"Farce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... farce, without a doubt! The cause of all this fuss and fluster Is just a housemaid shaking ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... "What a farce it all is, Frank!" she broke out. "There's something wrong in a system that gives a girl millions of dollars to do just as she likes with. I don't care what they say to the contrary; I believe women were meant to belong to men, to live in semi-slavery and do what they are told, ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... yarn of human life, tragedy is never far asunder from farce; and it is amusing to retrace in immediate succession to this incident of epic dignity, which has its only parallel by the way in the case of Vasco de Gama, (according to the narrative of Camoens,) when met and confronted by ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... out, it seemed a farce and a waste of money to have any trial at all. The assassin had not only been caught red-handed, but had actually confessed. Why waste time over a trial? True, one paper timidly suggested that it might have been a case of suicide. Robert Underwood's ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... be ever taught, With too much thinking to have common thought," was very nearly the destruction of his life. When at last he emerged from the anguish and confusion of her folly, her extravagance, her rage, her despair, and her devotion, he was left alone with endless memories of intermingled farce and tragedy, and an only son, who was an imbecile. But there was something else that he owed to Lady Caroline. While she whirled with Byron in a hectic frenzy of love and fashion, he had stayed at ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... recollection filled me with penitence. That was in my old light days, before this trouble came upon me. God knows at least that I shall never laugh again, thought I. But O, what a cruel thing is a farce to those ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... historic picture, when accoutred officers, and their beautiful wives,—or otherwise,—sat at the table d'-hote, and sumptuous dishes flitted here and there, while corks popped like so many Chinese crackers, and champagne bubbled up like blood. At night, the Provost Guard enacted the farce of coming by deputations to each public bar, which was at once closed, but reopened five minutes afterward. Congress water was in great demand for weak heads of mornings, and many a young lad, girt up for war, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of dramatic justice—that the farce should succeed the tragedy—our attention was at this moment called to a ludicrous incident. The Mexican trapper had ridden up, and halted beside the waggon; when all at once his eyes became fixed upon an object that lay near at hand upon the grass. It was the black silk hat of the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... sestetto"!! "While Poesy," with these delightful doxies, "Sustains her part" in all the "upper" boxes! "Thus lifted gloriously, you'll sweep along," Borne in the vast balloon of Busby's song; 40 "Shine in your farce, masque, scenery, and play" (For this last line George had a holiday). "Old Drury never, never soar'd so high," So says the Manager, and so say I. "But hold," you say, "this self-complacent boast;" Is this the Poem which the public lost? "True—true—that ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... been wondering why we couldn't repeat that little farce we gave at school last June. It wouldn't be much work, for we all know our parts. Beside ours, there was only one that amounted to anything. I thought maybe Claire would take that. The other characters have so little to do that we could easily ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... admirable mezzo-soprano voice. The slight voice of the ordinary singer of operetta is insufficient for the part. Furthermore, traditions have sprung up. The comic element has been suppressed and the piece has been denatured by this change. In Germany they conceived the idea of playing this farce seriously with an archaic ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... per ton, the short-haul rate. And we have to pay it all or go without. Here are the ploughs right here, in sight of the land they have got to be used on, the season just ready for them, and we can't touch them. Oh," he exclaimed in deep disgust, "isn't it a pretty mess! Isn't it a farce! the whole dirty business!" ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... bore such evident marks of treachery, that it could not be attributed to the general trepidation and disorder which possessed the army, and circumstances proved that a correspondence subsisted between Monthault and the Parliamentary general, which the farce of taking him prisoner and committing him to close custody, when the King's forces were generally permitted to disband and return to their houses, strongly confirmed. Lord Hopton recollected that his designs ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... distinguished writers of Mimes were DEC. LABERIUS, a knight, and P. SYRUS, a freedman, and originally a Syrian slave, both of whom were contemporaries of Julius Caesar. At Caesar's triumphal games in October, B.C. 45, P. Syrus challenged all his craft to a trial of wit in extemporaneous farce, and Caesar offered Laberius 500,000 sesterces to appear on the stage. Laberius was 60 years old, and the profession of a mimus was