"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over his tongue, and his eyes twinkled with a sort of leer, which indicated that the fellow was not without some humour. He submitted patiently to the rebuke, however, making no ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... applause. Nothing was said between Blanquette and myself, but she became my sworn sister from that moment. And Narcisse sat at our feet looking down on the crowd, his tongue lolling out mockingly and a satiric leer on his face. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... your Catelans? Do we, when the week's work of your humbler people is done, see the laughter in dancing eyes in the Rue Mouffetard or, in the revel of your Saturday night, do we see only the belladonna'd leer of the drabs in the Place Pigalle? Do we hear the romance of your concertinas setting thousands of hobnailed boots a-clatter with Terpsichore in the Boulevard de la Chapelle, in Polonceau and Myrrha, or do ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... in search of stolen goods; the "widow who bounced" from one end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a description in romantic style suggest ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... applause and admiration. Neither of the prisoners stirred. The pig's head grinned at the world with its inane, painted leer. A ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... or "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a led ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... Thou beheldest them. Thine ear Caught their defiance and thy lightening pen, In shattering the dark in evil's den, Caught hope amphibious from leer to leer Of those grim shadows, plotting to regain Lost Paradise, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... thought best to leave it. Fleda stopped crying as soon as she could, lest somebody should see her; and was sitting quietly again, alone as before, when one of the sailors whom she had never spoken to, came by, and leaning over towards her with a leer as he passed, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in her menaced house—I know not how she fared—whether she gazes for ever, disconsolate, at the deed, remembering only in her smitten mind, at which the little boys now leer, that she once knew well those things at which man stands aghast; or whether in the end she crept away, and clambering horribly from abyss to abyss, came at last to higher things, and is wise and eternal still. For who knows of madness whether it is divine or whether it ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... of the vast shadowy figure, which to Laurence's eye appeared to turn towards his niche with a leer, as if to say, "Listen to him. What ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Carietta, her small face distorted with a leer of the most horrid satisfaction, "'Lihu's ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... by the book-stall. That be Mr. Waffles,' continued he, giving his master a touch in the ribs as he jerked his portmanteau into a fly, 'that be Mr. Waffles,' repeated he, with a knowing leer. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... obedience to a guttural order from Dr. Fu Manchu, placed the cage upon the carpet, completely covering Smith's body, but leaving his neck and head exposed. The seared and pock-marked face set in a sort of placid leer, the dacoit adjusted the sliding partitions to Smith's recumbent form, and I saw the purpose of the graduated arches. They were intended to divide a human body in just such fashion, and, as I realized, were most cunningly shaped to that end. The whole of Smith's body lay now in the wire cage, ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... electioneering, a subserviency to caucus direction, and a party spirit upon a level with many of the least reputable elective Chambers in the world; and beneath the imposing mask of an assembly of notables backed by the prescription and traditions of centuries we discern the leer of the artful dodger, who has got the straight tip from ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... McAdam, handsome, carefree boys of sixteen and eighteen, passed the drinks with many a jest and often a wink, but never a drop drank they, not until the Lodge had closed its doors on all visitors, and then Tom, the elder, with a final leer at Sandy the younger, drained off a glass of bad whisky with a ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... will be to me, my lord, for having enabled him to establish the right," says Sampson, with a leer on his face. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so short, Jones, mayhap thou 'lt spare it, and tell thine errand at once," interposed Standish sharply, and Jones turned upon him with a leer. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... eye, close by whose lid the fatal wound had been inflicted, was not, as might have been expected, bathed in blood, but had started forth nearly from the socket, and gave to the face, by its fearful unlikeness to the other glazing orb, a leer more hideous and unearthly than fancy ever saw. The wig, with all its rich curls, had fallen with the hat to the floor, leaving the shorn head exposed, and in many places marked by the recent struggle; the rich ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... one of the sailors chanced to set his eyes upon me; and, after regarding me with a comic leer, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... corner of a lane that ran into the principal thoroughfare. The upper windows were much wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer. To-night nothing was visible but the outline of the roof upon ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... you won't be as much surprised at what we are going to do as the manner in which we are going to do it," replied Duval, with an evil leer. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... gratitude of the clergy is like their charity, which shuns the light — Mr Barton was immediately accosted by a person well stricken in years, tall, and raw-boned, with a hook-nose, and an arch leer, that indicated, at least, as much cunning as sagacity. Our conductor saluted him, by the name of captain C—, and afterwards informed us he was a man of shrewd parts, whom the government occasionally employed in secret services. But I have had the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... censure. It was a reverend and dignified pillar of the church, as demure as a saint, turning up his eyes, and professing and preaching morality, which I had more than once or twice before heard him do, while, with a sanctified leer, he expressed great horror at my breach of conjugal chastity, or violation of the marriage vow. The reader will easily imagine the manner in which I eyed him, while he was uttering these truly religious and moral doctrines, when I inform him that, only a few hours before, an old neighbouring farmer ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... feet; but the business was over in two twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... oak bough, peered down and signed to Josh to come and look. There was not much to see; there was an easel and a small canvas thereon, an open black japanned paint-box, a large wooden palette blotched with many colours lying on a bed of fern, and whose thumb-hole seemed to comically leer up at the boys like some great eye. Then there was a pair of big, sturdy legs, upon which rested a great felt hat, everything else being covered in by a great opened-out white umbrella, perfectly useless then, for, as Will had said, all was ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... She was reading aloud to about sixteen women prisoners, who were engaged in needle-work. They all rose on my entrance, curtsied respectfully, and then resumed their seats and employment. Instead of a scowl, leer, or ill-suppressed laugh, I observed upon their countenances an air of self-respect and gravity, a sort of consciousness of their improved character, and the altered position in which they are placed. I afterwards visited the other wards, which were ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... and Giorgione came Botticelli. Now, Botticelli builded on Giorgione, while Burne-Jones builded on Botticelli. Aubrey Beardsley, dead at the age at which Keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where Burne-Jones placed faith and abiding trust. Aubrey Beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in Botticelli's "Spring," I need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes about the face of one ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... had of possible help from the back room died with that laugh. Then the door behind the bar slowly opened, and the scar-featured face of Sassoon peered cautiously from the gloom. The horse thief, stooping, walked in with a leer directed triumphantly at ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... knew who you were, the moment you came in, sir," said he, with a very knowing leer out ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... O'Gorman, with the leer of a satyr, "we'd take moighty good care you didn't do that. If Misther Conyers won't be obligin', why, we'll have to spare him, I s'pose; but we couldn't do widout you, my dear; ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... the caress, and was going to shut the door, when the drunken old man turned round once more, and inquired with a cunning leer, "So you expect some one, my child? Whom do you expect, little Itzig? Is it ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Calendar's corpulent figure filled the doorway; Stryker's weather-worn features loomed over his shoulder, distorted in a cheerful leer. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... whets his bill upon his own blue-ringed legs, steadied by claws in the fleece, yet not so fiercely inserted as to get entangled and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and turned a little first to one side and then to another, all the while a self-congratulatory leer in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then folds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubious how to begin to gratify his lust of blood; and frequently, when just on the brink of consummation, jumps off side, back, or throat, and goes dallying about, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... caught the general idea on the instant. The two exchanged looks, such as are only current between very 'cute, knowing, sharp-witted men. Hiram was betrayed into returning Mr. Bennett's leer before he was aware of it. It was a spontaneous recognition, and he felt ashamed at being thus thrown off his guard. He colored slightly, and said something about his duty to ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... great relief that the Reverend Orme was not looking at Shenton; his gaze was fastened on Manoel. Lewis, too, turned his eyes on Manoel. Cold sweat came out over him as he saw the terror in Manoel's face. The leer was still there, frozen. Over it and through it, like a double exposure on a single negative, hung the film of terror. The Reverend Orme, his hands half outstretched, ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... towards this display than by a few touches of chalk. Among the heads of distinguished personages, finding those of the King of Prussia and the Empress of Hungary, he changed the cast of their eyes, so as to make them leer significantly at each other. Note.—These (which in the catalogue are called an original portrait of the present Emperor of Prussia and ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its antagonist) were two old signs of the "Saracen's Head" and Queen Anne. Under ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the ugliest man I have ever seen. He has a squint and a leer, his mouth drops at both sides, he has no forehead, and his straight, combed hair meets his eyebrows—or rather, his left eyebrow, since that one is raised by a cut. He has the expression of a cut-throat, and yet he is quite ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... of the cloister did this countenance keep, that it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an unnatural smile half-way between a leer and a grin. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... feared than any depth of serious love, however absorbing and apparently foolish, is that vicious condition in which trifling takes the place of all serious love, when women are viewed only as dolls, and addressed with an odious leer of affected knowingness as 'my dear,' wink, etc. Now to this tends the false condition of women when called 'the ladies.' On the other hand, what an awful elevation arises when each views in the other a creature capable of the same noble duties—she no less than he a creature ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the creased backs and gooseflesh of his nudes! What lurking cynicism there is in some of his interiors! Voila l'animale! he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayaderes and ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... they are doing," said the sham Belgian, with a cunning leer. "What would you have? A family, the father of which is a brigadier-general at the front; the eldest son also a captain at the front; and the young boy on the point of joining the Army. They were just the ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... my Uncle John, who was dancing attendance on her with the leer of a satyr, "please do not let me disturb this lady. I am so troubled about the anxiety I must be causing my father and my friends at the present moment, that I could not really stop here. All I ask is that she will be kind enough to lend me a fresh horse and a guide, so that I ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... too clevaire," said the maid with an evil leer,—"she would rob Madame, would she? She would play the espionne, hein? Eh bien, ma petite, you stay 'ere ontil you say what you lave done wiz ze ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each other and ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... bookseller. "You're as good as they are." He leaned forward from the easy chair, and tapped the clerk's arm with a long, claw-like finger. "I say," he continued, with a smile that was something between a wink and a leer, and suggestive of a pleased satisfaction. ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... follow with grim half-suppressed laughter as he speeds into the trap. The hoary cripple cannot hide his malicious glee, the "stiff blind horse" is as grotesque as he is woeful, the dreary day itself, as it sinks, shoots one grim red leer at the doomed knight as he sets forth; in the penury and inertness of the wasted plain he sees "grimace"; the mountains fight like bulls or doze like dotards; and the Dark Tower itself is "round and squat," built of brown stone, a mere anticlimax to romance; while round it lie ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... set purpose, had crept up behind us so softly that we should not suspect his approach, or else so engrossed were we that our ears had been deafened for the time. He stood there now in his untidy gown of black, and there was a leer of mockery on his long, white face. Slowly he put a lean arm between us, and took the sheet in ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... and then at Mr Cripps's face. There was the same ugly leer about the latter, into which a spark of anger was infused as the boy still held back ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... after him. The face of the Earth-girl was pale and drawn, yet, when she saw Glavour, her head rose in an expression of defiance. Sonom saluted the Viceroy and left the room, the massive door clanging shut behind him. Glavour stared at the girl with an evil leer ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... were ready did Bucky utter a word. The terrific beating he had received had stunned him for a few minutes; but now he jumped to his feet, not waiting for the command from Walker, and strode up close to Billy. There was a vengeful leer on his bloody face and his eyes blazed almost white, but his voice was so low that Conway and Walker could only hear the murmur of it. His words were ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... alehouse, where he sat, Came the Scalds and Saga-men; Is it to be wondered at, That they quarrelled now and then, When o'er his beer Began to leer Drunken ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... With a leer, he put one hand into his outer garment and felt around in a pocket. Then he felt in ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... Trice's business, and so at noon dined, and my wife telling me that there was a pretty lady come to church with Peg Pen to-day, I against my intention had a mind to go to church to see her, and did so, and she is pretty handsome. But over against our gallery I espied Pembleton, and saw him leer upon my wife all the sermon, I taking no notice of him, and my wife upon him, and I observed she made a curtsey to him at coming out without taking notice to me at all of it, which with the consideration ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the Officious Leer of a Pimp; and I half suspect a Design, but I'll be upon them before they think on ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... same unpleasant leer upon his face, rolled down the deck in her wake, carelessly humming a fragment of the tune he had just been playing. He had collected all the contributions in his big hand—a pitiful little collection of nickels ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... eyes upon Victoria, and ogled her with an impudent leer. Victoria sat erect and immovable, and even her eye- lashes did not move; she apparently did not see the glances fixed upon her; nor even heard what Bonnier had said about her, for her countenance ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... begin to "tell" upon the callers, and many eccentricities, to use no harsher term, are the result. Towards the close of the day, everything is in confusion—the door-bell is never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences of their friends, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... harm comin' to y'u, lady, while I am with y'u," said the fellow, with a hateful leer that made ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... It at first exhibited itself in restlessness, and an inability to remain quiet, and afterwards in half-suppressed groans and sighs. If he opened his eyes and looked at the reader, he saw a devilish figure, with a malignant leer glaring at him; if he shut them to exclude the disagreeable image it was converted into a thousand smaller figures, dancing up and down like motes in a distempered vision, all wearing that intolerable grin, while ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... and Montgomery favored the judge with a drunken leer. "Suppose I was to go home full, what's to hinder her from gettin' things out of me? I'm a talker, drunk or sober, and Andy Gilmore knows ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... room at the River Police Depot. It was that of a man who looked like a Lascar, who wore an ill-fitting slop-shop suit of blue, soaked and stained and clinging hideously to his body. His dank black hair was streaked upon his low brow; and his face, although it was notable for a sort of evil leer, had assumed in death another and ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... aim, his hands trembling one moment, but firm the next, as the kangaroo, bending downward with the side of its head to him and nearly on a level with the water, which rose in violent ebullitions consequent upon Shanter's struggles, seemed to have a peculiar triumphant leer in its eyes, as if it were saying: "Wait a bit; it is your ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... Insolence, Bloated empiric, puffed Pretence, Noise that through a trumpet speaks, Laughter in loud peals that breaks, Intrusion with a fopling's face, Ignorant of time and place, Sparks of fire Dissension blowing, Ductile, court-bred Flattery, bowing, Restraint's stiff neck, Grimace's leer, Squint-eyed Censure's artful sneer, Ambition's buskins, steeped in ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... and now, when I rise in the morning to harness my horses, and load my cart, methinks I have a tailor sewing stitches in my heart: when I am driving my cart, my heart that wanders one way, my eyes they leer another, my feet they lead me, I know not whither, but now and then into a slough over head and ears; so that poor Grim, that before was over shoes in love, is now over head and ears in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... criticism. "Los quales," he says, speaking of books of chivalry, "de mas de ser mentirossissimos, son tal mal compuestos, assi por dezir las mentiras tan desvergoncadas, como por tener el estilo desbaracado, que no ay buen estomago que lo pueda leer." Apud Mayans y Siscar, Origenes, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... ain't got no time to fool!" prompted the man, with a leer. "I'm dead onto your lay, and there's a bull comin' along now—half ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... An ugly leer came over the brutal face of the giant; "Oh, I ain't, ain't I? You think I'm drunk. But I ain't, not so mighty much. Jest enough t' perten me up a pepper grain." Then, turning to his companion, who was grinning in appreciation of ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... man," said the jockey, or whatever he was, turning to me with an arch leer, "I suppose I may consider myself as the purchaser of this here animal, for the use and behoof of this young gentleman," making a sign with his head towards the tall young man by his side. "By no means," said I; "I am utterly unacquainted with either of you, and before parting ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... lewd attempt at wit, Disgraceful to the times. Here Scotland's dandy Irish Earl,{50} With Noblet on his arm would whirl, And frolic in this sphere; With mulberry coat, and pink cossacks, The red-hair'd Thane the fair attacks, F-'s ever on the leer; And when alone, to every belle The am'rous beau love's tale will tell, Intent upon their ruin. Beware, Macduff, the fallen stars! Venus aggrieved will fly to Mars; There's mischief brewing. What mountain of a fair is that, Whose jewels, lace, and Spanish hat, Proclaim ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or perhaps a present from a friend—what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... lifted. Ursula watched him in his crawling, slinking progress down the room. He was one of her boys! When he got to the desk, he looked round, half furtively, with a sort of cunning grin and a pathetic leer at the big boys in Standard VII. Then, pitiable, pale, in his dejected garments, he lounged under the menace of the headmaster's desk, with one thin leg crooked at the knee and the foot struck out sideways his hands in the low-hanging pockets ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... I sat (and miserably enough) staring down at my jewelled buttons that seemed to leer up at me like so many small, malevolent eyes, upon the air rose a distant stir that grew and grew to sound of voices with the creak and rumble ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... a drinking bout among the officers in one of the German dugouts, the main beverage being champagne. With a drunken leer he informed us that champagne was plentiful on their side and that it did not cost them anything either. About seven that night the conversation had turned to the "contemptible" English, and the Captain had made a wager ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... A gas jet above the wretched little washstand lighted the room but poorly. The door opened slowly. A tall, ungainly woman entered the room—a creature with a sallow, weather-beaten face and a perpetual leer. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... shoved his hands into the hip pockets of his striped trousers; and putting on a leer of pretended indifference, turned to a man named Benoit, who was regarding him ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... the court with a fascinating leer, which left no doubt on any one's mind that he ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... A cunning leer passed over the greyish countenance as the dazzling vision protruded itself before Mr. Sharpley. He drew his fingers convulsively through the mass of bristling hair (which might be designated by that color ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... name Is woven with his country's fame, Triumphant over all, I found weak, palsied, bloated, blear; His province seemed to be, to leer At ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... on his heel, with military precision. Then he chuckled Dolores under the chin with a leer, to have his hand indignantly pushed aside. As the girl glared at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes, he stalked into the taproom, ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... haunting whisperer? Spirit of beauty immanent and sheer, Art thou that crooked servitor, Done with disguise, from whose malignant leer Out of the ghostly ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40 Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Od' und leer das Meer. ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... horrible to me. Angel was hitting out wildly. When the boy saw me, he hooked his leg behind Angel's and threw him on his back with deadly ease, at the same time administering a kick in the stomach. He turned then to me with a leer. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... ass that from his paddock strays Might sound abroad his field-companions' praise, Recounting volubly their well-bred leer, Their port impressive and their wealth of ear, Mistaking for the world's assent the clang Of echoes mocking his accurst harangue; So the dull clown, untraveled though at large, Visits the city on the ocean's marge, Expands his eyes and marvels to remark Each coastwise schooner ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... sch—sch—schooner go against the wind." Old Koogah dropped an open leer to Opee-Kwan, and, the laughter growing around him, continued: "The wind blows from the south and blows the schooner south. The wind blows against the wind. The wind blows one way and the other at the same time. ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... baseness foreign to his nature; and yet have not men of the most lofty sense of honor often fallen from their original nobility, and revelled in self-degradation? And it somehow seemed as though, at the last, the dwarf had looked up at her with a strangely knowing leer. And was it merely her imagination that made her think there was a certain sly approach to undue familiarity in the usually deferential deportment of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... can show you the beauty of a beautiful thing, or the ugliness of an ugly one; but it takes a clever beast like Crawley to show you beauty in anything so absolutely repulsive as that woman's face. Look at it! He's got hold of something. He's caught the lurking fascination, the—the leer ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... gardener weeded the vegetables. Nicholas rolled over again and faced the outstretched wings of the noseless angel on the nearest tombstone. The loss of the nose had distorted the marble smile into a grimace, which gave a leer to the remaining features. As the boy looked at it he laughed suddenly, and his voice startled him amid the droning of bees. Then he sat up and glanced at his brier-scratched feet stretched upon the slab, and laughed again for the sheer ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... proved an oracle. After two hours' dodging and maneuvering the fox came out at the very end of Bellman's Coppice, with nothing near him but Richard Bassett. Pug gave him the white of his eye in an ugly leer, and headed straight as a crow ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... classify people too definitely into types; you will find that all through their youth they will persist annoyingly in jumping from class to class, and by pasting a supercilious label on every one you meet you are merely packing a Jack-in-the-box that will spring up and leer at you when you begin to come into really antagonistic contact with the world. An idealization of some such a man as Leonardo da Vinci would be a more valuable beacon to you ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion. Some coarse town humorist would leer upon him from the doorway—a leer of furtive, devilish cunning—and whisper hoarsely, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... At that time, suspecting that all was not well, from the girl's eyes and the leer on the shopkeeper's face, he had opened the door in time to hear enough. He had lifted the proprietor bodily and flung him with a crash into a glass showcase of ornaments for the hair. Then, entirely cheerful and happy, and unmolested by the frightened ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... should fall in, was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth. It was a good speculation—a very safe one. The old man stowed his pocket-book carefully in the breast of his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of triumph. That will had made him ten years younger at the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... one, resolved to reign alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, View him with jealous yet with scornful eyes, Hate him for arts that caused himself to rise, Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Alike unused to blame or to commend, A timorous foe and a suspicious friend, Fearing e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne'er obliged; Willing to wound, and yet ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... in the middle of the street, with a cunning leer on his face. The change of purpose supported his belief that a May-day ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... floating spar, she clung to the little column at the left of the window, clutching it with her hand; for the dreadful thing had happened-Caracalla's eye had met hers and had even rested on her for a while! And that gaze had nothing bloodthirsty in it, nor the vile leer which had sparkled in the eyes of the drunken rioters she had met last night in the streets; he only looked astonished as at some wonderful thing which he had not expected to see in this place. But presently ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his heart was born, And sometimes mid the weary task, and leer Of felon faces, ere he was aware From a compress'd unmurmuring lip, it broke, O Lamb of God! If still unquell'd Despair Thrust up a rebel standard, down it fell At the o'er-powering sigh, O Lamb of God! And ere upon his pallet low, he sank, It sometimes breathed, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... that my daughter is very irritable and passionate, and withal so fond of admiration, that nothing in the shape of a leer comes amiss to her. She likes a good squeeze above all things. Evil, and the Father of Evil though I be, I am not so very wicked as to wish thee to marry a woman of that description without thy knowing what kind of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer;[327-3] Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson served his soda-water. In one hand he held an envelope and in the other his straw ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... ends of the landscape, not with the strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground—a red face looking on with a drunken leer. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Gorilla with a leer, "as for myself, I am so confident of being considered an Apollo that I wish for nothing so much as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the game. I then added, that from the look of the establishment I could not be wrong in assuming that they did a large business in the way of feeding hungry politicians and honester people. 'You may stake some on that, old feller,' says he, with a suspicious leer. His nasal was somewhat strong, so I put him down as from Vermont State, perhaps from the more mountainous part of it. As if shy of my patronage he upon the counter, pompous, spread his hands, as if the mahogany was all his. This seeming indifference rather ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... die Wolken ziehn, Das Maegdlein wandelt an Ufers Gruen; Es bricht sich die Welle mit Macht, mit Macht, Und sie singt hinaus in die finstre Nacht, Das Auge von Weinen getruebet: Das Herz is gestorben, die Welt ist leer, Und weiter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr. Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurueck, Ich babe genossen das irdische Glueck, Ich babe ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller |
