"Facetious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seems to you facetious; and no doubt, while we have nothing of more importance, we do sport with the pen. But examine these Fables with attention, {and} what useful lessons will you find {concealed} under them! Things are not always what they seem; first appearances deceive many: ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... figure-head but had the menacing look of bursting forward to run them down. Not a sluice gate, or a painted scale upon a post or wall, showing the depth of water, but seemed to hint, like the dreadfully facetious Wolf in bed in Grandmamma's cottage, 'That's to drown YOU in, my dears!' Not a lumbering black barge, with its cracked and blistered side impending over them, but seemed to suck at the river with a thirst for sucking them ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... they got facetious, and admired a Punch and Judy show together, and parted with deep regret, when a policeman ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and chatting with a little group of girls at the other end of the vessel. Her aunt was entertaining the ladies, and her uncle walking up and down the deck in earnest conversation with two gentlemen; Rupert was trying to get on the paddle-box, and there was no one near her but Gerald, the facetious leader of a knot of young men. Ruth felt very lonely and rather sorrowful; she had been eagerly anticipating this picnic, and now she seemed to be quite neglected, while every one else was gay and happy. She had not the courage to make her way through the visitors to reach Julia at the other end ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... "the season." These illuminations resembled the gleaming rays which shine in the gay haunts of pleasure; but there were tapers instead of wax candles, and the chanting of prayers for the dead replaced the murmur of the ball-room. In the streets, instead of the facetious transparencies which indicate the costumers, there swung at intervals huge lanterns of a blood-red color, with these words in black letters: "Assistance for those attacked with the cholera." The true places for revelry, during the night, were the churchyards; ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... so great as not to be talked over, or to prevent the call for more whisky and hot water. All but MacGregor, however, regretted what had occurred. He was so elevated with his victory and a sense of courage and prowess, that he became more and more facetious and overbearing. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... they want, I don't mind their taking my switch," I observed, trying to be facetious, although uneasy. As to the switch, it no longer matched my hair, and I would have parted from it without ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... soul that the plays reveal. The notices of his talk and character are few and unenlightening, and testify to a certain easy brilliance of wit, but no more. Before he is thirty he is spoken of as both "upright" and "facetious"—a ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dear, facetious man. Now that's just the thing to have captivated a jury. I don't believe Walter will ever be so clever as you are. Yet he can take Cynthia to Paris, and abroad, and everywhere. I only hope all this indulgence won't develope the faults in Cynthia's character. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... enjoyed in the East. To be sure it was a short night, for our party were stirring at one o'clock, and those who got up insisted on talking and keeping awake those who inclined to sleep. But I shall never forget the terror inspired in my mind, being shut up in the bug-disappointer, when a facetious lay-brother of the convent fell upon me and began tickling me. I never had the courage again to try the anti-flea contrivance, preferring the friskiness of those animals to the sports of such a greasy grinning wag as my ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... facetious Linton will no doubt make one of your party, I have got by heart for his amusement a reasonable number of Border ballads, most of them a little longer than Chevy Chase, which I intend to throw in at intervals, just by way of securing my share in the conversation. {p.201} As for you, as I know ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the distinctive line between savage and civilized bread. The savage mixes simple flour and water into balls of paste, which he throws into boiling water, and which come out solid, glutinous masses, of which his common saying is, "Man eat dis, he no die,"—which a facetious traveler who was obliged to subsist on it interpreted to mean, "Dis no kill you, nothing will." In short, it requires the stomach of a wild animal or of a savage to digest this primitive form of bread, and of course more or less attention in all ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... literature, contributing to the Gentleman's Magazine, investigating the antiquities of their county, occasionally confuting a deist, exerting a sound judgment in cultivating their glebes or improving the breed of cattle, and respected both by squire and farmers. The 'Squarson,' in Sydney Smith's facetious phrase, was the ideal clergyman. The purely sacerdotal qualities, good or bad, were at a minimum. Crabbe, himself a type of the class, has left admirable portraits of his fellows. Profound veneration for his noble patrons and hearty dislike for intrusive dissenters were ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... The Inca dies, and under his successor Ollanta is defeated and brought, a prisoner, to the capital. Mindful, however, of his merits, the magnanimous victor pardons him, restores him to his honors, and returns to his arms Cusi Coyllur and her child. Minor characters are a facetious youth, who is constantly punning and joking; and the dignified figure of the High Priest of the Sun, who endeavors to dissuade the hero from his seemingly ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... assuredly, and by the evidence of many a splendid example, an advocate addressing a jury—may embellish his oration with a wide circuit of historical, or of antiquarian, nay, even speculative discussion. Every Latin scholar will remember the leisurely and most facetious, the good-natured and respectful, yet keenly satiric, picture which the great Roman barrister draws of the Stoic philosophy, by way of rowing old Cato, who professed that philosophy with too little indulgence for venial human errors. The judices—that is, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... to laugh and to make facetious remarks. It was all done in a second. Kitty stood stock still as if some one had shot her. He gay manner ceased on the instant, she drew herself erect, and the next moment aimed a blow straight from the shoulder ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... coming revolution in English literature. For, incredible as it may seem, until that first performance of Barnwell, no writer, to quote Tom Davies' own words "had ventured to descend so low as to introduce the character of a merchant or his apprentice into a tragedy." Certain "witty and facetious persons who call themselves the town," continues Davies, brought to the first night copies of the old ballad on which the jeweller's play was based, meaning to mock the new tragedy with the old song; but so forcible and pathetic were Lillo's ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... escape capture. The members of the "Lone Star Crush" were boisterously warm in their congratulations, chaffing the subaltern as well as they knew; but Wilmshurst, alive to the mannerisms of his brother-officers, took their facetious ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... to carry on. He resorted to society for simple relaxation, and could even find a pleasure in dulness when accompanied with placidity. "It was a kind of cushion to his understanding," observes the wit. CHAUCER, like LA FONTAINE, was more facetious in his tales than in his conversation; for the Countess of Pembroke used to rally him, observing that his silence was more agreeable to her than his talk. TASSO'S conversation, which his friend Manso has attempted to preserve for us, was ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... inadvertently upsets the salt; each grain that is overthrown will bring to him a day of sorrow. If thirteen persons sit at table, one of them will die within the year; and all of them will be unhappy. Of all evil omens, this is the worst. The facetious Dr. Kitchener used to observe that there was one case in which he believed that it was really unlucky for thirteen persons to sit down to dinner, and that was when there was only dinner enough for twelve. Unfortunately for their peace of mind, the great ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... and the Schism in the Society of Friends. Pecuniary difficulties. Death of his Wife. Death of his son Isaac. Journey to Maryland, and Testimony against Slavery. His marriage with Hannah Attmore. Removes to New-York. Matthew Carey's facetious Letter of Introduction. Anecdotes of his visit to England and Ireland. Anecdote of the Diseased Horse. Visit to William Penn's Grave. The Storm at Sea. Profane Language rebuked. The Clergyman and his Books. His Book-store in New-York. The Mob in Pearl-Street. Judge Chinn's Slave. One of ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... is a tour, travelled, written, published, sold, and, for anything we know, reviewed by one and the same individual! We cannot submit patiently to this monstrous monopoly.' No. 31 was the shop of Vernor and Hood, booksellers. The latter was father of the facetious Tom Hood, who was born here in 1798. Spon, of 15, Queen Street, Cheapside, was issuing, half a century ago, his 'City of London Old Book Circulars,' which often contained excellent books at very ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... got very facetious to-day. He offered to sell me his authority, his Sheikhdom, and retire from affairs. I bid one thousand dollars for the concern. "No, no," said he, "I'll take ten thousand dollars, nothing less." Then, getting very familiar, he ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... human and divine; the whip and the gallows liberally applied availed naught to check the popular licence. Every prohibitory edict became a dead letter. In such a season the Jews might well tremble, made over to the facetious Christian; always excellent whetstones for wit, they afforded peculiar diversion in Carnival times. On the first day a deputation of the chief Jews, including the three gonfaloniers and the rabbis, headed the senatorial cortege, and, attired in a parti-colored costume of red and yellow, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... made them all laugh, and they began to talk about the genuine American character of the holiday, and what a fine thing it was to have something truly national. They praised Mrs. Makely for thinking of so many American dishes, and the facetious gentleman said that she rendered no greater tribute than was due to the overruling Providence which had so abundantly bestowed them upon the Americans as a people. "You must have been glad, Mrs. Strange," he said to the lady at my side, "to get back to our American oysters. There ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... more intelligible to my present circle. It might seem too much the case of a storm in a slop basin, if I were to spend any words upon the revolution which ensued. Suffice it, that I remained the lion of that company which had previously been most insultingly facetious at my expense; and the intellectual lady finally declared the air of the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... surgeon. He was a friend of Washington, and, in fact, was quite intimate with the commander in chief of the American forces. It is said that when Washington was at West Point in 1779, and the doctor and his family were stationed at the same place, Washington wrote to Dr. Cochran almost the only facetious letter which is known to have come from the pen of that grave ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... to brand this new affair as the most puzzling mystery that had yet confronted them, but he checked the utterance wisely enough as entirely too facetious for the occasion. ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... mineral wealth of his barren Scottish possessions. With him Raspe took up his abode for a considerable time at his spray-beaten castle on the Pentland Firth, and there is a tradition, among members of the family, of Sir John's unfailing appreciation of the wide intelligence and facetious humour of Raspe's conversation. Sinclair had some years previously discovered a small vein of yellow mundick on the moor of Skinnet, four miles from Thurso. The Cornish miners he consulted told him that the mundick was itself of no value, but a good sign of the proximity ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... he retreated, showed that he meant to be facetious, having all the pleasantry that attends a full stomach uppermost in his animal nature at that precise moment. A shout rewarded this sally, and the parties separated with mutual good humour and good feeling. In this state of mind, the county Leitrim-man was ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... copiousness of my literary out-put, and the ardent longing I experienced to behold the colour of money on account. On which, by returning post, my parched soul was reinvigorated by the refreshing draught of a draft (if I may be permitted the rather facetious jeu de mots) payable ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... misery in her dark eyes, but there was no longer any resistance. "Oh, if Mother needs me—" she murmured. She took the offered hand, stepped into the wagon and even went through some fitful pretense of responding to the chorus of facetious good-bys which rose from the ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... logic for once has led us into a facetious alley. One might indeed keep in this key, and write an agreeable little Utopia, that like the holy families of the mediaeval artists (or Michael Angelo's Last Judgement) should compliment one's friends in various degrees. Or one might ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the spirit of the injunction both by omitting, as impertinent, a proeme in which his original, Petrarch, gives a great deal of valuable, but not in its connexion interesting, geographical information, and by adding a facetious moral to what he calls the "unrestful matter" of his story. Even the "Squire," though, after the manner of young men, far more than his elders addicted to the grand style, and accordingly specially praised for his eloquence by the simple "Franklin," ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... The facetious impertinent here gave a sort of incredulous whistle. He eyed the palmer with a keen and scrutinising glance, but suddenly relapsing into his accustomed manner, he burst into ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... usually lives in the country with her father, and the lover, a plundered heir, is re-established in his rights and triumphs over his rivals. There are always a mendicant philosopher, a morose nobleman, pure young girls, facetious retainers, and interminable dialogues, stupid prudishness, and an utter absence ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... is facetious, ingenious, and argumentative, (Orat. iii. p. 101, 102, &c.) He ridicules the folly of such vain imitation; and amuses himself with inquiring, what lessons, moral or theological, could be ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... one of those kistrell birds called a wind-sucker." At the moment of his birth came into the world "a calf with a double tongue, and eares longer than any ass's, with his feet turned backwards." Facetious ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... must claim our praise For skirtless coats and skeletons of plays Renowned alike; whose genius ne'er confines Her flight to garnish Greenwood's gay designs, Nor sleeps with 'Sleeping Beauties,' but anon In five facetious Acts comes thundering on, While poor John Bull, bewildered with the scene, Stares, wondering what the devil it ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... was to instil a knowledge of his graceful mother tongue into the minds of a score of restless and unappreciative young Britons, found the facetious gentlemen of the Upper Fourth a decided "handful." They seemed to regard instruction in the Gallic language as an unending source of merriment. Garston threw such an amount of eloquence into the reading of the sentence, "My cousin has lost the hat of the gardener," that every one sighed ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... be facetious, Mr Larynx. I hope you do not suspect me of being studious. I have finished my education. But there are some fashionable books that one must read, because they are ingredients of the talk of the day; otherwise, I am no fonder of books than ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... Sunderland respecting the report that Lord Howick had been fired at by some ruffian, says, with great naivete, "a gun was certainly pointed at his lordship's head, but it is generally believed there was nothing in it."—We confess we are at a loss to know whether the facetious writer alludes to the gun or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... but I am afraid that I shall not be able to give you very many as good: and now, in your turn, you are to fulfil your promise, and tell me what virtue is in the universal; and do not make a singular into a plural, as the facetious say of those who break a thing, but deliver virtue to me whole and sound, and not broken into a number of pieces: I have ...
— Meno • Plato
... pitiful an' helpless, walled up in that tree. Then Meddy will tune up agin, an' mighty nigh cry her eyes out. He warn't even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air partic'lar afflicted that he hed ter die afoot." Old Kettison glanced about the circle, consciously facetious, his heavily grooved face distended ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... assumption of superiority from his Lordship's rank, and is the sort of quizzing he might use to a person who came to hire himself as a valet to him at Long's—the waiters might laugh, the public will not. In like manner, in the controversy about Pope, he claps Mr. Bowles on the back with a coarse facetious familiarity, as if he were his chaplain whom he had invited to dine with him, or was about to present to a benefice. The reverend divine might submit to the obligation, but he has no occasion to subscribe to the jest. If it is a jest that Mr. Bowles should be a parson, and Lord Byron a peer, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... was that very day publicly mentioned in the French army. The prince of Tingray, an officer in the Austrian service, having been taken prisoner in the battle that ensued, dined with mares-chal count Saxe, who dismissed him on his parole, and desired he would charge himself with a facetious compliment to his old friend, the earl of Crawford. He wished his lordship joy of being a French general, and said he could not help being displeased with the sergeant, as he had not procured him the honour of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... embellish all his facial expressions with the offer of a conditional, a provisional smile whose expectant subtlety would exonerate him from the charge of being a simpleton, if the remark addressed to him should turn out to have been facetious. But as he must also be prepared to face the alternative, he never dared to allow this smile a definite expression on his features, and you would see there a perpetually flickering uncertainty, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... her imperiousness, and yielded herself to his guidance with a delicious return to woman's weakness in the face of practical material details. To Bradley this seemed vastly significant and his spirits rose. He grew quite facetious and talkative ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... worthy of respect, the bread which is before thee or myself? Without awaiting a reply, he made, it is said, a well-understood signal with his hand; and the unintending offender was beheaded on the spot." I may add that the hero of the story is said to have been the celebrated "Daftardar" whose facetious cruelties have still a wide fame in the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... frends of the best men, so no man had ever wickednesse to avow himselfe to be his enimy. He was a man very well bredd, and of excellent partes, and a gracefull speaker upon any subjecte, havinge a good proportion of learninge, and a ready witt to apply it, and inlarge upon it, of a pleasant and facetious humour and a disposition affable, generous, and magnificent; he was master of a greate fortune from his auncestors, and had a greate addition by his wife (another daughter and heyre of the Earle of Shrewsbury) which he injoyed duringe his life, shee outlivinge him, but all served not his exspence, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... the facetious poem entitled May Fair, in speaking of Captain Parry's undertaking, and predicting its probable want of success, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... dying—it is only fair that my patrons should know this. Yacoub Artin Pasha declares that the superstition dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and he explains it in two ways. Firstly, it is a facetious exaggeration, meaning that no one has leisure or patience to wade through the long repertory. Secondly, the work is condemned as futile. When Egypt produced savants and legists like Ibn al- Hajar, Al-'Ayni, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... set all the little bristles on his head bolt upright with his bony hands, and then made believe to spar at Paul with great science, on account of his being all right again, which was so uncommonly facetious, and kind too in Mr Feeder, that Paul, not being able to make up his mind whether it was best to laugh or cry at him, did ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Louis the Fourteenth was so incensed at the insult offered to his palace, that he had a counterpart of St. James's built for offices of the meanest description. The size and grandeur of the edifice, indeed, drew down the ridicule of several of the wits of the age: by one of whom—the facetious Tom Brown—it was said, "Bedlam is a pleasant place, and abounds with amusements;—the first of which is the building, so stately a fabric for persons wholly insensible of the beauty and use of it: ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... piece of parchment with ancient characters for the purpose of imposition, though the fact is clearly ascertained by the testimony of that gentleman! —The reverend commentator argues on this occasion much in the same manner, as a well-known versifier of the present century, the facetious Ned Ward (and he too published a quarto volume of poems). Some biographer, in an account of the lives of the English poets, had said that "he was an ingenious writer, considering his low birth and mode of life, he having for some time kept a publick house in the City." "Never was a greater ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... statue and bust in the Vatican, and stand grinning at the effect of his work. Because wit is an exquisite product of high powers, we are not therefore forced to admit the sadly confused inference of the monotonous jester that he is establishing his superiority over every less facetious person, and over every topic on which he is ignorant or insensible, by being uneasy until he has distorted it in the small cracked mirror which he carries about with him as a joking apparatus. Some high authority ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... and the gazelle are trotting together," said Latimer, presently, trying to be facetious in an effort to regain control of himself. He looked up ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... victory to supply himself with a new outfit. He was enough of a philosopher to know that it is better to meet misery with a smile than with a scowl. Mark Tapley had many prototypes in the Confederate ranks, and the men were never more facetious than when things were at their worst. "The very intensity of their sufferings became a source of merriment. Instead of growling and deserting, they laughed at their own bare feet, ragged clothes, and pinched faces; and weak, hungry, cold, wet and dirty, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... The wit (if it deserves that name) is mean enough; but, in justice to Cicero, it should be remembered, that he himself calls it frigid, and says, that the men, who in their anger could be so very facetious, as to blame the priest who did not sacrifice such a hog (Verres), were idle and ridiculous. He adds, that he should not descend to repeat such sayings (for they were neither witty, nor worthy of notice in such a cause), had he not thought it material to shew, that the iniquity of VERRES ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... invited to a juvenile party, bursts into the room with the cry of "Here we are again"—walking in on his hands like a clown—to find that he had come to the wrong house next door, and was scandalising a sedate and stately dinner party. Henry Mayhew had a story of which a facetious police officer of his acquaintance was the hero. The latter was driving "Black Maria" along the street when he was hailed by a waggish omnibus-driver who affected to mistake the depressing character of the passing vehicle. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... remedies that are either kill or cure in their action," the old doctor said, giving Charley a facetious poke. "Your marriage was one of them, young man. I thought it was Kill—it ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... and portly personage—shows visitors over the rooms and picture-galleries. There is a superb collection of pictures by the Old Masters, about which Dickens had always something facetious to say to his friends. They illustrate the schools of Venice, Florence, Rome, Netherlands, Spain, France, and England, and were formed mainly by purchases from the Orleans Gallery, and the Vetturi Gallery from Florence, and include ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... was pronounced almost like a snarl. Runyon had adopted a facetious tone which had ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... youth, the propensity to jocularity still survives; but the jests are generally such as you meet with in the very earliest editions of Mr Joseph Miller, though, for the sake of variety, they are often ascribed to the late facetious Mr Joseph Jekyll, or Mr Henry Erskine, or to some other of the Fogie's early contemporaries, if indeed the Fogie himself is not the hero ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... little of his son. In the childish maladies with which the boy was troubled, he would make daily inquiries and daily pay him a visit, entering the sick-room with a facetious and appalling countenance, letting off a few perfunctory jests, and going again swiftly, to the patient's relief. Once, a court holiday falling opportunely, my lord had his carriage, and drove the child himself to Hermiston, the customary place of convalescence. It is ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shelves were mimicked; and in the spaces between these edges the backs of books were pasted congruously with the whole effect. Some of these backs had been taken from actual books, others had been made specially and were stamped with facetious titles that rather depressed me. 'Here,' thought I, 'are the shelves on which Dencombe's works ought to be made manifest. And Neil Paraday's too, and Vereker's.' Not Henry St. George's, of course: he would not himself have wished it, poor fellow! I would have nothing of his except ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... impressing on their minds the remembrance of the day, and the boundaries of the parish, instead of beating houses or stones. But this would not have harmonized well with the excellent Hooker's practice on this day, when he "always dropped some loving and facetious observations, to be remembered against the next year, especially by the boys and young people." Amongst Dorsetshire customs, it seems that, in perambulating a manor or parish, a boy is tossed into a stream, if that be the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... American journal said of it: "We find the paper upon which this production is printed of a most amusing quality." Another observed: "The binding of this tedious military work is the most humorous we ever saw." A third added: "In typographical details, the volumes now under consideration are facetious beyond compare." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... pleasure?" asked Granger, in a would-be facetious tone. "Going, Dent?" For the younger man had risen to his feet and was preparing to ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... his friend hardly respectful to the head of the Wyndham family, but set it down as an awkward attempt at being facetious. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... a facetious twinkle coming into her eyes as she looked at it. "And why are you cutting ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... ask a solemn question; there is a serious and also a facetious explanation of both these names; the serious explanation is not to be had from me, but there is no objection to your hearing the facetious one; for the Gods too love a joke. Dionusos is simply didous oinon ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... you here!" he exclaimed, with an assumption of facetious bonhomie particularly distasteful to me. "All the world lives in London, I think! It's where you'll always come across anyone you want. Sly dog! Following a lady, I'll be bound! By Jove! I wouldn't have thought it of you, Galbraith! ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... father and grandmother had left him; additional wise-acres were of the opinion that some out-of-town folks had bought the place and were trying to prop it up so it wouldn't tumble into the street, while one, more facetious than the others, had claimed that it was no wonder it was falling down, since the only new thing Temple had put upon it ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... example, the worship of material luxury and wealth, which constitutes so large a portion of the "spirit" of our age, make somewhat for effeminacy and unmanliness? Is not the exclusively sympathetic and facetious way in which most children are brought up to-day—so different from the education of a hundred years ago, especially in evangelical circles—in danger, in spite of its many advantages, of developing a certain trashiness of fibre? Are there not hereabouts ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... clergyman had asserted that the oath prescribed in the Pontificale Romanum, which the Cardinal Wiseman must have taken to the Pope when he received the Pallium as Archbishop of Westminster, notoriously contained a clause enjoining the duty of persecution. This clause, a facetious Englishman said, ought to be translated, "I will persecute and pitch into all heretics to the utmost of my power"; and every one knew that the Pope of Rome looked upon the English as the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready. I was also ready, with a stenographer. We were in a room called the Rope-Walk. This is a formidably long room, as is indicated by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews. At 9:30 the F.-D.-B. took his place near me and gave the word of command; the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared at an upper door, and the "march-past" was on. Down they filed, a blaze of variegated color, each ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a great deal of noisy pleasantry, flavored every now and then with a dash of irritation. There was a young man of whom I made a note; he was such a beautiful specimen of his class. Sometimes he was very facetious, chatter- ing, joking, punning, showing off; then, as the game went on and he lost, and had to pay the consomma- tion, he dropped his amiability, slanged his partner, declared he wouldn't play any more, and went away in a fury. Nothing could be more perfect or more ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... he would hand in, though it was only twenty words, and Speug never went back from his oath. When Howieson caught the Dowbiggin ear with a pellet there is no doubt that a joyful light came into Speug's eyes, and he struggled with strong temptation, and when old friends made facetious signs to him he hesitated more than once, but in the end assumed an air of dignified amazement, explaining, as it were, that his whole mind was devoted to literary composition, and that he did ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... for the once-a-day train to Nogales, and when she might logically expect to arrive in that squatty little town that might be said to be really and truly divided against itself. Here the nice young man became facetious. ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... pity and understanding she gave him somewhat revived his fainting spirit, and he determined to stick it out until the family were ready to retire and allow him a word with her alone. But, idle hope! Gradually it dawned upon him that they had no such intention. To relieve the strain, he became facetious and told funny stories; but this was an unlucky experiment, for his witticisms fell with a ghastly hollowness. No one laughed save the grandmother and the Guatemalan cousin, who could not understand, and at this Kirk ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... charitable to the poor (notwithstanding the narrowness of his fortune), free and open in his discourse and conversation (which he always managed without the least personal reflection), courteous and affable to all people, facetious upon all proper occasions, and ever ready to give his counsel and advice, and extremely communicative of his great knowledge.'[37] Although a man of retiring habits and much personal humility, he was bold as a lion when ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... approached by a narrow wicket, with posts higher than the gate, and often, while working in his garden, or sitting in his parlour, Mr Kirby would look up and see, to his great delight, the shovel hat of his facetious friend adorning one post, and the cumbrous wig and appertaining pig-tail ornamenting the other. And soon the kind old man would walk in with his bald head, as he used to say, cool and ready for the investigation. These visits were always hailed with pleasure, the delights of which were ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... "cheeked" my uncle, I was pleased to find. "What are you old Poking in for at THIS time—Gubbitt?" she said when he appeared, and she still looked with a practised eye for the facetious side of things. When she saw me behind him, she gave a little cry and stood up radiant. Then she ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... have left more of this poet, is a Latin Ode to Henry St. John, esq; which is esteemed a master-piece; the stile being pure and elegant, the subject of a mixt nature, resembling the Jublime spirit, and gay facetious humour of Horace. He was beloved, says Dr. Sewel, 'by all who knew him; somewhat reserved and silent amongst strangers, but free, familiar, and easy with his friends; he was averse to disputes, and thought no time so ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... generally observed to love to reside in empty pockets, so the gentleman whose ingenuity we have above remarked, as soon as he had parted with his money, began to grow wonderfully facetious. He made frequent allusions to Adam and Eve, and said many excellent things on figs and fig-leaves; which perhaps gave more offence to Joseph than to any ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... in papers of the highest character an over-indulgence in headlines is coming into vogue, while the reporter is allowed too often to treat the unimportant and most personal events in a picturesque or facetious way without regard to truthfulness. On a lecture trip West last winter, a reporter of one of the most respectable and influential papers in the country asked if I was going to attack anybody in my speech, or say anything ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... With this facetious remark, made partly in the indulgence of his usual humour, but as much to raise the spirits of his young companions, he strides off among the odd structures, making direct for the other side of the cemetery, Ludwig and Cypriano ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... Gadsbud, much better as it is. Good, strange! I swear I'm almost tipsy; t'other bottle would have been too powerful for me,—as sure as can be it would. We wanted your company, but Mr. Brisk—where is he? I swear and vow he's a most facetious person, and the best company. And, my Lord Froth, your lordship is so merry a man, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... dignitaries and nobles swarmed into the hall, and then, in at the scarlet door, came, with white ribbon shoulder-knots and streamers flying in all directions, a broad scarlet five-row-ermined figure, with high, bald forehead, facetious face, and jovial, hail-fellow-well-met countenance, princely withal, H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, and the sidelong peeress benches stretched their fair hands, and he his ungloved royal hand hastily ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... stories: always calls them merry, facetious, good, or excellent, before he begins, in order to bespeak the attention of the hearers, but never gives himself concern in the progress or conclusion of them, to make good what he promises in his preface. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... leaving the island behind us. He was sailing the Maria that day as she will never be sailed again: her lee gunwale awash, and a wake like a surveyor's line behind her. More than once I called to mind his facetious observation about Mr. Drew, and wondered if he knew more than he had said about ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and they take possession of both decks. The pretty daughter of Erin lays out with no little artistic taste her bog-oak ornaments, and 'Arry (for the genus cad is to be encountered even on board such aristocratic ships as these) attempts to be rampantly facetious at her expense. But the damsel with the unkempt auburn locks flowing about her comely face, lit up by a pair of blue Irish eyes under their dark lashes, takes the cad's vulgarity together with his money, like the pill with the jam, giving ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... woman with the particulars of his fate, who, though perhaps unacquainted with all the parties, is directed by a phantom to lay the facts before a magistrate. In this respect we must certainly allow that ghosts have, as we are informed by the facetious Captain Grose, forms and customs peculiar ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... questioned the Admiral and myself very minutely, about the clothing and victualling of the seamen. It was then, on being told that all that department was under the charge of the purser, he said in a facetious way, "Je crois que c'est quelquefois chez vous, comme chez nous, le commissaire est un peu coquin." "I believe it happens sometimes with you, as it does with us, that the purser is a little of a rogue." This was addressed to the Admiral and me, with whom he was conversing, and not to ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... no laughing matter, sure enough," quoth Peregil; "and in sooth I cannot perceive why I should be facetious on the occasion, for after all I am the greater loser of the two. Look for a moment at this vile beast! May the lightning of heaven and the curses of all the saints fall on him and his former master too;" and so saying he again belaboured the sides of the unfortunate jackass, regretting ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... herself," said I, "I would agree with pleasure. She is a saint for whom I have a great fascination. She could work miracles. When an Irish chieftain made her a facetious grant of as much land as she could cover with her mantle, she bade four of her nuns each take a corner and run north, west, south and east, until her cloak covered several roods. She could have done the same with ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... day discharge your debts; For, when your sun of reason sets, The night succeeds; and all your schemes Of glory vanish with your dreams. Ah! where is now the supple train, That danced attendance on the Dean? Say, where are those facetious folks, Who shook with laughter at his jokes, And with attentive rapture hung, On wisdom, dropping from his tongue; Who look'd with high disdainful pride On all the busy world beside, And rated his productions more Than ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... him, open-eyed; not, apparently, that she exactly supposed he was jesting, for the expression of such a desire was not necessarily facetious; but as if he must have spoken with an ulterior motive. In fact, he had spoken from the simplest of motives. The girl beside him pleased him unspeakably, and, suspecting that her charm was essentially her own and not reflected from social circumstance, he wished to give ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Tollendals, the Mouniers of the Assembly, were replaced and popularly displaced by the sophists and intriguers of the Gironde and the Constituent; how, in the Convention and the hall of the Jacobins, the coarser men of the whole movement—the Dantons, the Robespierres, the Marats, the facetious as ferocious Bareres, the stupid Anacharsis Clootzes—trampled under foot, or finished with the guillotine, the phraseurs and meneurs of the Gironde, your orators of set speech, glittering abstractions, and hair-splitting definitions; the Brissots, Vergniauds, Condorcets, and Rolands, who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... said Gubblum, with many shakes of his big head. Let any facetious young gentleman who supposed that it was possible to make sport of him, understand once for all that it might be as well to throw a ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... a new settlement in Australia. We will state at once, that our official authority is a Blue Book—one of those huge volumes printed from time to time, by order of parliament, for the edification—or as some facetious folks say, for the mystification—of M.Ps. Having carefully waded through its voluminous pages, we have jotted down the passages that especially struck us, and propose to present the pith and substance of our labour—for it is nothing less—in a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... hairy-nosed wombat. They don't come out much in daylight, and they had been here some time before they found themselves both out for an airing together. "Halloa," reflected the hairy-nosed wombat, "here is my neighbour. I'll chaff him!" and he straightway set to work to invent some facetious observation. In an hour or so an idea struck him, and, advancing to the partition bars, he said to the common wombat, "Here, I say—you're common!" and laughed uproariously. The common wombat felt the sting of the remark and determined upon a crushing repartee. While ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Persius are written in a free, expostulatory, and argumentative manner; possessing the same justness of sentiment as those of Horace, but exerted in the way of derision, and not with the admirable raillery of that facetious author. They are regarded by many as obscure; but this imputation arises more from unacquaintance with the characters and manners to which the author alludes, than from any peculiarity either in his language or composition. His versification is harmonious; and ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Then came a facetious sailor and whispered to him: "Do you want ever to get to New York?"—"Yes, I do," said the little captain of the midair craft.—"Well, then, you'd better haul in sail; for you're set dead agin us now." The sails were struck on the instant ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... out into the ears of his colored admirers to his heart's satisfaction, till he is empty and they are full. At last, after blowing and puffing for nearly an hour in the popular ear, the windy story, tapering off with a little facetious gas designed for the ladies, found its way to an end, and dismissing his audience with a majestic wave of his war-cap, Big Black Burl came down from ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... doubtless, capable of fighting like heroes, were short of stature, so that the British tars looked down on them with a patronising expression of countenance, and one or two even ventured on a few facetious remarks. Bill Bowls and Ben Bolter, who both measured above six feet in their stockings, towered above ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... friendly smile for the facetious intention of this. "I guess I won't have anything that'd be worth locking doors on," he said. He looked about him still smiling, his pleasant old eyes full of a fresh satisfaction in what he saw. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... are right, Mr. Trenchard," said the Duke with a laugh. Indeed, he found Mr. Trenchard a most pleasant and facetious gentleman. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... the public towards a writer, who, though then little known, might, without impeachment of modesty, lay claim to every mark of respect; and inquiry proved, beyond a doubt, that the calls of justice had been little attended to by others, as well as the facetious YORICK. WOOD observed, more than a century ago, that several authors had unmercifully stolen matter from BURTON without any acknowledgment. The time, however, at length arrived, when the merits of the Anatomy of Melancholy were to receive their due ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... that he had not been of our party. Of course he was very much concerned at finding how serious was the injury I received, though, when we arrived in safety at the village, he could not help saying in his usual facetious manner— ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... an end he should dismiss the congregation. Then the elder crept softly up the stairs, and after a short struggle he succeeded in grasping the dog by one of its hind legs. Then he walked down the aisle with it, the dog meantime yelling with supernatural energy and the Sunday-school boys making facetious remarks. ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... this, that I and my Lord Mumble and the Duke of Tenterden were out upon a ramble: we called at a little house as it might be this; and my landlady, I warrant you, not suspecting to whom she was talking, was so jocular and facetious, and made so many merry answers to our questions, that we were all ready to burst with laughter. At last the good woman happening to overhear me whisper the duke and call him by his title, was so surprised and confounded, that we could scarcely get a word from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... had been the "evil genius" of the Bible cause and of himself. The incident did no good to the already bickering relations between Borrow and the Rev. A. Brandram, the Secretary. Evidently Borrow's character jarred upon Brandram, who took revenge by a tone of facetious cavil and several criticisms upon Borrow's ways, upon his confident masculine tone, for example, his "passionate" prayer, and his confession of superstitious obedience to an ominous dream. Brandram even took the trouble to remind Borrow ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... to'gallant stu'ns'ls!" he bellowed, in a tone that put that of poor Mr Bitpin completely into the shade; his voice sounding as if the wild bull which that gentleman had apparently imitated, according to the facetious Larkyns, had since been under the instruction of Signor Lablache or some other distinguished bass singer and had learnt to mellow his roar into a deeper tone. No sooner, too, had the hands jumped ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... very different thing. Its impudence did not mitigate the aggravation, but made it more acute. If he had picked out a fairy-tale, rather than two glorious poems—Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Bears, Rumpelstiltskin, for example—he could have been as facetious as he pleased. But that would not suit him. There would have been no darts to fling. Butler was a banderillero. All right; but then don't complain that the Miss Harrisons, Darwins, and others shake off your darts and ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... "I think," a facetious neighbor said to me, "it would be cheaper for you to buy a lot of Apollinaris water,—at wholesale rates, of course,—and let your men open so many bottles a day and empty them into your tank. You would find that would pay better in the ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... (September 19, 1818), he says, "I have finished the first canto ... of a poem in the style and manner of Beppo, encouraged by the good success of the same. It is ... meant to be a little quietly facetious upon every thing. But I doubt whether it is not—at least as far as it has gone—too free for these very modest days." The critics before and after publication thought that Don Juan was "too free," and, a month after ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... names of people living in the country, with slight variations. Thus "De Villiers" became "De Williers," and "Van Zyl" "Van Zul." I remember that my own name appeared on one of the petitions with some slight alteration. Some of the names were evidently meant to be facetious. Thus there was a "Jan Verneuker," which ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... long from the men's. Here the imprisoned ladies communicated with their male friends as gaily as if each were not foredoomed. The Faubourg St. Germain was transferred to the Conciergerie. The toilets were the freshest and the manners most well-bred in Paris. The guillotine was the subject of facetious remarks up to the very hour of parting for the mockery of the trial below, and at evening vows of love were breathed between the bars. La Tour found a crowd on both sides enjoying the cramped promenade. Amid this crowd was a "sheep"—one of those vile ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... actual life. Sydney Smith, in a very lively portrait, says that Horner was the best, kindest, simplest, and most incorruptible of mankind; but intimates sufficiently that his impenetrability to the facetious was something almost unexampled. A jest upon an important subject was, it seems, the only affliction which his strength of principle would not enable him to bear with patience. His contributions gave some solid economical speculation to the 'Review,' but were neither numerous nor lively. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... talkative, facetious, communicative, overflowing. At dessert he and his wife sang the air—appropriate to the occasion—from the Voyage en Chine, which we caught up with more ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... not surprising, for there were troubles in plenty at home. Huguenots and Catholics were at each other's throats; the wars of the Fronde convulsed the land; and it was not till the very end of the sixteenth century that the country settled down to peace within its own borders. Some facetious chronicler has remarked that the three chief causes of early warfare were Christianity, herrings, and cloves. There is much golden truth in that nugget. For if one could take from human history all the strife that has been due either to bigotry or to commercial ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... Some were facetious; others indifferent; a few mildly interested. But no one seemed very keen about it, especially as the tanks in those days had a reputation for rather heavy casualties. Only Talbot, remembering the derelict and the ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries; we are therefore to ascribe their extravagant mixture of grave admonition with facetious illustration, comic tales which have been occasionally adopted by the most licentious writers, and minute and lively descriptions, to the great simplicity of the times, when the grossest indecency was never concealed under a gentle periphrasis, but everything was called ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... recklessly facetious tone, and Tom Green followed it up with a remark to the effect that "he'd be blowed if he ever wos in sich a fix in his life;" intimating his belief, at the same time, that ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... blending of the facetious with the horrible in this sanguinary scene. Before the battle, the Protestant preachers, in earnest sermons, had compared Henry with David at the head of the Lord's chosen people. In the midst of the bloody fray, when the field was covered ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... be facetious, sir," the teller replied. His lip curled; he turned away, tilting his ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... the judge found Amzi disposed to be facetious over the reports that other failures were likely to follow the embarrassment of ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... shall proceed to inform you that our family are all in good health at present, and we were very happy with the unexpected favour of John Caird's[6a] company for nearly two weeks, and I must say it of him that he is one of the most agreeable, facetious, warm-hearted lads I was ever ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the facetious B, all on a summer's day, just at that period when it was the fashion to rail against the beautiful statue, erected by the ladies of England, in honour of the ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... two men! Your sending for their assistance looks as if you were beginning to be doubtful of success." I privately winked at her, (she is very good in allowing me to do so without taking offence,) and told her, in my facetious way, that she labored under a slight mistake. "It is because I am sure of success, Ma'am, that I send for them. I am determined to recover the money, not for my own sake only, but for Mr. Yatman's sake, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... A facetious individual who was taking a long walk in the country came upon a yokel sitting on a stile. As the gentleman was not quite sure of his road, he thought he would make inquiries of the local inhabitant; but at the first glance he jumped too hastily to the conclusion that he had dropped on the village ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... humble wise and bid ye same drink hearty. So then ben merrisome discourse and passing plaisaunt cheere, And Arthure's tales of hippogriffs ben mervaillous to heare; But stranger far than any tale told of those knyghts of old Ben those facetious narratives ye Western straunger told. He told them of a country many leagues beyond ye sea Where evereche forraine nuisance but ye Chinese man ben free, And whiles he span his monstrous yarns, ye ladies of ye court Did deem ye listening thereunto to be right plaisaunt sport; And whiles they ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... a battle, a man who is married is pretty sure of half, though not always the better half, of it," answered the parson, who seemed peculiarly facetious that day. "Ah, Squire, I wish I could think Mrs. Hazeldean right in her conjecture!—you would have the prettiest daughter-in-law in the three kingdoms. And I do believe that, if I could have a good talk with the young lady apart from her father, we could remove the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strangely ill at ease; for, even if it had not been inspired by good-will towards me, I could never have brought myself to understand that it might be something very different from real goodness. It bore so little resemblance to the facetious braggadocio of the Mauprats, that it seemed to me like an entirely new language, which I understood but ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Salmo Salar is facetious about the destruction of the roe by insects, and says, "because an aquatic insect will devour a minnow's egg, which is not as large as a pin's head, we have no right to infer that it will devour that of a Salmon, which is as large as a pea; it would be just as reasonable to suppose that ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... frolics and festivities of the ale-house, which he treated with a characteristic expression of humorous drollery, that compensated for the vulgarity of his subjects. He sometimes painted interiors, domestic assemblies, conversations, mountebanks, etc., which he generally accompanied with some facetious trait of wit or humor, admirably rendered. Some of his works of this description are little inferior to the charming productions of Gabriel Metzu. His compositions are ingenious and interesting, his design is correct and spirited, his coloring chaste and clear, and ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... on hand a supply of "little jokes" gleaned from Joe Miller, current comic literature, dinner tables, clubs, etc.—"little jokes" of which every point in his discourse continually reminded him, though his hearers could not always perceive the association of ideas. This gentleman was very facetious over family jars, which reminded him of a "little joke," which he told; he was also very witty upon the subject of matrimonial disputes in particular, which reminded him of another "little joke," which he also told; but most of all, he was amused at the caprice of womankind, who very ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... mixture of Mrs. Pipchin and Miss Sally Brass. I will confess that when, in years to come, I read 'Dombey and Son', certain features of Mrs. Pipchin did irresistibly remind me of my excellent past governess. I can imagine Miss Marks saying, but with a facetious intent, that children who sniffed would not go to heaven. But I was instantly ashamed of the parallel, because my gaunt old friend was a thoroughly good and honest woman, not intelligent and not graceful, but desirous in every way to do her duty. Her duty to me she certainly did, and I am afraid ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... portion of society, we may easily believe that the great body of the population suffered what would now be considered as insupportable grievances. The pavement was detestable: all foreigners cried shame upon it. The drainage was so bad that in rainy weather the gutters soon became torrents. Several facetious poets have commemorated the fury with which these black rivulets roared down Snow Hill and Ludgate Hill, bearing to Fleet Ditch a vast tribute of animal and vegetable filth from the stalls of butchers and greengrocers. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... robbers should break into our house and steal, but it was a sort of implied insult that robbers should think that our house was not worth breaking into. We contrived, however, to bear up under this implied contempt and even under the facetious imputations of some of our lively neighbours, who declared that it looked very suspicious that we should lose nothing, and even continue to add to our worldly goods, while everybody else was ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... us, "Qu'il fait tres beau!" We pass the lanes of the village, our heads almost on a level with the flat stone-laden roofs; our mules, with their long rolling pace, like the waves of the sea, give to their riders a facetious wag of the body that is quite striking. Now the village is passed, and see, a road banded with green ribands of turf. S.'s mule and guide pass on, and head the party. G. rides another mule. C. and W. leap along trying their alpenstocks; stopping once in a while to admire the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... board his ship in the harbor, watched the bombardment with great interest. Having occasion to write to Winslow, he closed his letter in a facetious strain. "I often hear of your success in plunder, particularly a coach.[257] I hope you have some fine horses for it, at least four, to draw it, that it may be said a New England colonel [rode in] his coach and four in Nova Scotia. If you have any good saddle-horses ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... as literal as her friend was facetious. "Well, it just happened so, and it didn't matter, since, on my asking you, don't you know? to choose your time, you had taken, as suiting you best, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the rhythm within whose circle of influence the infant early finds himself, often leads him precociously into the realm of song. Emerson has said, "Every word was once a poem," and Andrew Lang, in his facetious Ballade of Primitive Man, credits our Aryan ancestors with speaking not in prose, but "in a strain that would scan." In the statement of the philosopher there is a good nugget of truth, and just a few grains of it in ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain |
