"Gibe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are fond of quoting a foolish gibe: "Be good, and you may be happy; but you will not have a good time." The wise, however, soon become aware that if, in the course of life's journey, you achieve goodness and happiness, you will almost certainly have a good ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... to you When rioting in Alexandria; you Did pocket up my letters, and with taunts Did gibe my missive ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the inner man. His silence clothed him like armour, and he never really emerged from it save when a fiendish sense of humour tempted him. This, and this alone, so it seemed to Babbacombe, had any power to draw him out. And the instant he had flung his gibe at the object thereof, he would retreat again into that impenetrable shell of silence. He never once spoke of his past life, never ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... I'll give you some lunch. Two thousand three hundred roubles! After such a good stroke of business you'll have an appetite for your lunch. Do you like my rooms? The ladies about here declare that my rooms always smell of garlic. With that culinary gibe their stock of wit is exhausted. I hasten to assure you that I've no garlic even in the cellar. And one day when a doctor came to see me who smelt of garlic, I asked him to take his hat and go and spread his fragrance elsewhere. ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Savonarola's influence upon the young Machiavelli must have been slight, for although at one time he wielded immense power over the fortunes of Florence, he only furnished Machiavelli with a subject of a gibe in "The Prince," where he is cited as an example of an unarmed prophet who came to a bad end. Whereas the magnificence of the Medicean rule during the life of Lorenzo appeared to have impressed Machiavelli ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... that they may learn how to fish in deep and rough water, such as ours." These remarks were of course duly made public, and caused much indignation, neither the minister nor his flock liking the gibe about the deep, rough water; also the insinuation that anything about fishing was to be learnt from the new white man was annoying ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... Scott met the gibe with tightened lips. He made no attempt to reply to it. "The only thing left," he said quietly, "is for you to see her and hear what she has to say. She is waiting ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... expected his opponent to pay his flippant gibe the honor of repartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect in his slender grace, was moved to a slight, disdainful smile, but it evidenced scarcely the appreciation that anybody less impervious to criticism than Ridgway would ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... a boy, I was one morning playing at marbles in the village ball alley, with a light heart and lighter pocket. The gibe and the jest went gaily round, when suddenly there appeared amongst us a stranger, of a very remarkable and very cheerful aspect; his intrusion was not the least restraint upon our merry little assemblage, on the contrary, he seemed pleased, and even delighted; he was a benevolent creature, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... happy escape, for the cruelty involved in the lady's methods and the careless flout of the opinion of the sober, decorous world were not indicia of worthy traits; but he was of sensitive fibre, and tingled and winced with the consciousness of the cheap gibe and the finger of scorn. He often said to himself then, however, as now to the friend of his inmost thought, "I would not be bound to a woman ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Fescennine songs the Etruscans probably furnished the spectacle, all that which addresses itself to the eye, while the habits of Italian rural life supplied the sarcastic humor and ready extemporaneous gibe, which are the essence of the true comic. The next advance in point of art must be attributed to the Oscans, whose entertainments were most popular among the Italian nations. They represented in broad caricature national ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... line over Spey in the veni, vidi, vici manner of one who had made Usk and Wye his potsherd, and who over the Hampshire Avon had cast his shoe. Russel, the famous editor of the Scotsman, the Delane of the north country, who, pen in hand, could make a Lord Advocate squirm, and before whose gibe provosts and bailies trembled, who had drawn out leviathan with a hook from Tweed, and before whom the big fish of Forth could not stand—even he, brilliant fisherman as he was, could "come nae speed ava" on Spey, as the old Arndilly water-gillie ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... to wonder; delicacy of perception such as this is not ordinarily looked for in the person of a burglar. With a laugh and a gibe she tried to pass off ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... any kind have ever urged that war is impossible is due either to that confusion of thought just touched upon, or is merely a silly gibe of those who deride arguments to which they have not listened, and consequently do not understand, or which they desire to misrepresent; and such misrepresentation is, when not ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... as is this reply to the oft-repeated gibe to which we have referred, it is also true that nowhere does the square man in the round hole do quite as great and as lasting injury as he does from the pulpit. The right man for the work—that must be the ideal ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... incidentally, in a moderate way, for the nominal beneficiaries; and, in the case before us, the twelve brethren being so comfortably provided for, the Master is likely to be at least as comfortable as all the twelve together. Yet I ought not, even in a distant land, to fling an idle gibe against a gentleman of whom I really know nothing, except that the people under his charge bear all possible tokens of being tended and cared for as sedulously as if each of them sat by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter bustling round the hearth to make ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... talking that I heard Nothing at first quite plain, as I sat down; Until from this man's gibe and that keen word, Another's chilly smile or peevish frown, I caught their talk—but added none of mine. They said how she still fumbled with her fate, How she had banished visitants divine, How long her sleep had been, her sloth how great, How others had drawn near and passed her by, While ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... the docile animals had refused to obey their mistress, and the duchess expressed the suspicion that she had not intended to call them off; for, though she had carelessly apologised, she asked, as if the words were a gibe, if there was anything more delightful than to curb a refractory steed. She had an answer ready for Cordula, however, and retorted that the disobedience of her dogs proved that, if she understood how to obtain from horses what she called the greatest delight, she certainly failed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that he was meriting the old gibe of the atheists. He was shirking the responsibility of himself, turning it over to ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... clerk except his Cockney accent would have noticed nothing about Simon de Montfort except his French accent. The man who jeers at Jones for having dropped an "h" might have jeered at Nelson for having dropped an arm. Scorn springs easily to the essentially vulgar-minded, and it is as easy to gibe at Montfort as a foreigner or at Nelson as a cripple, as to gibe at the struggling speech and the maimed bodies of the mass of our comic and tragic race. If I shrink faintly from this affair of tourists and ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... I found each gibe at army rules Appreciated fully; I sparkled when describing mules As "embryonic bully," Or, aided by some hackneyed tune, Increased my easy laurels By stringing verses to impugn The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... was making progress with them. The hated gibe "white slave" was less frequently heard. Sam, passionately bent on making good in the community, weighed every shade of the men's manner toward him, like ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... meant by the gibe—and some smack of an evil jest lurked in his tone—he played the host so far as to urge his bewildered companion along the passage and into the living-chamber on the left, where he had seen from without that his orders to light and lay were being executed. A dozen ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... knew in advance that it was not going to be one of his worst efforts. He knew almost exactly where the punctuations of laughter and applause would burst in, he knew that nimble fingers in the Press Gallery would be taking down each gibe and argument as he flung it at the impassive Minister confronting him, and that the fair lady of his desire would be able to judge what manner of young man this was who spent his afternoon in her garden, lazily chaffing himself and ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... himself this gibe; but he trusted to Lapham's unliterary habit of mind for his security in making it, and most other people would consider it sincere ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... I to brook the fellow's saucy gibe, "That if the peasant must have bread to eat, Why, let him go and draw the plough himself!" It cut me to the very soul to see My oxen, noble creatures, when the knave Unyoked them from the plough. As though they felt The wrong, they lowed ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... down the grass in Heaven's Meadow, They tore the flowers about, And flung them on the earth beyond the paling, With gibe, and jeer, and shout. ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... send your military and police to attack him?" The gibe was covered, but it found the governor's breast. He knew what she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... come, you are so taken up with Parson Dunce, that your old Friends can't drink a Dram with you.—What, no smutty Catch now, no Gibe or Joke to make the Punch go down merrily, and advance Trading? Nay, they say, Gad forgive ye, you never miss going to Church when Mr. Dunce preaches,—but here's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... of quick life crops out In watchful mutual mockery. Gibe and flout In low asides flow freely. Oh, bland elysium for the brave and fair, Whose pleasures are the snigger and the stare, Chill snub, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... at home, the sick tall yellow Duchess Was left with the infant in her clutches, {90} She being the daughter of God knows who: And now was the time to revisit her tribe. Abroad and afar they went, the two, And let our people rail and gibe At the empty hall and extinguished fire, As loud as we liked, but ever in vain, Till after long years we had our desire, And back came the Duke and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... in the dusk, as they sauntered over the old bridge, she flung out gibe after gibe at her lover. Her cheeks grew hotter and hotter; it was like tearing her own flesh. The shame of it! The rapture of it! It hurt her so that the tears stood in her eyes; so she did it again, and yet again. "I don't pretend to live up to ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... audience, and plying them with the well-worn platitudes of the Nationalist platform. When these evoked the usual enthusiasm he waxed bolder, and shot out some almost original epigrams directed against the Government, working up to a really new gibe about officials who sat like spiders spinning murderous webs in Dublin Castle. The audience were delighted with this, but their joy reached its height when someone shouted: 'You might speak better of the men who tore down the placard on Wednesday.' Mr. O'Rourke ignored the suggestion, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... toboggan continued far behind the others. As they panted up the hill Tom and his two companions shot past and waved their hands at them; then followed Bob Steele's crew and Helen shouted some laughing gibe at them. Isadore's ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... Indian Poet Amir Khusru, puts in the mouth of his king Kaikobad a contemptuous gibe at the Mongols with their cotton-quilted dresses. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... clown will not spare the courtier, Mr. Glascock. I understand the gibe, and I tell you that the courtier shall be spared no longer;—because he is useless. He shall be cut down together with the withered grasses and thrown into the oven, and there shall be an end of him." Then she turned round to appeal to an American gentleman who had joined them, and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... has a pretty wit and I admire it as I admire most of his brilliant qualities, but I fail to see the aptness of this last gibe. At the club this afternoon I picked up an entertaining French novel called En felons des Perles. On the illustrated cover was a row of undraped damsels sitting in oyster-shells, and the text of the book went to show how ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... notice of this gibe, but as soon as he thought wise brought the conversation round to the object ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... voice—the gibe at her own poor ruins of love fallen about her—was lost on him. He was in total ignorance of her friendship with Quarrington. But the plain significance of her words came home to him clearly enough. He did not speak for a minute or two. Then: "You've been playing with me, then—fooling ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... man choked back some gibe; the presence of strangers enforced respect to his chief. He took a thin folding rule of aluminum from a waistcoat pocket, and applied it to the most clearly defined of the three footprints. Then beginning at the "house" ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... rose up before him the stern faces of Mr Hippetts and Mr Sibery, with the jeering crowd of schoolfellows, who could laugh at and gibe him for his downfall, and be sure to call him Gentleman Coleby, as long as they were together, the name, under the circumstances, ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... of the Palazzo Gradenigo were ended, the great square of St. Mark began to lose a portion of its gaiety. The cafes were now occupied by parties who had the means, and were in the humor, to put their indulgences to more substantial proof than the passing gibe or idle laugh; while those who were reluctantly compelled to turn their thoughts from the levities of the moment to the cares of the morrow, were departing in crowds to humble roofs and hard pillows. There remained one of the latter class, however, who continued to ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... gulp their weekly air: Thy coach of hackney, whiskey, one-horse chair, And humblest gig, through sundry suburbs whirl; To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow, make repair; Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl, Provoking envious gibe ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... red velvet and dazzling ermine. It makes ragged Lazarus doubly hungry to see Dives feasting in cloth-of-gold; and so if I were a beauteous duchess . . . Silence, vain man! Can the Queen herself make you a duchess? Be content, then, nor gibe at thy betters of "the Duke of ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from the speaker to her husband. But Frederick had again put on his mask of apathetic indifference and answered his wife's gibe only by a shrug of his shoulders. Noting her brother's scowling ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... acknowledge, beyond the most melancholy mood of Montaigne into one of far sterner and more stringent pessimism, an absence or infrequency of suggestions of Montaigne in the plays between 1605 and 1610 would be a very natural result of Jonson's gibe in VOLPONE. That gibe, indeed, is not really so ill-natured as the term "steal" is apt to make it sound for our ears, especially if we are prepossessed—as even Mr. Fleay still seems to be—by the old commentators' notion ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... ardent letters, to which she had not deigned to answer one word. Now she assumes an air of injured innocence, and accuses him of unkindness! She even promises to see him, but cannot resist the temptation to qualify the concession with a gibe. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... gibe in this, and Grange at once retreated to a less exposed position. "I am quite willing to wait for her," he ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Richard III. in illustration of his own meaning, Milton, says, "I shall not instance an abstruse author, wherein the King might be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the closet companion of these his solitudes, William Shakespeare." Though not an overt gibe, there certainly lurks an insinuation to Milton's Puritan readers, to whom stage plays were an abomination—an unworthy device of rhetoric, as appealing to a superstition in others which the writer himself does not share. In Milton's contemptuous reference to Sidney's Arcadia as a vain ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... calls not to me, "Here, but for fate, were thou and she—" Its gibe for once is checked. To-night Silence is queen in grief's despite, And even the longing of my soul Is silent ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... Begins the time, his heart has prayed, When men may reap and sow? Ah, God! back to the cold earth's breast! The sages chuckle o'er their jest! Must they, to give a people rest, Their dainty wit forego? The tyrants sit in a stately hall; They gibe at a wretched people's fall; The tyrants forget how fresh is the pall Over their dead and ours. Look how the senators ape the clown, And don the motley and hide the gown, But yonder a fast rising frown On the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... that; I know how folk would gibe If one of us pushed courtesy so far. She has always loved love's fashions well; you wot, The marshal, head friend of this Chastelard's, She used to talk with ere he brought her here And sow their talk with little kisses thick ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... shall hear me. Patience. Trust in me." Somewhat the authoritative