretend never to have seen you ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Ann was deeply in love with John McNeil—the genial, handsome and successful young Irishman. The affair had reached the stage of frankness, of an open discussion of plans, of fond affection expressing itself in caresses quite indifferent to ridicule. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... Cockaygne (variously spelled) was intended to ridicule the mythical country of Avalon, somewhat as Cervantes' Don Quixote later ridicules the romances of chivalry. In Luxury Land everything was good to eat; houses were built of dainties and shingled with cakes; buttered larks fell instead of rain; the streams ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Dodds, it would be the worse for him. By far his best chance of a peaceful life was to be a bishop and not to live in Scotland. This was a great deal worse than Lalage's way of treating him. She merely sported, pursuing him with gay ridicule, mangling his pet quotations, smiling at his swelling rotundities. Dodds would have sent him to the stake without an ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... men in our office. They liked me well enough, but used to guy me unmercifully for my simplicity and clumsiness. One of them, Harry by name, was something of a scapegrace, and soon acquired quite a power over me. I stood in much fear of his ridicule, and frequently did things for which my conscience reproached me, rather than stand the fire of his raillery. The greatest harm he did me was in firing my imagination with stories of Wall street, of the fortunes that were and could ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... told the story of her adventures, hesitatingly at first and afterwards with more confidence seeing that Hannah sympathised and did not chide or ridicule. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... Wordsworth, why should not humbler folks have the courage of their own opinions? They cannot possibly be more wrong than Johnson and Macaulay were, and it is surely better to be honest, though it may expose one to some ridicule, than to lie. The more we agree with the verdict of the generations before us on these matters, the more, it is quite true, we are likely to be right; but the agreement should be an honest one. At present very extensive domains in literature are, as it were, enclosed ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Dr. Duchesne had not hoaxed them in regard to the quality of See Yup's medicines, they knew that an attack on the unfortunate Chinaman would in either case reveal their secret and expose them to the ridicule of their brother miners. So the matter dropped, and See Yup ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... fighting, 5-1/3; lying, 4; stealing, 1; miscellaneous, 7-1/3. He names a long list of punishable offenses, such as malice, swearing, obscenity, bullying, lying, cheating, untidiness, insolence, insult, conspiracy, disobedience, obstinacy, rudeness, noisiness, ridicule; injury to books, building, or other property; and analyzes at length the kinds of punishment, modes of making it fit the offense and the nature of the child, the discipline of consequences, lapse of time between the offense and its punishment, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... in haste, fearing a rescue of the prisoners, and while waiting at the tolbooth till the magistrates came to receive them, one John Nisbet, the arch-bishop's rector, said to Mr. Cargil in ridicule, three times over, Will you give us one word more, (alluding to an expression he used sometime when preaching) to whom Mr. Cargil said with regret, "Mock not, lest your hands be made strong. The day is coming, when ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... He was between the devil and the deep sea. The prospect of staying lost in a world of trees filled him with hungry foreboding. But he dreaded the open highway and pictured himself John Gilpining through town and village, a thing of ridicule and helpless progress. Puck in the guise of a hairbrained mule! He would pound onward into the night and throw his rider with ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... as cheap as you do," he was assured by many a farmer's wife, who had been won by the unconscious eloquence of his dark eyes. No longer did people laugh at "the little merchant," for nothing so quickly kills ridicule as success. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... Walstein. 'In an evil hour I might descend from my pedestal; I should compromise my dignity with the herd; I should sink before the first shaft of ridicule.' ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... such a confounded mistake. This lovely being is—is—is—don't prepare to laugh. I shall be tempted to knock you down if you do, for really my feelings are so much interested that I could not bear even a friend's ridicule." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... himself had such a bright, intelligent face and genial manner, was so ready to assist or oblige a comrade in any right and honorable way that lay in his power, so very conscientious about obeying rules and doing his duty in everything, and brave in facing ridicule, insolence, and contempt, when the choice was between that and wrong-doing, that no one of them could help respecting him, whether willing to ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... after the great reception was over, he signed the final Proclamation of Emancipation. Though at home there was still ridicule and abuse, in England the effect of the Proclamation was significant; for there the laboring men were in dire distress because they could get no cotton for their mills; but these English laborers—hearing of the Emancipation Proclamation—felt that the cause of the Union ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... gentlemen, any could be found with sufficient enthusiasm, for the Royal cause, here represented by me, to attend, and support me through all the fatigues, the endless errands, the interviews—ay, also the rebuffs, the ridicule at times, perhaps the danger of the conjuration, which must be set on foot in this country—to do all that, without hope of other reward than the consciousness of helping a good cause, and—and the gratitude of one, who may have nothing ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Latona with her two children, watching what was taking place in distant Thebes. "See, my children," she said, "I, your mother, who am so proud of your birth, who yield place to no goddess except Juno, I am held up to ridicule by an upstart mortal, and if you do not defend me, my children, I shall be driven away from the ancient and holy altars. Yes, you too are insulted by Niobe, and she would like to have you set aside ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... American papers that our National Guard could not mobilise for Mexico because of lack of sleeping cars caused much ridicule here, where they go to ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... Lacedaemonians, began the practice of gymnastic exercises, the wits of the time had it in their power to make sport of those novelties.... As for the man who laughs at the idea of undressed women going through gymnastic exercises, as a means of revealing what is most perfect, his ridicule is but 'unripe fruit plucked from the tree of wisdom.'" ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... from his seat, by a vote of the House of Commons, had (in 1770) thrown the nation into a ferment. Johnson was roused to take the side of the ministry; and endeavoured in a pamphlet, called the False Alarm, as much by ridicule as by argument, to support a violent and arbitrary measure. It appears, both from his conversation and his writings, that he thought there was a point at which resistance might become justifiable; and, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Patrick to call the steward of the fort of Naas—i.e., Fallen. He avoided Patrick; and he pretended to be asleep, through enmity and ridicule of Patrick. And Patrick was told that the steward was asleep. "My debroth," said Patrick, "I should not be surprised if it were his last sleep." His people went to awake him, and they found him dead, through the disobedience ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... Renaissance supposition that each genre has a style and subject matter appropriate to it. This supposition discouraged any "mixing" of the genres: in Richard Blackmore's words, "all comick Manners, witty Conceits and Ridicule" should be barred from heroic poetry.[11] The influence of the genres theories even after Pope's death may be shown by the fact that Pope, for the very reason that he had failed to work in the major genres, was ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... still to be learned without being wise. The world is full of such persons to-day when education is too cheap. Concha steered his flock as best he could through the stormy paths of insurrection and civil war. He ruled with a rod of iron whom he could, and such as were beyond his reach he influenced by ridicule and a patient tolerance. True to his cloth, he was the enemy of all progress and distrusted ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... 'Room amongst yourselves: all that wins me this homage I would lay at the feet of Beauty. I enter the lists of love,' and straightway his power vanishes, the poorest booby of twenty-four can jostle him aside; before, the object of reverence, he is now the butt of ridicule. The instant he asks right to win the heart of a woman, a boy whom in all else he could rule as a lackey cries, 'Off, Graybeard, that realm ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Tiha prodded, and since Wiwau knew that for what she gave Tiha would then try to give more, Wiwau exerted herself to give the utmost while yet she could. The perspiration ran down both their faces. Each had her partisans in the crowd, who encouraged and heaped ridicule with every prod. ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... as a passionate admirer of her poetry, I felt flattered, at finding that Lord Byron fully sympathized with my admiration. He has, or at least expresses a strong dislike to the Lake school of poets, never mentions them except in ridicule, and he and I nearly quarrelled to-day because I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... to what dangers would you expose your own life, and the fortune of the State? Or if I should make any private person believe that you were a good economist, and he should trust you afterwards with the care of his family, would not you be the ruin of his estate, and expose yourself to ridicule and contempt? Which is as much as to say, Critobulus, that the shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be: and if you observe, you will find that ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... once or twice he, as Macleod's friend, had been archly questioned on the subject by some inquisitive lady, whose eyes asked more than her words. But Lieutenant Ogilvie was gravely discreet. He neither treated the matter with ridicule, nor, on the other hand, did he pretend to know more than he actually knew—which was literally nothing at all. For Macleod, who was, in ordinary circumstances, anything but a reserved or austere person, was on this subject ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... of fancied prudence, seeing that he would thereby admit his guilt, and prove his pusillanimity, while it might ultimately turn out that the king's intentions were not hostile, whereby he would be exposed to the ridicule and scorn of both king and subjects. Having beat off Scott's retainers, and secured in this way, as he thought, a fancied victory, he marched direct on to his own Tower; and, as he approached, sounded his horn in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... in so noble a spirit certainly does not deserve the ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished upon it. Curiously, indeed, one of the most contemptuous of these criticisms has been recently made by one of the most strenuous defenders of orthodoxy. No less eminent a standard-bearer of the faith than the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... woman who marries a man much younger than herself there is the inevitable picture of later life to be faced. The ridicule of society will be felt if it is not heard. The advance of age is relentless and will make her an old woman when he is just in his prime. She may pray for death to come and set him free, or she may ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... enormous penalties or imprisonment, but NOW, what keeps you back, O Christian. Fears for the loss of property, liberty, or life, would have been a wretched plea for the loss of the soul, how much less the fear of ridicule ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that this passage would be quoted against him, and, by taking it as a motto, hoped to anticipate or disarm ridicule; or he may have selected it out of bravado, as though, forsooth, the public were too stupid ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Tom. A lovely sunset was shedding its radiance over the humble gathering, when Mr. Pennefather rose and spoke to them of 'the coming glory,' first reading Luke ix. 25-35; and knowing that many before him would as Christians be called upon to endure ridicule from ungodly companions, he pointed out to them that in all the Gospels which speak of the Transfiguration, the event is preceded by an account of the Christian's path of self-denial. After an earnest address to the unsaved, this delightful gathering was closed by his ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... creative vein may have been less fertile than of old, his efforts for the good of his fellow men were no less continuous and sincere. His first books had aimed at killing by ridicule certain social institutions which had sunk into abuses. The pictures of parliamentary elections, of schools, of workhouses, had not only created a hearty laugh, but they had disposed the public to listen to the reformers ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... laugh at this proud folly in a woman, otherwise of shrewd understanding, Edwin turned toward the window; but not before the countess had observed the ridicule which played on his lips. Vexed, but afraid to reprimand one who might so soon resent it, by speaking of her disparagingly to Wallace, she unburdened the swelling of her anger upon the unoffending Helen. Not doubting that she felt as Edwin did, and fancying that she saw the same ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... he was a tragedy. Your farmer is not given to introspection. For that matter, anyone knows that a farmer in town is a comedy. Vaudeville, burlesque, the Sunday supplement, the comic papers, have marked him a fair target for ridicule. Perhaps one should know him in his overalled, stubble-bearded days, with the rich black loam of the Mississippi ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... indeed a scathing arraignment, a masterpiece of ridicule, but as it went on it became even worse, for it now got down to the making of serious charges ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... good terms with. Grindot accordingly resolved to sacrifice his immediate gains to his future interests. He listened patiently to the plans, the repetitions, and the ideas of this worthy specimen of the bourgeois class, the constant butt of the witty shafts and ridicule of artists, and the object of their everlasting contempt, nodding his head as if to show the perfumer that he caught his ideas. When Cesar had thoroughly explained everything, the young man proceeded to sum up for him his ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... most hopeless aria that ever was heard. The theatre shook with the loud and boisterous laughter of the audience. They shouted; they screamed wildly, "O Pasquale Capuzzi! Our most illustrious composer and artist! Bravo! Bravissimo!" The old gentleman, not perceiving the ridicule and irony of the laughter, was in raptures of delight. The aria came to an end, and the people cried "Sh! sh!" for Doctor Gratiano, played on this occasion by Nicolo Musso himself, appeared on the stage, holding his hands over his ears and shouting to Pasquarello for ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... specific, obscure field, but by saturating himself in facts about it, he has developed an interest in it amounting to passionate absorption, which manifests itself in "absent-mindedness" of such profundity as to make him often an object of wonder and ridicule. ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... believe that a man is moved save by some selfish ambition. Trojan's noble fraction of a line, "indocillis privata loqui," is not generally considered as adapted to, or to be applied to, the domain of every-day life. Yet, ladies, far above all ridicule, misjudgment, slander, and abuse even, is the holy consciousness you have of the nobility of your work, which is, as I have said, the emancipation and elevation of both man and woman. The great Republic, of which you are citizens, by express provision ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... parent. There are moments in the career of even the greatest sinners when sleeping conscience is roused to remorse. The shock the old man received in the loss of his amiable child opened his eyes to the unhappy state of his own soul; every act of ridicule he cast on the religious tendencies of Louis became arrows of memory to sting him ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Providence: death is uncheered by the hope of a future life. An example of the flippant sceptic is found in Lucian in the second century, A.D. The great knowledge of life which travel had afforded him created a universal ridicule for religion; but his unbelief evinced no seriousness, no sadness. His humour itself is a type of the man. Lacking the bitter earnestness which gave sting to the wit of Aristophanes, and the courteous playfulness exhibited in the many-sided genius of Plato, he was a caricaturist ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... they are mocking spiritual things when it is the imperfection of material nature, (which they set so much store by,) that provokes their ridicule. ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... trying to make his boat go by pushing against the mast. He is like a drowning man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair of his own head. Christ held up this method almost to ridicule when He said: "Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?" The one redeeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this—that those who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the goal. The Changed Life, ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... cannot better serve the wishes of those who ridicule all morality as a mere chimera of human imagination overstepping itself from vanity, than by conceding to them that notions of duty must be drawn only from experience (as from indolence, people are ready to think ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... College in that province, relating the same experiment. It was read at the Royal Society, Nov. 21, of that year, but not printed in the Transactions; perhaps because it was thought too strange to be true, and some ridicule might be apprehended if any member should attempt to repeat it in order to ascertain or refute it. The following is a ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... came to pass. I was only twelve when I joined my husband's people in Nawabganj. My mother-in-law shamed me morning, noon, and night about my gluttonous habits. Her scoldings were a blessing in disguise, however; they roused my dormant spiritual tendencies. One morning her ridicule ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... conviction that what he saw here was the usual custom, and what he had known with the Silsbees was the novelty. The feeling was attended with a slight sense of wounded pride for Susy, as if her enthusiasm had exposed her to ridicule. ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... a coming family. But a Benedict, who early in his career shall have carried his friends with considerable self-applause through half a dozen nurseries, and at the end of twelve years shall still be the father of one rickety baby, will incur a certain amount of ridicule. It is very well to be prepared for good fortune, but one should limit one's preparation within a reasonable scope. Two miles by one might, perhaps, have done for the skeleton sketch of a new city. Less than half that would contain much more than the present population of Washington; and there are, ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... was willing to believe in his unswerving loyalty to the much greater men who were his friends, but even that poor confidence in him must perforce be shaken when one finds him silent at a moment when Keats most needs his voice, and abusive when Coleridge is a common subject of ridicule. It was all very well for Hunt to glorify himself in the borrowed splendour of Keats's established fame when the poet was twenty years dead, and to make much of his intimacy with Coleridge after the homage of two generations had been offered him, but I know ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... on such a subject, and when such interests are at stake, what can exceed the ridicule of thus systematically coupling together a friend and an enemy to toleration, like fat and lean rabbits, or the man and his wife in a Dutch toy, or like fifty other absurdities made to be laughed at, but certainly ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... GORDEYEVNA is silent] Tell me, Lyubov Gordeyevna! I am now in such perplexity that I cannot express it to you. My position in your house is known to you; subordinate to everybody, and I may say utterly despised by Gordey Karpych. I've had only one feeling, that for you, and if I receive ridicule from you, then it would have been better for me never to have lived in this world. You may trust me! I ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... National Federation, to visit Cliff Crest, as Mrs. Worthington called the Worthington mansion, and she turned up her nose at those who worshiped under the towers, turrets and minarets of the Conklin mosque, and played the hose of her ridicule on their outer wall that she might have it spotless for a target when she got ready to raze it with ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... clergyman to his pretty penitent was as unique as it was priggish. I'm sure you must have been vastly entertained! And the final allusion he made to his age—THAT was a masterstroke of pathos!—or bathos? Which? Du sublime au ridicule ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... reflect that neither of these recommendations received an encouraging response from Congress. The latter suggestion, indeed, excited the ridicule of many of the opposers of Mr. Adams, and "a light-house in the skies," became a term of reproach in their midst. In this, however, it must be confessed, their ridicule was greatly at the expense of their intelligence, their public spirit, and their devotion to the highest ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... consisted of the second lieutenant, purser, Mr Jolliffe, and one of the midshipmen, were astonished at such heterodox opinions being stated in the presence of the captain, they were equally astonished at the cool, good-humoured ridicule with which they ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... one great characteristic of pre-eminent sanctity at all ages of life is reticence, while these little people are perpetually seeking to interest others in themselves, their doubts, and feelings. If wisely dealt with, not by direct ridicule, but by a wholesome neglect of the child's revelations, treating them as of no special interest or importance, and discouraging that minute introspection which, of doubtful good at any age, is absolutely destructive of the simplicity of childhood, this unnatural condition will soon ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... that his three brothers had resolved to act in this outrageous manner he did not hesitate to reproach them; but not being able to contend against him honourably, they met him with ridicule. "Do not attempt to rule us with your wooden staff," they cried contemptuously. "Sacrifice IT if your inside is really sincere. And, in the meanwhile, go and sit under your paper umbrella and wield your inscribed fan, while we attend to our couch, ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... great vehemence; the Captain roughly maintaining the superiority of the English in every particular, and Madame Duval warmly refusing to allow of it in any; while Sir Clement exerted all his powers of argument and of ridicule, to second and strengthen whatever was advanced by the Captain: for he had the sagacity to discover, that he could take no method so effectual for making the master of the house his friend, as to make Madame Duval his enemy; and indeed, in ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... Stone worked himself up to such a pitch under the pressure of forced calmess that he at last said Thackeray would get himself horse-whipped one day by one of these infuriated Apelleses. At this I, who had partly agreed with Stone that ridicule, though true, needs not always to be spoken, began to laugh: and told him two could play at that game. These painters cling together, and bolster each other up, to such a degree, that they really ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... manger, car vous savez que c'est inutile pour moi; de plus j'en ai scrupule." But other friends had more appreciation of her niceties. Voiture thanks her for her melons, and assures her that they are better than those of yesterday; Madame de Choisy hopes that her ridicule of Jansenism will not provoke Madame de Sable to refuse her the receipt for salad; and La Rochefoucauld writes: "You cannot do me a greater charity than to permit the bearer of this letter to enter into the mysteries of your marmalade and your genuine preserves, and I humbly ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... distraction. She plucked out handfuls of her pale gold hair, the pretty blonde hair which had been almost as famous in Paris as Beaufort's or Madame de Longueville's yellow locks. The thought of De Malfort's ridicule cut her like a whalebone whip. She had fancied herself his Beatrice, his Laura, his Stella—a being to be worshipped as reverently as the stars, to make her lover happy with smiles and kindly words, to stand for ever a little way off, like a goddess ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... discussion, Lyell adds: "I was much struck with the different tone in which my gradual causes was treated by all, even including De la Beche, from that which they experienced in the same room four years ago, when Buckland, De la Beche(?), Sedgwick, Whewell, and some others treated them with as much ridicule as was consistent with politeness ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... than that of the Unity of God. This truth is clearly pronounced also in the material universe; it is the introduction and conclusion of all scientific researches. Any other representation contradicts both creation and revelation. Its denial is a proper object for the ridicule of every thinking man, and of the disbelief of every orthodox Christian. Let this, then, be our first and necessary conclusion—that Deity, whether creating, inspiring, or otherwise manifesting itself, is one ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... town where Luther lived. Several bishops joined the party of the seceders, and already the towns throughout Hungary had generally declared for the Reformation; in many the "Catholic priests were left, as shepherds without flocks."[15] When Popish ceremonies aroused the ridicule of the people, and when even in country districts the priests who came to demand their tithes were dismissed without their "fat ducks and geese," there was a general outcry against the new heresy. The Romish party knew their strength at the Court of Vienna. At the instigation ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... acquired by his generals, made this advice of Augustus a pretence for his inactivity [k]. The mad sallies of Caligula, in which he menaced Britain with an invasion, served only to expose himself and the empire to ridicule: and the Britons had now, during almost a century, enjoyed their liberty unmolested; when the Romans, in the reign of Claudius began to think seriously of reducing them under their dominion. Without seeking any more justifiable reasons of hostility than were employed by the late Europeans ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... were familiar with the figure of Sokrates as he went in and out amongst them; they knew his character and his manner of life; and, though the poet ventured to pervert the teaching and to ridicule the habits of a well-known citizen, he would not venture to put before the people a representation in which there was not a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... cheat, he was much displeased; and as Romulus was casting up a ditch, where he designed the foundation of the city wall, he turned some pieces of the work to ridicule, and obstructed others: at last, as he was in contempt leaping over it, some say Romulus himself struck him, others Celer, one of his companions; he fell, however, and in the scuffle Faustulus also was slain, and Plistinus, who, being Faustulus's ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... concluded, I glanced at the clock, and determined to devote the remainder of the evening to a little private investigation of my own. From Nayland Smith I had preserved the matter a secret, largely because I feared his ridicule; but I had by no means forgotten that I had seen, or had strongly imagined that I had seen, Karamaneh—that beautiful anomaly who (in modern London) asserted herself to be a slave—in the shop of an antique dealer not a hundred yards from ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... virtually disowned the right by appealing to the magnanimity of his Majesty against the capturers. He has made this magnanimous Majesty the umpire in the case, and the government of the United States must abide by the decision. If, Sir, I turn some part of this business into ridicule, it is to avoid the unpleasant sensation ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... passion, a mock joy, a mock fear, a mock love, a mock pride, which chase each other like shadows over its surface, and vanish as soon as they appear. He is just idiot enough to be an object, not of pity or horror, but of ridicule. He bears some resemblance to poor Calandrino, whose mishaps, as recounted by Boccaccio, have made all Europe merry for more than four centuries. He perhaps resembles still more closely Simon da Villa, to whom Bruno and Buffalmacco ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... probable rivals in charm, in comprehensiveness, in maturity, in internal rationality, in external adaptability; so much so that a strong anti-clerical government, like the French, cannot safely leave the church to be overwhelmed by the forces of science, good sense, ridicule, frivolity, and avarice (all strong forces in France), but must use violence as well to do it. In the English church, too, it is not those who accept the deluge, the resurrection, and the sacraments only as symbols that are the vital party, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... ill-chosen time for jesting, Kate," said my aunt with a frown. "I cannot congratulate you on your good taste in turning so important a subject into ridicule. Mr. Haycock has proposed to you; you have accepted him. Whilst poor Deborah is so ill I am your natural guardian, and he has with great propriety requested my consent; although, in the agitation very natural to a man so circumstanced," added my aunt, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... resolution to keep silence was broken by Mrs. Draper, who was informed, presumably by Jermain himself, of the circumstances, and encountering Sylvia in the street waited for no invitation to confidence by the girl, but pounced upon her with laughing reproach and insidiously friendly ridicule. Sylvia, helpless before the graceful assurance of her friend, heard that she was a silly little unawakened schoolgirl who was throwing away a brilliantly happy and successful life for the queerest and funniest of ignorant notions. "What did you suppose, you baby? You wouldn't have him marry ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... please; Know'st thou not the difference yet, between a Man Of Money and Titles, and a Man of only Parts, As they call them? poor Devils of no Mein nor Garb: Well, 'tis a fine and frugal thing, this Honour, It covers a multitude of Faults: Even Ridicule in one of us is a-la-mode. But I detain thee; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... of youth, Archie avoided the subject from that hour. It was perhaps a pity. Had he but talked - talked freely - let himself gush out in words (the way youth loves to do and should), there might have been no tale to write upon the Weirs of Hermiston. But the shadow of a threat of ridicule sufficed; in the slight tartness of these words he read a prohibition; and it is likely that ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... philosophical. He ate his dinner without moralizing over it, and felt thankful when he had enough. He had not a particle of aristocratic blood in his veins, and, in consequence, rather ridiculed the possession of that indescribable material by the Stork. Ridicule as he would, however, he was really secretly proud of his acquaintance with the other, and used to say to his friends ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... advantages of this method are obvious: the young candidate gained courage, and improved his judgement; he studied in open day, amidst the heat of the conflict, where nothing weak or idle could be said with impunity; where every thing absurd was instantly rebuked by the judge, exposed to ridicule by the adversary, and condemned by ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... Mr. Rabinson rather encouraged than shunned her visits, and I was obliged to receive the beautiful Angelina (for such was her Christian name), however repugnant such an associate was to my feelings. At every interview she took occasion to ridicule my romantic domestic attachment; laughed at my folly in wasting my youth (for I was not then eighteen years of age) in such a disgraceful obscurity; and pictured, in all the glow of fanciful scenery, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... disappointment of the year 1000 A.D., in which multitudes of Christians seriously prepared for the end of the world, the prophet who announces that the end is at hand is still popular. Many of the people who ridicule his demonstrations that the fantastic monsters of the book of Revelation are among us in the persons of our own political contemporaries, and who proceed sanely in all their affairs on the assumption that the world is going to last, really do believe that there will be a Judgment Day, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... extending itself to more mature life; and serious and discreet men, senators and judges, toiling painfully through elements, vocabularies, and rules of pronunciation, to acquire an amount of speech sufficient to attract ridicule, and produce inconvenience, but very inadequate to any useful or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... genus) and regarded each other with abhorrence. It is said, in vindication of the character of these great men, that they were abused into a mutual dislike merely by the calumnious misrepresentations of pretended friends. Finding, however, that their animosities provoked general ridicule and contempt, and that their quarrels had become the common theme with which the witlings and poetasters of Greece amused the people,[2] they judiciously resolved to treat each other with the respect ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... the clinamen the straight line can never produce anything, and the Epicurean system falls to the ground; with the clinamen, a fabulous poetical invention, the direct line is violated, and the system falls into derision and ridicule. ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... drawing-room. Was he waiting for her there? or did he wish to avoid her? When she reached the broad landing she hesitated. She was half inclined to go in audaciously, to laugh in his face; turn his fury into ridicule, tell him she was the sort of woman who is born to do as she likes, to live as she chooses, to think of nothing but her own will, consult nothing but her whims of the moment. But she went on and into ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... of birds and beasts. Perhaps, said Paoli, in a thousand years we may know this as well as we know things which appeared much more difficult to be known. I have often since this conversation indulged myself in such reveries. If it were not liable to ridicule, I would say that an acquaintance with the language of beasts would be a most agreeable acquisition to man, as it would enlarge the circle ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... now? Perforce the person in charge at any police station would be under requirement to shelter him. What even if he were locked up temporarily? In a cell he would be safe from the slings and arrows of outrageous ridicule; and surely among the functionaries in any station house would be one who would know a gentleman in distress, however startlingly the gentleman might be garbed. Surely, too, somebody—once that somebody's amazement had abated—would he willing to do some ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... and in the country, the young man would ridicule the idea of having a chaperon along. He seldom considers the question of repaying social invitations, or paying calls after an entertainment. He should be careful to show courtesy to the host and hostess, to dance with the latter and her ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... was so incensed at the insult offered to his palace, that he had a counterpart of St. James's built for offices of the meanest description. The size and grandeur of the edifice, indeed, drew down the ridicule of several of the wits of the age: by one of whom—the facetious Tom Brown—it was said, "Bedlam is a pleasant place, and abounds with amusements;—the first of which is the building, so stately a fabric for persons wholly insensible ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... He hoped through the pieces played at the theatres and through his censored, subsidized press to bring the Belgians round to a reasonable frame of mind, to a toleration of existence under the German Empire. But his efforts brought down on him the unsparing ridicule of the Parisian-minded Bruxellois. They were prompt to detect his attempts to modify the text of French operettas so that these, while delighting the lovers of light music, need not at the same time excite a military spirit or convey the least allusion of an impertinent or contemptuous kind ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... mes principes. Ce livre conduit l'athisme que je dteste. J'ai toujours regard l'athisme comme le plus grand garement de la raison, parce qu'il est aussi ridicule de dire que l'arrangement du monde ne prouve pas un artisan suprme qu'il serait impertinent de dire qu'une horloge ne prouve pas ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... out of their scrapes. They vituperate the humanists in comically bad Latin, which is perhaps the best part of the joke.[269] In this way those who later opposed Luther and his reforms were held up to ridicule in these letters and their opposition to ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... December 1785 there is the following notice: "Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. Small 8vo, IS. (Smith). This is a satirical production calculated to throw ridicule on the bold assertions of some parliamentary declaimers. If rant may be best foiled at its own weapons, the author's design is not ill-founded; for the marvellous has never been carried to a more whimsical and ludicrous extent." The reviewer had probably read the work through ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... repeating the question, as if to hold up to ridicule the absurd ignorance which it implied. "Do ye no ken that Blackie is Gowrie's bull—the ill-natertest bull ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... hardly numbered more than fifteen members, and was the object of much ridicule at the university; but it included some men who afterward played considerable parts in the world. Among them was Charles, the younger brother of John Wesley, whose hymns became the favorite poetry of the sect, and whose gentler, more submissive, and more ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... now in Princesse de Raynes' room; I need say no more, and I am not fond either of reproaches, acts of violence, or of ridicule. As I wish to avoid all such things, we shall separate without any scandal. Our lawyers will settle your position according to my orders. You will be free to live as you please when you are no longer under my roof; but, as you will continue to bear ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... a trap, escaped with the loss of his "brush." Henceforth feeling his life a burden from the shame and ridicule to which he was exposed, he schemed to bring all the other Foxes into a like condition with himself, that in the common loss he might the better conceal his own deprivation. He assembled a good many Foxes, and publicly advised them to cut off their tails saying "that ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... genuine fun and bristling with pungent satire, this is an epitome of Artemus Ward's most genial humour and of his keenly sarcastic truth. The doings of the Fenians have hitherto been sufficiently ludicrous to merit the ridicule which Artemus has added to the stock they have liberally provided for themselves. To use the periphrasis of Senator Sumner, they have hitherto been "the muscipular abortion of the parturient mountain," whatever their folly may yet lead them to effect of a more serious nature ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... home faces its duty toward a family yet to be, is just where some of the most serious mistakes are made. This is no time for teasing and jesting, still less for mocking ridicule. If you treat this essentially sacred step as a joke it will not be strange if the young people follow suit and take marriage as a yet larger joke. The home is the place where the home is treated most irreverently. Of course one must not take too seriously those "calf" courtships, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... Eyck was a man of determination and although he had before tested the mettle of the Grants men, he felt a burden of confidence now with this army behind him. The ridicule of the party in ambush stung his pride, and although warned that a considerable number of settlers were hidden in the wood, he was not disposed to temporize. But the men who had accompanied him on his nefarious mission were far ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... and reasonable vision, what most others do by instinct. And so their readings make them no better than I am, and they remain ridiculous in spite of themselves, while I am only so when I choose, and always leave them a vast distance behind me; for the same art which teaches me how to escape ridicule on certain occasions teaches me also on certain others how to incur it happily. Then I recall to myself all that the others said, and all that I read, and I add all that issues from my own originality, which is ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... was present. "The moment was so well timed, the importance of the man and his services, the languor of his emaciated countenance, and the study bestowed on his dress were circumstances that struck solemnity into a patriot mind, and did a little furnish ridicule to the hardened and insensible. He was dressed in black velvet, his legs and thighs wrapped in flannel, his feet covered with buskins of black cloth, and his hands with thick gloves." Not for the first time, he was utilizing his maladies for purposes of stage effect. He spoke for about ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... betrayed us to the naked hangman with your promises and with your drink? If you brought us out here to fail us and to ridicule us, it is the last ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... bold fellows, those Trouveres. Not content with making the ignorance and the gross vices of the clerical orders the subjects of their fabliaux, they did not scruple to ridicule their superstitious teachings, as witness the satire on saint-worship, entitled "Du vilain [i.e., peasant] qui conquist Paradis par plait," the substance of which is as follows: A poor peasant dies suddenly, and his soul escapes ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... startled and excited to pause and ridicule his companion's superstitious notions, and he took a few steps quickly to the rough, square wall, from a faint hope that the sound might have come from there; but as he touched the wall, a strong grip was on ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the present conjuncture. There is hardly a man, in or out of power, who holds any other language. That Government is at once dreaded and contemned; that the laws are despoiled of all their respected and salutary terrors; that their inaction is a subject of ridicule, and their exertion of abhorrence; that rank, and office, and title, and all the solemn plausibilities of the world, have lost their reverence and effect; that our foreign politics are as much deranged as our domestic economy; that our dependencies are ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... Whatever ridicule may be thrown upon Mr. Dale's dissertations by the wit of the enlightened, they had a considerable, and I think a beneficial, effect upon Leonard Fairfield,—an effect which may perhaps create less surprise, when the reader remembers that Leonard was unaccustomed to argument, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the embankment watching the receding form of the aged chief, Thunder-Cloud, taking his departure with his escort. It was an outfit to inspire ridicule, were it not for the seriousness lying behind the human passions governing the situation. Kars understood. Those with him understood. Peigan Charley alone lacked appreciation. He regretted the old man's coming under a truce. He even more regretted his departure—whole. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... endeavour by secret machination carefully to deprive those advantages of any opportunity of showing themselves and becoming known. Then out of his dark corner he will attack these qualities with censure, mockery, ridicule and calumny, like the toad which spurts its poison from a hole. No less will he enthusiastically praise unimportant people, or even indifferent or bad performances in the same sphere. In short, he will becomes a Proteas in stratagem, in order to wound others without showing himself. ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... beyond that which he received as a member of the Convention, and which was hardly sufficient for the wants of his simple existence, he worked nearly night and day in the service of the State. Constancy of purpose—from the commencement of his career, in opposition at first to ridicule and obscurity, then to public opinion, and lastly to the combined efforts of the greatest of his countrymen, he pursued one only idea; convinced of its truth, sure of its progress, and longing for its success. Temperance in power—though in reality governing all France, Robespierre assumed to himself ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... latest developments to ensure the utmost accuracy of fire, the howitzer and heavy field artillery expert, the scientific and highly-trained sapper, all joined in the hue and cry, until Lord Haldane's conceptions almost collapsed and expired in a ferment of ridicule. But he remained steadfast. The mounted brigades received their Territorial batteries of horse artillery. Fourteen complete Territorial divisions were formed of three brigades of infantry, three brigades ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... embankment. The little girl saw them fall and ran forward to secure them. He did not see her. He was sitting on the top step of the fast-receding train, his face covered as if to shut out a fearful sight, his coat-sleeves pressing his ears as if to deaden a shout of ridicule. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Far Eastern art may be said to be three: Nature, Religion, and Humor. Incongruous collection that they are, all three witness to the same trait. For the first typifies concrete impersonality, the second abstract impersonality, while the province of the last is to ridicule personality generally. Of the trio the first is altogether the most important. Indeed, to a Far Oriental, so fundamental a part of himself is his love of Nature that before we view its mirrored image it will be well to look the emotion itself in the face. The Far Oriental lives ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell |
