Therefore it does not help to sneer at the imperfection of today's reality or to preach absolutes as a daily agenda.
People who would never sneer at sci-fi and murder mysteries have no trouble damning the whole romance genre without reading one.
A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow.
The sure foundations of the state are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin.
The next time anyone is inclined to sneer at the basics as "traditional," I suggest he or she visit with a 12th -or even a sixth-grader who can barely read, write or compute and look at the pain and frustration on that student's face
How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel.
A sneer is often the sign of heartless malignity.
It will be very generally found that those who will sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples
The malicious sneer is improperly called laughter.