voice abashed, Even hoarse and changed, the miscreants, who feared Some strong curse lurked in this mysterious tongue, Armed with this evil eye. But brief the spell. With gibe and scoff they dragged their victims forth, The abused old man, the proud, insulted youth, O'er the late path of his triumphal march, Befouled with mud, with raiment torn, wild hair And ragged beard, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... an' praise. Beliebe on de delibrin (delivering) Sabior. Trus' Him. He lead yuh. He show yuh de way. Dat all yuh got tuh do. Beliebe—pray—praise. Ebery night befo' I lay on my bed I git on my knees an' look up tuh Him. Soon I wake in de mornin' I gibe Him t'anks. Eben sometime in de day I git on my knees an' pray. He been good to me all dese years. He aint forget me. I aint been sick for ober twenty-five years. Good t'ing too, nobody left tuh tek care of me. Dey all gone. But I don't care now, jus' ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... with furious anger. His strange blue eyes grew cold with hatred, and he thrust out his scarlet lips till he had the ruthless expression of a Nero. The gibe at his obesity had caught him on the raw. Susie feared that he would make so insulting a reply that a quarrel ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... conceive, was the fear of being ridiculous. The position of a poor tutor aspiring to the favours of the heiress destined for his master invites the unkind gibe. And Harry could not be sure that Alison herself was free from the desire to make him a figure of scorn. Such a suspicion might disconcert the most ardent of lovers. Harry Boyce, whatever his abilities in the profession, was ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... said the archbishop; "let not the gibe and jest go round; there be matters of graver import that should occupy us this night. To-morrow, let the elements be propitious, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... to consent to this on the ground that in all likelihood Bill's claim would last but a few years, anyway. It seemed too good an opening for Brick to lose; but instead of refreshing himself with his customary gibe, the huge fellow sat dark and glowering, his eyes staring upward at the crevice in the rock roof, the lantern-light showing his forehead deeply rutted ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... of the summer term, just at that moment when Oxford normally is at its loveliest and fullest, brimming over with young life, the streets crowded with caps and gowns, the river and towing-path alive with the "flannelled fools," who have indeed flung back Rudyard Kipling's gibe—if it ever applied to them—with interest. For they had all disappeared. They were in the trenches, landing at Suvla, garrisoning Egypt, pushing up to Baghdad. The colleges contained a few forlorn remnants—under age, or medically ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the moment: "Stay, thou art so fair"; and Mephistopheles shall harshly cry out: "The clock stands still"; and the graybeard shall sink in the dust; and the holy angels shall fly away with his soul, leaving the Fiend baffled and morose, to gibe at himself over the failure of all his infernal arts. But, meanwhile, it remains true of the man that no pleasure satisfies him and no happiness contents, and "death is desired, and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... 'scorners,' who mock at good. A man must have gone a long way down hill before he begins to gibe at virtue and godliness. But the descent is steep, though the distance is long; and the 'simple' who begins to do what is wrong will come to sneer ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the third time that evening, and, feeling wonderfully well satisfied with the way in which he had played his cards generally, could not resist another gibe at the ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... Eastern censors, who did not take those surroundings into account, and allowed nothing for his originality of character. One of these critics heard at Washington that Mr. Lincoln, in speaking at different times of some move or thing, said "it had petered out;" that some other one's plan "wouldn't gibe;" and being asked if the War and the cause of the Union were not a great care to ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... remorse to think that I myself have accused them of vanity and folly. It overcomes me with pain to hear the thoughtless laugh aloud after them, in the public ways. For they are simply short-sighted trustful people, the myopic victims of the salesman and saleswoman. The little children gibe at them, pelt even.... And somewhere in the world a ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... quarter of a century was so popular with the awakened intelligence of England, aroused at last to the imminent importance of her call to expansion by sea, that it was greeted by a general pealing of the bells, which drew from the reluctant prime minister, Walpole, that bitter gibe, "Ay, to-day they are ringing their bells, and to-morrow they will be wringing their hands." Howe embarked with Anson's squadron, celebrated for its sufferings, its persistence, and its achievements, to waste the Spanish colonies of the Pacific; but ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... to hear you say so," said my uncle. "One has to come into the country to hear honest loyalty, for a sneer and a gibe are more the fashions in town. The King is grateful to me for the interest which I have ever shown in his son. He likes to think that the Prince has a man of taste in ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... themselves under strange conditions or in an emergency, and in domestic hygiene they are inferior, and yet they are so competent to push the national military, industrial, and commercial ball along as men, that one wonders whether Bagehot's gibe at certain well-to-do classes of the Saxons, that "they spend half their time washing their whole persons," may not have a grain of truth ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... reasonably occupied, lent herself to Lingen's murmured conversation, and felt for it just so much tolerance, so much compassion, you may say, as to be able to brave Mabel's quizzing looks from across the room. Mabel always had a gibe for Francis Lingen. She called him the Ewe Lamb, and that kind of thing. It was plain that she scorned him. Lucy, on the other hand, pitied him without knowing it, which was even more desperate for the young man. It had never entered Lingen's head, however, that anybody could ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... tamed girls at once heartily corroborated this statement, whereupon the newcomers ceased to gibe and consented to silence. Ramsey leaned forth over the edge of the overhanging bank, a dirt precipice five feet above the water, and peered into the indeterminable depths below. The pool had been stirred, ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... "This is a gibe at me," Moya explained, "because I don't read Emerson. 'It is the very measure of a marching chorus,' he goes on to say, 'where the step is broken by rocks and tree-roots;'—and he is chanting it to himself (to her it was in the original) ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... Gilfillan's song is among ourselves, it is much less so to the south of the Border, and I present it to my English readers, as a worthy representative, in these latter days, of those ludicrous songs of our country in the olden time which are so admirably suited to show, notwithstanding the gibe of Goldsmith, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... it swept along, contrasted forcibly with the wild movements and disorderly mirth of the timbrel-players. These last darted round and round the riders, holding out their instruments for largess, and retorting, with laugh and gibe, the disdainful look or sharp rebuke with which their ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had passed out of the wood and we were alone, he tied me up again to the same oak and gave me a fresh flogging, that left me like a flayed Saint Bartholomew; and every stroke he gave me he followed up with some jest or gibe about having made a fool of your worship, and but for the pain I was suffering I should have laughed at the things he said. In short he left me in such a condition that I have been until now in a hospital getting cured of the injuries which that rascally clown inflicted on me ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... we ole niggers wus raised right an' de young niggers ain't. Iffen I had my say-so dey'd burn down de nigger schools, gibe dem pickanninies a good spankin' an' put 'em in de patch ter wuck, ain't no nigger got no business ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... and if Madame de Grammont was the culprit, it is a sad confirmation of the old gibe, "Skittish in youth, prudish in age." It can only be pleaded in extenuation that some youth which was not skittish, such as Sarah Marlborough's, matured or turned into something worse than "devotion." And Elizabeth Hamilton was ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... stoop to denying or even repeating what he said; far less to justify myself. Yet I should like to mention, in passing, that his coarse gibe concerning my fawning on a rich man is the most unjust ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... fat, old swindler! You white-headed outrage—you—you Foxy Grandpa!" cried Loring in blushing chagrin—not wholly dissembled, either. "I ought to make you eat it. Come, have a drink." He led the way, the others following with gibe and jeer. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Germany's action was offensive in character, and therefore dispensed Italy from an obligation to support her partners in the Triple Alliance; and her neutrality during August and intervention in May disproved the gibe of the French diplomatist that she would rush to the rescue of the conqueror. The question throughout the winter was whether she would complete her breach of the Triple Alliance by attacking her former Allies. The grievance ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... faction went so far as to use the poisoned weapons of savages—in this warfare the advantages of wit and delicate irony lay on the side of the nobles. But it should never be forgotten that the wounds made by the tongue and the eyes, by gibe or slight, are the last of all to heal. When the Chevalier turned his back on mixed society and entrenched himself on the Mons Sacer of the aristocracy, his witticisms thenceforward were directed at du Croisier's salon; he stirred up ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... people called the plague, and he died, and his body had to be committed without much delay or ceremonial to the sea. He had built his monument to no purpose. He was never to occupy it. It stood a vast and solid gibe at the vanity of ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... gibe germ tinge edge urge huge serge judge singe ledge large barge fudge lodge dodge ridge cringe lunge budge hedge badge sledge nudge wedge fringe range bridge merge grudge trudge mange smudge charge plunge ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... or other Bagshaw was always very decent to me, and when he heard that Ward, Dennison, Collier, Lambert and I were going to finish the evening at The Reindeer he asked me to come home in the brake, but that gibe of Dennison's was heavy upon me and I had determined to stick to my promise and do whatever came my way. I did not expect that the evening was going to be anything but a rowdy one, for when Lambert did undertake a thing he went at it most zealously. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... recognition of himself as an Harrovian, forgave the gibe. It had struck him, also, that the shallow straw hat, the swallow-tail coat, did look queer, but he regarded them reverently as the uniform of a ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... lofty scorn, in words at least. On December 15th in General Orders he spoke of "the wretched garrison" posted behind the walls of Quebec, "consisting of sailors unacquainted with the use of arms, of citizens incapable of the soldier's duty and [a gibe at the corps in which Nairne served] a few miserable emigrants." He went on to promise his troops that when they took Quebec "the effects of the Governor, garrison, and of such as have been active in misleading the inhabitants and distressing the friends of liberty" should be equally ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... however, I should mention one detail which Harry was too modest to mention. He was—or is—unusually good-looking. I don't mean to claim that he possessed any Greek-god beauty; such wouldn't gibe with a height of five foot seven. No; his good looks were due to the simple outward expression, through his features, of a certain noble inward quality which would have made the homeliest face attractive. Selfishness ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... aches this morning, and I have a sort of backsliding feeling. The truth is, Tombs and Virginia reels don't seem to gibe in together. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... you one. You won't let me convert you, I know; you always used to gibe and jeer at my philosophy. But Augustine ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... and honey." This sentence is apparently a gibe or jeer, addressed by the defenders of Cakhay to Gagavitz after his attack on their city had ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... met the gibe unfaltering. "I know it's a chance that doesn't come every day, and I know you mean well by him. I shan't put any hindrance in ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... go to the Opera, his general faculty of enjoyment was unimpaired, and, as always, he loved a gibe at the clergy. On the 30th of November 1841, Samuel Wilberforce wrote to a friend about George Augustus Selwyn,[140] Missionary Bishop of ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... had shrunk from it, and he had even avoided Bethel lest that gentleman should imagine that he was on the edge of a proposal for his daughter's hand. He thought that all the world must know of it, and he blushed like a girl at the thought of its being laid bare for Pendragon to laugh and gibe it. It was so precious, so wonderful, that he kept it, like a rich piece of jewellery, deep in a secret drawer, over which he watched delightedly, almost humorously, secure in the delicious knowledge that he alone had the key. He wandered out at night, like a foolish schoolboy, to watch ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... thou canst bear the averted face, The gibe, or treacherous embrace, Of those who ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of that Stentorian sound, Rose Belcour, dressed, and soon the lobby found. About the door a throng of varlets stood, A grinning and ill-favoured brotherhood, That scoff and gibe at every wight that wears Linen less black, or better coat than theirs. For these, young Belcour was too fair a mark; 'Make way,' cries one, 'he's going to the Park: His horses wait; he's going for a ride.' 'Fool, 'tis his tilbury,' another cried; ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... it well that thou shouldest seek to make me captive, and show me unto the army? For they have beheld our combat, and that I overcame thee, and surely now they will gibe when they learn that thy strength was withstood by a woman. Better would it beseem thee to hide this adventure, lest thy cheeks have cause to blush because of me. Therefore let us conclude a peace together. The castle shall ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... her wide, candid gaze, with the unrancorous placidity of the young, who are still used to being snubbed. Nan, she knew, would tease and baffle, withhold and gibe, but would always say what she thought in the end, and what she thought was always worth knowing, even ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... heavy fashion, has chosen to mock the tailor with the fact—the indubitable fact—that he is but the ninth part of a man. Yet, after all, at this time of day, it seems more of a compliment than a gibe. To be a whole ninth of a man! Few of us, when we ponder it, can boast so much. Take, for instance, that other proverbial case of the fractional-part-of-a-pin-maker. It takes nine persons to make a pin, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... people seventy or eighty years younger than herself, who talked and laughed with her as if she were a child, finding great delight in her wayward and strangely playful responses, into some of which she cunningly conveyed a gibe that caused their ears to tingle a little. She had done getting out of bed in this world, and lay there to be waited upon like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... corner of Jardines. It was past one. As the pair walked on, prostitutes in their gay attire accosted them from the doorways in which they lurked, but looking into Leandro's grim countenance and Manuel's poverty-stricken features the girls let them walk on, following them with a gibe at their seriousness. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... itself a shape and bulk that raised the shawl in its centre some five or six inches. It was now unmistakably the outline of a small but perfect human figure, with extended arms and legs. One or two of us turned pale. There was a feeling of general uneasiness, until the editor broke the silence by a gibe, that, poor as it was, was received with spontaneous enthusiasm. Then the chant suddenly ceased. Wang arose, and with a quick, dexterous movement, stripped both shawl and silk away, and discovered, sleeping peacefully upon my handkerchief, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... beautiful to look at, than most of the works of men. This was, perhaps, the view of his comrades, for they did a good deal of looking at the Colonel. He said he was a modest man and didn't like it, and Mac, turning a little rusty under the gibe, answered: ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... fates that gibe have lessoned us; There sups to-night on earth No madder crew of wastrels than This fellowship of mirth.... (Of mirth ... drink, fools!—nor let it flag Lest from the outer mist Creep in that other company Unbidden ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... "Treatise on Beauty" is but a review article, worked up into an encyclopaedia article, and dealing almost wholly with pure criticism. Against him, if against any one, the famous and constantly repeated gibe about the fellows who have failed in literature and art, falls short and harmless. In another of its forms, "the corruption of a poet is the generation of a critic," it might be more appropriate. For Jeffrey, as we know from his boyish letters, once thought, like almost every boy ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... heard this ill flouting from the damsel, he was wroth with wrath exceeding beyond which was no proceeding and said to the broker, "O most ill-omened of brokers, thou hast not brought into the market this ill-conditioned wench but to gibe me and make mock of me before the merchants." Then the broker took her aside and said to her, "O my lady, be not wanting in self-respect. The Shaykh at whom thou didst mock is the Syndic of the bazar and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... the pagan Jew, once taunted Mendelssohn with being a Jew and yet conducting a "Passion Play." The gibe was a home-thrust and a cruel one, since Mendelssohn had neither the wit nor the mental acuteness to avoid the pink of the man who was hated by Jew and Christian alike. Towards the exiled Heine, Mendelssohn had only a patronizing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... where the vital essence lives and retains an individual memory, and where all the errors and faults of judgment, and unsatisfied passions and the unsubstantial terrors of the mind wherewith it hath at any time had to do, come to mock and haunt and gibe and wring the heart for ever and for ever with the vision of its own hopelessness. Thus, even thus, have I lived for full two thousand years—for some six and sixty generations, as ye reckon time—in a Hell, as thou callest it—tormented ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... feel, no mental powers but what we possess, the inference would be precarious enough. The Anthropomorphist in the strict sense—the man who thinks that God or the gods must have human bodies—no doubt renders himself liable to the gibe that, if oxen could think, they would imagine the gods to be like oxen, and so on. But the cases are not parallel. We have no difficulty in thinking that in other worlds there may be colours which we have never seen, ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... parrot, with such appropriateness that even Hope had to join feebly in the woman's jolly laughter, while Faith plucked up strength to gibe a little in return for ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... success of his speech on the {276} reform of the calendar, and made little of it. Perhaps he helped thus to explain the comparative failure of his whole career. Life was to him too much of a gibe and a sarcasm, and life will not be ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... be something queer about her," declared Mr. Blackmore. "I do know how to handle a boat despite my friend's gibe, and there was no reason why she should have upset like that. That Ford ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... suppose we should wear white favours, and believe in the divine right of Kings. It must be impossible for her to forget that the Prince, whom death has proved to be worthy of the praise most people now accord him, was far from popular in his lifetime, and the pet gibe and sport of Punch. I suppose when she is dead or abdicated we shall discover that England has had few better sovereigns—and one can only hope that the reflection may not be additionally stimulated by the recurrence of her successor ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... saying yesterday—" and Duke repeated a bit of gossip that had a gibe at the Lorrigans for its point. "He got it over to Hitchcocks. It come from the Douglases. I guess Mary Hope don't want nothing of us—except what she can get out of us. We been a good thing, ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... and from amongst them the panic-stricken eyes made a dumb appeal to the griffins and crowns of his dark green hangings, for they were afraid to turn to the King. Henry retained his heavy look of jocularity: he jumped at a weighty gibe— ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... and sots may swill, Cynics gibe, and prophets rail, Moralists may scourge and drill, Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail. Let them whine, or threat, or wail! Till the touch of Circumstance Down to darkness sink the scale, Fate's ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... neither living nor dead: he accepted or rejected communications as they appealed to his reason: he kept his literature and his hallucinations separate from his business, and never did a thing which did not gibe with his reason. In this way he lived to be eighty, earnest, yet composed, serene, steering safely clear from Bedlam, by making his commonsense the court of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... hand?" inquired Nell's husband, John Peebles, at dinner. The good-natured wink which accompanied the words, the hearty voice and friendly manner, robbed the words of offense. They seemed rather a humorous gibe directed against Nell. These two got along excellently well. There was about John Peebles an effect of tender strength, re-assuring and at the same time illuminating—responsive to weakness, but adamant to imposition. Even the managerial Nell had not succeeded in piercing ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... example in itself is potent for evil. The Catholic is usually not a persona grata as a Catholic but for some quality he possesses. Consequently, he must hide his religion under the bushel for fear of offending. Then a sneer, a gibe, a taunt are unpleasant things, and will be avoided even at the price of what at other times would look like being ashamed of one's faith. If ignorant, he will be silent; if he has not prayed, he will be weak; if vicious, he ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... and no respecter of persons; and a woman may forgive an injury, but never a scornful gibe. It is this that has brought both France and Russia on him. Madame Pompadour, who is all powerful, hates Frederick for having made disrespectful remarks concerning her. The Empress of Russia detests him, for the same reason. She of Austria has a better ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... was but a mess-room gibe, as he had said, cut out of unmarred cloth, at that. Our Austrian Maria ever had a better word than "roundhead" for her soldiers. But yet it stung, and stung the more because I had and have the Ireton face, and that is unbeloved of women, and glum and curst and solemn even ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... by a long-drawn-out comparison of England's behaviour to Ireland with that of Mr Murdstone and his friend and manager Quinion to David Copperfield. In the first place, one thinks wickedly of the gibe in Friendship's Garland about "Mr Vernon Harcourt developing a system of unsectarian religion from the life of Mr Pickwick." In the second, one asks on what principles of literary art a comparison, not ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... say was this: my stuff all goes out—my real stuff; my fool failures stay by me—this thing, for instance." He indicated the big clump of nude forms. "I had an 'idea' when I started, but it was too ambitious and too literary. Moreover, it isn't democratic. It don't gibe with the present. I'd be a wild-animal sculptor if ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... pride; Where ne'er was known the form of mock debate, Or seen a new-made mayor's unwieldy state; Where change of favourites made no change of laws, And senates heard before they judged a cause; 60 How wouldst thou shake at Britain's modish tribe, Dart the quick taunt, and edge the piercing gibe! Attentive, truth and nature to descry, And pierce each scene with philosophic eye, To thee were solemn toys or empty show The robes of pleasure, and the veils of woe: All aid the farce, and all thy mirth maintain, Whose joys are causeless, or whose ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the strangest things I ever heard of," he complained. "It almost seems as if it was a talent that I didn't possess." He went once more minutely through his proofs. "A clerk would simply gibe at them," said he. "Well, there's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Nature has created me a lover of the picturesque. In heart and soul I am an artist, I dabble in colours, I dream of lights and shades and glorious effects; but the power of working out my ideas is denied me. If I try to paint a tree my friends gibe at me. I am a poor literary hack; but I give you my word, my dear old Philistine, that I would willingly change places with you." Anna smiled, she was accustomed to this sort of talk; but to her surprise Verity, who had just rejoined ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... curtain went down with the auditorium already nearly empty. Glover undoubtedly had his bad quarter-of-an-hour that night, but the next morning he regained his usual equipoise, and cast off his chagrin with a characteristic gibe, at his own expense. A sympathetic friend ventured to ask if the fiasco was caused, perhaps, by too much blood ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... PROD. Gibe not with me, you whoreson rascal slave! For money I come, and money will I have. Sirrah Vanity, Vanity! What, Vanity! Speak and be hang'd, Vanity! What, will't ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... into her face with an air of well-feigned alarm. "You don't think the sprain has gone to your head, Fanny?" he asked, and walked away, leaving Mr. Arbuton to the ladies. Mrs. Ellison did not care for this or any other gibe, if she but served her own purposes; and now, having made everybody laugh and given the conversation a lively turn, she was as perfectly content as if she had not been herself an offering to the cause of cheerfulness. She was, indeed, equal ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... wedding veil and it was all gray and dingy like the end of my honeymoon. How many sweet and tremulous illusions I folded into it on that first night and how soon afterwards did three-fourths of the world look like ashes to me. Dreams are harder to give up than realities, because they come back and gibe us even after they are dead and buried, while tangible realities stay fairly well hidden when we screw down the lid. I suppose you think that I talk like Old Man Solomon, but you know that the only serious thoughts I have are mushrooms ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... shall I," she gibed—but the gibe itself was almost a caress. "Sometimes you remind me of an impatient boy who has been promised a peach and can't wait until it ripens. But if you must have a reason why I won't drive you this afternoon, ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... and non-committal gibe satisfied most of the audience, and I was about to proceed to the next question when my interlocutor, a litigious-looking man with blue spectacles, rose in the circle ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... neighbour, said my sermon was greatly thought of, and that I had surprised everybody; but I was fearful there was something of jocularity at the bottom of this, for she was a flaunty woman, and liked well to give a good-humoured gibe or jeer. However, his grace the Commissioner was very thankful for the discourse, and complimented me on what he called my apostolical earnestness; but he was a courteous man, and I could not trust to him, especially as my lord Eaglesham had told me in secrecy before—it's true, it ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... "But hear me, and gibe not before the end. I left that hall, accursed of the gods, and over full, I fear, of drunken men, in the manner you witnessed. My counterfeit of drunkenness was so exceedingly lifelike, that even when I got outside I felt my head ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... would have understood the gibe: Addie Wicks was the dullest girl in town. And a year later he had ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... under the platform, five of them occupied, with their lids all in place, and one of them yet empty and open. In the act of mounting the steps the condemned craned his head sidewise, and at the sight of those coffins stretching along six in a row on the gravelled courtyard, he made a cheap and sorry gibe. But when he stood beneath the cross-arm to be pinioned, his legs played him traitor. Those craven knees of his gave way under him, so that trusties had to hold the weakening ruffian upright while the executioner snugged ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb |
