Mockery
The city residents mocked the nuns by calling them "les grises" – a phrase meaning both "the grey women" and "the drunken women", in reference to the color of their attire and d'Youville's late husband, François-Magdeleine You d’Youville (1700–1730), a notorious bootlegger. Marguerite d'Youville and her colleagues adopted the particular black and brown dress of their religious institute in 1755: despite a lack of grey colour, they kept the nickname once used to spite them.
Read more about this topic: Grey Nuns
Famous quotes containing the word mockery:
“O that I were a mockery king of snow,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water drops!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
—New Yorker (April 23, 1990)
“In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
Half dead at the top.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)