"Comicality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so could put up with this droll figure at my elbow; but the seriousness of his face was such a contrast to the comicality of the rest of him, that I found myself beginning to smile every now and then, but directly I saw the serious eyes on me, I felt obliged to ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... constructed, and have in them material of the finest acoustic properties. The sound-hole loses the pointed form so much associated with Guarneri: the purfling is embedded, the edges heavy, the corners somewhat grotesque, the scroll has a mixture of vigour, comicality, and majesty, which may force a smile and then a frown from the connoisseur. The comparison may seem a little forced, but the head of a thoroughbred English mastiff, if carved, might give some idea of the appearance sought ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... daughter of that mother who had been good and loving. Henrietta had her father's passion for excitement but, being a woman, she had the greater need of being loved, and Rose raised her eyes and looked at Charles with an ironical appreciation of his worthiness, of his comicality. She saw him with Henrietta's eyes, and her white shoulders lifted and dropped in resignation. Then she looked at Henrietta and smiled frankly. 'Another dance has begun,' she said. 'Somebody must ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... came to the conclusion that Septimus was only sentimentally in love with Zora, and she regarded his tepid passion as a matter of no importance. At the same time her easy discovery delighted her. It invested Septimus with a fresh air of comicality. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Artemus Ward is a perfect steam factory of puns and a museum of American humour. Humanity seems to him to be a vast mine, out of which he digs tons of fun; and life a huge forest, in which he can cut down 'cords' of comicality. Language with him is like the brass balls with which the juggler amuses us at the circus—ever being tossed up, ever glittering, ever thrown about at pleasure. We intended to report his lecture in full, but ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... This strange habit of the Countess is a fact, and sorely distressed the Earl, as he has himself put on record, though with all his annoyance he shows himself quite conscious of the comicality ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... my wife, in an Indian dress, and seated in a chair that was once my grandfather's; but since some months goes by the name of Henry James's, for it was there the novelist loved to sit - adds a touch of poesy and comicality. It is, I think, excellent, but is too eccentric to be exhibited. I am at one extreme corner; my wife, in this wild dress, and looking like a ghost, is at the extreme other end; between us an open door exhibits my ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as I have related, was in some estimation for his comicality; but he was a dure hand at an argument, and would not see the plainest truth when it was not on his side of the debate. No occasion or cause, however, had come to pass by which this inherent cross-grainedness was stirred into action, till ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... The comicality of Martin consisted, in the present instance, of singing in a harsh baritone the song of ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... became resigned, noticing that among the three or four hundred in his class only about forty merited the honor of being questioned, because they attracted the professor's attention by their appearance, some prank, comicality, or other cause. The greater part of the students congratulated themselves that they thus escaped the work of thinking and understanding the subject. "One goes to college, not to learn and study, but to gain credit for the course, so if the book can be memorized, what more can be asked—the ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... that he had had one or two bad days, but he protested afresh against the wrong of his mother's having made them the ground of an appeal to poor Pemberton. Poor Pemberton could laugh now, apart from the comicality of Mrs. Moreen's mustering so much philosophy for her defence—she seemed to shake it out of her agitated petticoats, which knocked over the light gilt chairs—so little did their young companion, marked, unmistakeably ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... said Miss Wren, with an arch look. "Don't you think me a queer little comicality?" In shaking her head at him after asking the question, ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... daily, only an indication of the quality of his mind. Broechner's mere manner, as he remarked one day with a smile, "You do not read The Daily Paper on principle," made me perceive in a flash the comicality of my indignation over such articles as it contained. My horizon was still sufficiently circumscribed for me to suppose that the state of affairs in Copenhagen was, in and of itself, of importance. I myself regarded my horizon as wide. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... to a vice was the furious and ill-considered efforts of totally unskilled women to make shirts and hospital garments for soldiers. If some of the results had not been pathetic one could almost be overcome with the comicality of the whole business. Soldiers' shirts were turned out by a circle of busily sewing ladies that would not fit a dwarf, while probably the next batch of garments dispatched with patriotic fervor to a regimental ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... her husband, whenever the two go out together, there is small opportunity for intercourse by the way, even were there the slightest inclination to it, which there is not. The appearance of the pair on an excursion is a walking satire on sociability, for the comicality of the connection is quite unperceived by the performers. In the privacy of the domestic circle the separation, if less humorous, is no less complete. Each lives in a world of his own, largely separate in fact in China and Korea, and none the less in fancy in Japan. On the continent a friend ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... nonsensical refrain of "Right tooral lol looral, right tooral lol lay." At times, when his audience was convulsed with merriment, he would come to a halt, and gravely observe, "This is not a comic song"; but London, was soon unanimous that such exquisite comicality had not been heard for many a long year. "Vilikins and his Dinah" created a furore. My countrymen are always going mad about something; and Englishmen and Englishwomen all agreed to go crazy about "Vilikins." "Right tooral lol looral" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... amiable bright blue eyes. An extremely communicative man: a man with whom loquacity was the irrestrainable outpouring of contentment and gratitude. Mr. Bintrey, on the other hand, a cautious man, with twinkling beads of eyes in a large overhanging bald head, who inwardly but intensely enjoyed the comicality of openness of ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... latter part of Harry's speech was particularly comical, the comicality of it lying in this, that while he spoke, he drew Kate gradually towards him, and at the very time when he gave utterance to the penitential remorse for his rudeness, Kate was infolded in a much more vigorous embrace than at the first; and what is ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... exposing some of Westermarck's arguments, which, as he shows, "border on the comic." I myself have in this chapter, as well as in those on Africans, American Indians, South Sea Islanders, etc., revealed the comicality of the assertion that there is in a savage condition of life "comparatively little reason for illegitimate relations," which forms one of the main props of Westermarck's anti-promiscuity theory; and I have also reduced ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... The comicality of the Ape family might have provoked a reluctant smile, but much more likely a lecture on the impropriety of descending to caricature in a ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... on the surface of society; cut a little deeper, you will find the veins and arteries of wisdom. Therefore will a sober man not deride the notion that comic almanacs, comic Latin grammars, comic hand-books of sciences and arts, and the great prevalence of comicality in popular views taken of life and of death, of incident and of character, of evil and of good, are, in reality, signs of the times. These straws, so thick upon the wind, and so injuriously mote-like to the visual organs, are flying forward before ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Sometimes there is a fourth who flits about and stirs up the animal with a switch. Every minute Decamp's "Turkish Patrol," that startling painting which made such a sensation in the Exhibition of 1831, passed before me, amid a cloud of dust, and made me smile; but no one appeared to notice the comicality of the situation: a stout man dressed in white with a broad belt around his waist, perched on a little ass and followed by three or four poor devils, thin and tanned, with hungry mien, who through excess of zeal and ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... your watch,' says my false friend, rubbing his hands, and smiling, as if he really enjoyed the comicality of the thing. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... evasive," said Heyst after a short silence. "Well, the good fellow did pray and after he had confessed to it I was struck by the comicality of the situation. No, don't misunderstand me—I am not alluding to his act, of course. And even the idea of Eternity, Infinity, Omnipotence, being called upon to defeat the conspiracy of two miserable Portuguese half-castes did not move my mirth. From the point of view of the supplicant, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... earnest, and more especially if he deliver his expostulations in a tone which in the world must necessarily provoke a duel; his real-life manner will destroy the whimsical and purely dramatic existence of the other character (which to render it comic demands an antagonist comicality on the part of the character opposed to it), and convert what was meant for mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece of impertinence indeed, which would raise no diversion in us, but rather ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... said, with a sort of dry comicality which belonged to him, "I hope you will never change ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... his presence, the grotesqueness of his appearance in a gathered smockfrock, such as was now worn only by the most old-fashioned of the labourers, had a ghastly comicality that chilled her as to its bearing. D'Urberville emitted a ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... table no 'laird's lady' could have behaved so well, albeit her droll remarks and repartee kept us all laughing. After dinner it was just the same—there were no bounds to her good-nature, her excellent spirits and comicality. Even when asked to sing she was by no means taken aback, but treated us to a ballad of five-and-twenty verses, with a chorus to each; but as it told a story of love and war, of battle and siege, of villainy for a time ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... out again, "you're not going away?"—an ejaculation that, after all that had happened, had the grandest comicality. "Bless my soul," he then remarked as artlessly, ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... questions sometimes not needing, and often incapable of answer. There are three stanzas of such near the close of the First Part of "Peter Bell," where Peter first catches a glimpse of the dead body in the water, all happily incongruous, and ending with one which reaches the height of comicality:— ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... stood in immediate need of the Reverend Frank to come and take it off. Many a time had that kind creature got up, and gone out to Mrs Sprodgkin (such was the disciple's name), suppressing a strong sense of her comicality by his strong sense of duty, and perfectly knowing that nothing but a cold would come of it. However, beyond themselves, the Reverend Frank Milvey and Mrs Milvey seldom hinted that Mrs Sprodgkin was hardly worth the trouble she ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... commentary on the poem in time, its allusions, and with them most of its wit, will be in danger of perishing entirely. What we can judge of in Fanny are one or two graceful lyrics interspersed in it, though even these are marred by untimely comicality and local allusions. The nominal hero, while wandering about at night after the wreck of his fortunes, hears a band playing outside a public place of entertainment. It must have been a better band than that which now, from the Museum opposite the Astor ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... khaki, and chloride of lime, very pungent in one's nostrils, and when the curtain went up on a well—fitted stage and "The Follies" began their performance, the squalor of the place did not matter. What mattered was the enormous whimsicality of the Bombardier at the piano, and the outrageous comicality of a tousle-haired soldier with a red nose, who described how he had run away from Mons "with the rest of you," and the light—heartedness of a performance which could have gone straight to a London music-hall and brought down the house with jokes and songs made up in dugouts ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Harry who replied. He told the whole story as far as it was known to himself, dwelling especially upon the character and actions of that strange being who had played the role of monarch. Harry's light and playful nature threw a tinge of comicality around the whole story, which was highly appreciated by all his hearers. And so it was that a smile began to go round, until at length it deepened and developed into laughter, and so went on deepening and broadening and intensifying, until at last the laughter ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... trespasser, do you see? and we must think it good that they do; and even if we do not, what harm will it do them? The people object, indeed! Why? Plautus himself would never have attained the comicality of such an idea. A philosopher would be jesting if he advised the poor devil of the masses to cry out against the size and weight of the lords. Just as well might the gnat dispute with the foot of an elephant. One day I saw a hippopotamus ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... to study, a thousand opportunities to make those infinitesimal improvements which are so much in art and for the artist. Our first Greek play had been costumed by the professional costumier, with unforgettable results of comicality and indecorum; the second, the Trachiniae of Sophocles, he took in hand himself, and a delightful task he made of it. His study was then in antiquarian books, where he found confusion, and on statues and bas-reliefs, where he at last found clearness; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a ghastly comicality in such a thing as this, that this lately dreaded Being should be nothing more than a common skeleton, and that he should be discovered in this bed of horror doing nothing more dignified than clutching a junk bottle like a sleeping drunkard. Brandon smiled faintly ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... this aspect of their relation; she was well aware of its comicality; but though Franklin's devotion was at times something of a burden, though she could expect from him none of the glamour of courtship, she could ill have dispensed with his absorption in her. Franklin's absorption in her was part of her own ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Buddhas. From among the trees he chose his favourite, a kind of dwarf cedar, to place between the window, opening on to a sunny veranda, and an old gold screen, across whose tender glory wound the variegated comicality of an Emperor's traveling procession, painted by a Kano ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... after a last good-by," thought Lancelot, and continued to smile at the comicality of ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the comicality of the request, and the thoroughly colonial coolness of making it, William set off, and presently returned with nearly half a sheep hanging over his shoulders, and a large joint in ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... I daresay. Ah! I saw a scene of mingled comicality and seriousness at his funeral some weeks ago, which has choked me at dinner-time ever since. C—— and I went as mourners; and as he lived, poor fellow, five miles out of town, I drove C—— down. It was such a day as I hope, for the credit of nature, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... we are," said I, laughing at the comicality of the situation, which struck me all of a moment. "Anstruther and I are very good friends. I'm sure I don't want to do him ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson |
