| 1. | He was too clever and too cynical to be really fond of. - from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde |
| 2. | In those cynical words there was indeed a grain of truth. - from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy |
| 3. | A laughter that is too cynical to be frank. - from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo |
| 4. | He had nearly swooned at what Lord Henry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting. - from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde |
| 5. | During the night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and coil themselves away there for a nap. - from Moby Dick; or The Whale by Herman Melville |
| 6. | _With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm_ Hik Hek Hak Hok Huk Kok Ku. - from Ulysses by James Joyce |
| 7. | Wild was the wrestle which should be paramount but another feeling rose and triumphed something hard and cynical self-willed and resolute it settled his passion and petrified his countenance he went on-. - from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte |
| 8. | Yet when I think of him in cold blood, far away from the glamour of his presence, I am convinced from his cynical speech and the look which I have caught in his eyes that he is one who should be deeply distrusted. - from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle |
| 9. | the cynical and corrupt practices of Walpole, premier of the first Tory cabinet, were replaced by the more enlightened policies of Pitt. - from English Literature by William J. Long |