infamous, but the wish of the Dictator was equivalent to a command, and he reluctantly complied. He had, however, revenge in his power, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... the meaning of this? I have heard of your shame, of your dishonour—of the disgraceful way in which you have entrapped my poor boy. But what is this farce enacted here? How dare you enter the House of God and forge this ridiculous statement? Where is my son, whom ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... prudential measure of magnanimity and conciliation; secondly, to make it a cloak to hide, as far as might be, their own preparations for war. Had the Federal Government been in a condition of normal health and vigor, the farce would not have been effective for even a single day; but, with capital alarmed, with, parties divided into factions, with three traitors in the Cabinet, and a timid and vacillating Executive, by successive, almost imperceptible, degrees, the farce produced a policy and the policy ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... This farce was presented at Frankfort-on-the-Main by Jewish students of the city, aided by some from Hamburg and Prague, with extravagant display of scenery. Tradition ascribes the authorship to a ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... long farce, the minister at last assumed a serious tone, and threatened the obstinate duke with the Emperor's resentment, if he persisted in his refusal. "Low enough had the imperial dignity," he added, "stooped already; and yet, instead of exciting his magnanimity ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... year 1839, I landed at Tarifa, from the coast of Barbary. I arrived in a small felouk laden with hides for Cadiz, to which place I was myself going. We stopped at Tarifa in order to perform quarantine, which, however, turned out a mere farce, as we were all permitted to come on shore; the master of the felouk having bribed the port captain with a few fowls. We formed a motley group. A rich Moor and his son, a child, with their Jewish servant Yusouf, and myself with my own man Hayim Ben Attar, a Jew. After passing ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... farce which for more than two months held in suspense the hopes and fears of three nations. But the friends of Cromwell resumed the subject in parliament. It was observed that he had not refused to administer the government under any other title; ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... the Moze property intact, and further she was already reconsidering her newly-acquired respect for money. No! What depressed her was a doubt as to the genius of Musa. In the long dreadful pause it seemed impossible that he should have genius. The entire concert presented itself as a grotesque farce, of which she as its creator ought to be ashamed. She was ready to kill ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... is, youngster, we have played this farce long enough," Tom proceeded, in a rage. "I want you to understand that I am not to be trifled with. You may make a fool of the old man, but you can't make a fool ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... the most rudimentary degree, a beginning is made with us that is designed to carry us far, if we but follow the leading of our hearts. There is an ideal toward which all our experience points. If it were not so, life would be a hopeless enigma, and the world a meaningless farce. There must be a spiritual function intended, a design to build up strong and true moral character, to develop sweet and holy life, otherwise history is a despair, and experience a hopeless riddle. All ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... for the famous literary agent that has his office there, but I wonder how many of them know that that was where Mrs. Lirriper had her immortal lodgings? The Notebooks of Samuel Butler, just to give her a little intellectual jazz. The Wrong Box, because it's the best farce in the language. Travels with a Donkey, to show her what good writing is like. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to give her a sense of pity for human woes—wait a minute, though: that's a pretty broad book for young ladies. I guess we'll put ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... against and perhaps to shoot Free-State men who disputed the right of the South to plant and to maintain slavery there. Under these circumstances the first election for members of the territorial legislature was a farce. Yet Reeder felt obliged to let the new assembly go on with its work of making easy the immigration of masters with their "property"; when he went East a little later he took occasion to protest in a public address against the intrusion of Missouri voters. He was regretfully removed from office, ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... volume been a farce, which, unless every one's life and opinions are to be looked upon as a farce as well as mine, I see no reason to suppose—the last chapter, Sir, had finished the first act of it, and then this chapter must ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... to some freak of fashion. The countess showed some signs of a wish to see the floured face of the actor who had so delighted several people of taste, and I obtained the honor of taking her to a first presentation of some wretched farce or other. A box scarcely cost five francs, but I had not a brass farthing. I was but half-way through the volume of Memoirs; I dared not beg for assistance of Finot, and Rastignac, my providence, was away. These constant perplexities were the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... the Queen's first chamberwoman. She was barely out of her teens, and, ordinarily, was a pretty girl; but the moment I saw her dead-white face, framed in a circle of fluttering fans and pitiless, sparkling eyes, I discerned tragedy in the farce; and that M. de Bassompierre was acting in a drama to which only he and one other held the key. The contrast between the girl's blanched face and the beauty and glitter in the midst of which she stood struck others, so that, ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... Gentlemen of the Board," said Jim, "I'm not going to tell you anything that you don't know about yourselves. You are simply making a farce of the matter of hiring a teacher for this school. It is not as if any of you had a theory that the teaching methods of one of these teachers would be any better than or much different from those of the others. You know, and I know, that whichever is finally engaged, or even if ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... a desperate visit they seemed to court it, and often the several doors opening into our little hall served as important a part in preventing a meeting between Whistler and the enemy as the doors in the old-fashioned farce played in the husband and wife game ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... every one else!' As the child grew, the charm vanished; the crowds that had applauded the boy fled from the man. Byron denounced him warmly. 'His figure is fat, his features flat, his voice unmanageable, his action ungraceful, and, as Diggory says (in the farce of All the World's a Stage), "I defy him to extort that d——d muffin face of his into madness!"' Happy Master Betty! ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... She looked so earnestly as we regarded attentively the line of her open hand." (Mr. Petalengro does not say that tears were to be seen trickling down those lovely cheeks of Esmeralda while this fortune-telling, nonsensical farce was being played out.) "Then we took her step by step through some scenes of her supposed future. We did not tell all. The rest was reserved for another day. There was a serious look on her countenance as we ended; but, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... course of highway robbery runs in the channel of a swift accomplishment and a rapid getaway. Yet this crew, leaving the saddle-bags uninvestigated at their feet, were solemnly playing out their farce at the expense of valuable time—time which should have stood for miles put between ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... cry had set her going, as if I had touched a spring—and there he was at the door himself, rushing back. He, too, had remembered. It was almost a collision, and nothing but their good Southern breeding, the way they took it, saved it from being like a rowdy farce. ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... the double nature of the author,—his genius for moral satire and his genius for pure fun. From the moral point of view, it is a terrible indictment against the most corrupt bureaucracy of modern times, from the comic point of view, it is an uproarious farce. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... farce, says Delta, composed at Quebec by J. Galt, and performed there before the Earl of Dalhousie (then Governor-General), was named "The Visitors, or a Trip to Quebec," and was meant as a good humoured satire on some of the particular usages ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... The Jacobite farce, or tragedy, was speedily brought to a close by the Battle of Culloden; there did Charlie wish himself back again o'er the water, exhibiting the most unmistakable signs of pusillanimity; there were the clans cut to pieces—at least, those who could be brought to the charge—and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... which we have alluded to and promised some account of to our readers, dates in more modern times; indeed, all the actors in that far-famed farce ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... be engaged for any English school. If he possess by nature a few harmless peculiarities, calculated to cause merriment, so much the more is he esteemed by his employers. The class naturally regards him as an animated joke. The two to four hours a week that are deliberately wasted on this ancient farce, are looked forward to by the boys as a merry interlude in an otherwise monotonous existence. And then, when the proud parent takes his son and heir to Dieppe merely to discover that the lad does not know enough to call a ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... himself bold for any situation. He would carry the farce through if they insisted on it. He no longer planned to elude the waster. They were in ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... much relished out of their own country, and whether even there, the effect must not be weakened as fatuity and absurdity shall discover new methods of fastening ridicule upon themselves. They border more nearly on farce than comedy. They have neither of them any thing of fancy, that power which can give a new and higher interest to the laughable itself, by mingling it with the marvellous, and which has placed Aristophanes so ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... understand the soul well; they profess to be able to distinguish it from the body; in short, they can do nothing without it; and therefore, to keep up the farce, they have been compelled to admit the ridiculous dogma of the Persians, known by the name of the resurrection. This system supposes that the particles of the body which have been scattered at death will ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... stay in the two country-houses above named, where they saw but little company, Madame du Maine made many attempts at reconciliation with her husband, which he repelled. This farce lasted from the month of January (when they arrived at Sceaux and at Clagny) to the end of July. Then they thought the game had lasted long enough to be put an end to. They had found themselves quit of all danger so cheaply, and counted so ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... under it. This much accomplished, he hurried away to Washington, where he was received with open arms by the President and his advisers, who at once proceeded with a united and formidable effort to legalize the transparent farce by Congressional sanction. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... at the mere thought. Now, as he was told by the warder, by the bishop, and by Justinus, the day after to-morrow was fixed for the bridal of his betrothed. In two days the bride, decked by base and mocking hands for an atrocious and accursed farce, would be wreathed and wedded, not to him, the bridegroom whom she loved, but to the Nile—the insensible, death-dealing element. He rushed up and down his cell like a madman, and tore his lute-strings when he tried to soothe his soul with music; but then a calm, well-intentioned voice would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the Greek Church produce an ill effect upon the character of the people, for they are not a mere farce, but are carried to such an extent as to bring about a real mortification of the flesh; the febrile irritation of the frame operating in conjunction with the depression of the spirits occasioned by abstinence, will so far answer the objects ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... this period (February, 1806) at work upon a farce, to be called "Mr. H.;" from which he says, "if it has a 'good run' I shall get two hundred pounds, and I hope one hundred pounds for the copyright." "Mr. H." (which rested solely upon the absurdity of a name, which ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... polls, as who should say: When you got your majority in June, the nation was with you; many things of the gravest national concern have happened since; let us see if the nation is with you now. M. Venizelos declined the invitation: "The elections," he said, "will be a farce. All my supporters are detained voteless under arms, and the only votes cast will be those of the older and more timid men." How many supporters he had under arms the near future was to show. Meanwhile, he and his partizans reinforced ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... had inadvertently selected as the frontispiece. It appears," Timbs continues, "that the landlady and her daughter were the reigning toast of the Templars, who then frequented Dick's; and took the matter up so strongly that they united to condemn the farce on the night of its production; they succeeded, and even extended their resentment to everything suspected to be this author's (the Rev. James Miller) for ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... brought on in a hamper as a New Year's gift to a selfish old gentleman who would not forgive his daughter for having married for love. As, however, she began to cry long before the hamper was opened, the comedy became a farce, to the immense amusement of the public. She next appeared in a mediaeval melodrama, being then three years of age, and was so terrified at the machinations of the villain that she ran away at the most critical moment. However, her stage-fright seems ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... hundred clenches makes, And ductile Dulness new meanders takes; There motley images her fancy strike, Figures ill paired, and similes unlike. She sees a mob of metaphors advance, Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance; How Tragedy and Comedy embrace; How Farce and Epic get a jumbled race; How Time himself stands still at her command, Realms shift their place, and ocean turns to land. Here gay description Egypt glads with showers, Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers; Glittering with ice ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... rebels and traitors was there no power in Congress to give, at least, security to life? Must they wait till murder was organized into an institution, and life and property were at the mercy of the mob? And, if so, would not such a government be a farce, and such ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... would be idle to deny that the ingredient which, more than its humour, or its wisdom, or the fertility of invention or knowledge of human nature it displays, has insured its success with the multitude, is the vein of farce that runs through it. It was the attack upon the sheep, the battle with the wine-skins, Mambrino's helmet, the balsam of Fierabras, Don Quixote knocked over by the sails of the windmill, Sancho tossed ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... distinct picture, one for tragedy, consisting of large buildings, with columns, statues, and other corresponding ornaments; a second face, with houses, windows, and balconies, for comedy; a third applied to farce, with cottages, grottoes, and rural scenes. There were the scenae versatiles of Servius. Besides these, there were scenae ductiles, which drew backwards and forwards, and opened a view of the house, which ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... grounds on which his master claimed the throne of Sweden, at the close of which the people were asked whether they would have him for their king, and with their tyrants' weapons brandished before their eyes they answered yes. With this elaborate farce the ceremony ended and the people scattered, being first ordered to return on the following Sunday and share in the coronation festivities of the king whom they had thus elected against their will. The ostentatious mummery of these mock ceremonies would cause a smile ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... half in love with his own cleverness. She even found herself laughing at his mimicry of what this acquaintance and that would say. Her spirits rose; the play that might have been a painful drama seemed turning out an amusing farce. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... hard for a week or two, like the loss of any other toy, I deprive you of nothing, but add to your comfort, and (if there be such a thing) to your happiness, when I forbid you ever to see that foolish child again. All marriage is a wretched farce, even when man and wife belong to the same rank of life, have temper well assorted, similar likes and dislikes, and about the same pittance of mind. But when they are not so matched, the farce would become a long, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... that weakness, my daughter: you must be nearly 80 by this time. I was cut off (by an accident) in my 64th year, and am considerably your junior in consequence. Besides, my child, in this place, what our libertine friend here would call the farce of parental wisdom is dropped. Regard me, I beg, as a fellow creature, not as ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... the Montreal Theatre? I am an old hand at such matters, and am going to join the officers of the garrison in a public representation for the benefit of a local charity. We shall have a good house, they say. I am going to enact one Mr. Snobbington in a funny farce called A Good Night's Rest. I shall want a flaxen wig and eyebrows; and my nightly rest is broken by visions of there being no such commodities in Canada. I wake in the dead of night in a cold perspiration, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... said the words he wished he could recall them. Their substance was right enough; it was the sound of them that was wrong. They sounded like a line from a farce, where the erring husband has been caught by the masterful wife. They were ridiculous. Worse than being merely ridiculous, they created an atmosphere of guilt ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... opinion. Nevertheless, age by age they have been gay; and age by age they have exchanged language imitated from the children they doubtless never studied, and perhaps never loved. Why so? They might have chosen broken English of other sorts—that, for example, which was once thought amusing in farce, as spoken by the Frenchman conceived by the Englishman—a complication of humour fictitious enough, one might think, to please anyone; or else a fragment of negro dialect; or the style of telegrams; or the masterly adaptation of the simple savage's English devised by Mrs Plornish in her intercourse ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... shout of laughter, without the slightest effort for his relief. At last Caddy, taking compassion upon his forlorn condition, procured a basin of water, and assisted him to wash from his woolly pate what had been intended for the next day's meal. "This is the farce after what was almost a tragedy," said Mr. Walters, as they ascended the stairs again; "I wonder what we shall ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... in the cabin, but neither door nor port-hole could be opened for fear of the water coming in. Dinner was a farce, to use Tom's way of expressing it, for everything was cold and had to be eaten out of hand or from a tin cup. Yet what was served tasted very good to ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... is yet employed in groping for his premises, should keep his mind fluent and sensitive, keen to mark flaws, and willing to surrender untenable positions. He should keep himself teachable, or cease the expensive farce of being taught. It is to further this docile spirit that we desire to press the claims of debating societies. It is as a means of melting down this museum of premature petrifactions into living and impressionable soul that we insist on their utility. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... When this farce is well under way, they prepare to go in search of the cabbage. They bring a hand-barrow, on which the paien is placed, armed with a spade, a rope, and a great basket. Four strong men carry him on their shoulders. His wife follows him on foot, the ancients ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... talent for caricature. To this we owe the full-length portrait of Major Gahagan, and a whole gallery of other drawings, usually of Irishmen, which have been the delight of innumerable readers. The striking alternation between two extremes of character and conduct, between tragedy and farce, between ridiculous meanness and pathetic unselfishness, is to be found in all his novels, though in his later and finer work it is controlled and tempered to more artistic proportions. But in the productions of his youth ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... London is the dirtiest; London is, if you will, the most sombre; London is, if you will, the most miserable. But London is certainly the most amusing and the most amused. You may prove that we have the most tragedy; the fact remains that we have the most comedy, that we have the most farce. We have at the very worst a splendid hypocrisy of humour. We conceal our sorrow behind a screaming derision. You speak of people who laugh through their tears; it is our boast that we only weep through our laughter. There ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... strife Pope took small part; for, notwithstanding his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, he hated music with an entire sincerity. He also affected to hate the drama; but some have thought this accounted for by the fact that, early in his career, he was damned for the farce of Three Hours after Marriage, which, after the fashion of our own days, he concocted with another, the co-author in this case being a wit of no less calibre than Gay, the author of The Beggars' Opera. The astonished audience bore it as best they might till ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... for once made a false step, and for once you have had the wit to profit by it. The farce of the cobbler ends to-day; and I confess to you (with my compliments) that you have had the best of it. Blood will out; and you have certainly a choice idea of how to make ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... surprises of a French farce, I hope," said Madame Valtesi. "Esme, I am quite stiff from knitting so long. Take me to the drawing-room and sing to me a song of France. Let us try ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... sisters and brother had a hundred different interests of their own, and, familiar still, were utterly estranged from each other. Some few score of years afterwards, when all the parties represented are grown old, what bitter satire there is in those flaunting childish family-portraits, with their farce of sentiment and smiling lies, and innocence so self-conscious and self-satisfied. Osborne's own state portrait, with that of his great silver inkstand and arm-chair, had taken the place of honour in the dining-room, vacated ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... It is said that L400,000 of our money has been transferred for some extraordinary purpose to Holland. Recently L17,000 is said to have been sent out of the country with Dr. Leyds for Secret Service purposes, and the public audit seems a farce. When the Progressive members endeavoured to get an explanation about large sums of money they were silenced by a vote of the majority prompted by President Kruger. The administration of the public service ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... till at last I told her that I thought we had had talk enough about the floor, we would now have a touch at the ceiling." I asked him if he ever huffed his wife about his dinner. "So often," replied he, "that at last she called to me and said, Nay, hold, Mr. Johnson, and do not make a farce of thanking God for a dinner which in a few minutes you will protest ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... "permit this young man to thank you for the lesson of prudence which you have given him by frightening him a little. He knows well that it was you who sent me to his aid, and that all this is a farce. No one is deceived by hearing the son oppose the Father, and who has ever doubted ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... leaders were executed, the others swore to keep the peace, and a glowing account of the pacification of the Miaotze region was sent to Pekin. Some severe critics suggested that the whole arrangement was a farce, and that Hengan's triumph was only on paper; but the lapse of time has shown this skepticism to be unjustified, as the Miaotze have remained tranquil ever since, and the formidable Yaoujin, or Wolfmen, as they are ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... to the station, of course; it is only in later years that the farce of "seeing people off" is seen in its true colours. Edward was the life and soul of the party; and if his gaiety struck one at times as being a trifle overdone, it was not a moment to be critical. As ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... farce. Thorpe was built on the true athletic lines, broad, straight shoulders, narrow flanks, long, clean, smooth muscles. He possessed, besides, that hereditary toughness and bulk which no gymnasium training ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... was Miss Grahame's open landaulet, and there were she and Gwen in it, just starting to see the former's little boy. That was how Dave was spoken of, at the risk of creating a scandal. They immediately lent themselves to a gratuitous farce, having for its object the liberation of Mr. Pellew and Miss ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of the best writers of our time, whether for comedy or for tragedy; and for extravaganza, too, as witness his lively farce called The Hand of Ethelberta. He can write dialogue or description. He is so excellent in either that either, as you read it, appears to make for your highest pleasure. If his characters talk, you would gladly have ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... to recall the fact that the late farce of this name, adapted from L'Hotel du Libre Echange, ran for five hundred nights before it expired. Some restorative music has now been applied to it and the corpse has revived. Indeed there are the usual signs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... such as it was. Many good, but easy, men had thought it best, for the reputation of the Christian ministry, not to rake too deeply into such an unpleasant business. Especially in the Synod the proceedings had been a farce. When Riverius, the moderator of the Synod, at the close of the proceedings, had said to Morus, "Never was a Moor so whitewashed as you have been to-day," could not everybody, with any sense of humour, perceive that the Reverend gentleman had been joking? Then, what ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Patty, laughing again. "The farce is over. Now come and be real. Your own beautiful real self. Come and meet ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... monument of fruitless ingenuity, of wasted labour, and of blighted hopes; and that for all their gay trappings—their flowers, their ribbons, and their music—they partake far more of tragedy than of farce. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... than he had yet used. "You're overdoing it—you always do. It's no good. This is the last stroke, and I give up. It has gone against the grain with me to get anybody into trouble," he said, looking attentively at Lady Alice, "and now that I know who this lady is, I don't feel inclined to keep up the farce any longer. I am much too ill to live to be hanged—Mr. Kenyon can tell you so at any minute—and I may as well give you the satisfaction of knowing that Caspar Brooke had nothing at all to do with Oliver's death: I was his murderer, and no one else: ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... It is not a contract but a fact; it cannot be effected by any mere act of will on the part of the parties concerned; it cannot be maintained by any mere act of will. To will such a contract is merely to perform a worse than indecorous farce. Certainly many of the circumstances of marriage are properly the subject of contract, to be voluntarily and deliberately made by the parties to the contract. But the essential fact of marriage—a love strong enough to render the most intimate ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... The Taylor. Last night, a little before sundown, until after dark, we were amused by a farce enacted by the natives, apparently to keep us quiet and render us powerless, while they approached the water hole and got what water they required. They commenced at some distance off, raising a heavy ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... I have some misgivings about Mr. HENRY ARTHUR JONES'S farce—parable, The Pacifists. Assume Market Pewbury's afflictions to have been as stated: an intolerable stalwart cad of a butcher fencing-in the best part of the common, assaulting people's grandmothers, shutting them up in coal-cellars and eating their crumpets, kissing their wives ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... behind him, the Fokker; behind the Fokker, the Nieuport, and I, last of all, behind the Nieuport. We exchanged shots merrily. Finally the Fokker let the Caudron go, and the Nieuport stopped chasing the Fokker. I fired my last shots at the Nieuport and went home. The whole farce lasted over an hour. We had worked hard, but without visible success. At least, the Fokker (who turned out to be Althaus) and I had dominated ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... her spirits up, She sent for company to sup: When all the while you might remark, She strove in vain to ape Wood Park. Two bottles call'd for, (half her store, The cupboard could contain but four:) A supper worthy of herself, Five nothings in five plates of delf. Thus for a week the farce went on; When, all her country savings gone, She fell into her former scene, Small beer, a herring, and the Dean. Thus far in jest: though now, I fear, You think my jesting too severe; But poets, when a hint is new, Regard not whether false ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... general election. I've been earning two thousand a year, I've got nearly four thousand of my own, and I've never spent much more than half my income. I wondered if it was worth while to spend eight hours a day settling the sordid quarrels of foolish people, and another eight hours in the farce of governing the nation.' ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... the more piercing our painful ones. Yet the thrill from pleasure is gradually deadened by repetition, and finally, with the passage of time, the senses no longer feel it; but all the while that pleasure is diminishing, pain increases. After all, what a tragical farce! Is there ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... marble mantel struck the hour, the count stopped before his young visitor, and looked searchingly at his mild and effeminate farce. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... rider, who has ridden him time out of mind, and is, indeed, the only one that can do anything with him. Sometimes, however, they have a complete quarrel, and a dispute for mastery, and then, I am told, it is as good as a farce to see the heat they both get into, and the wrongheaded contest that ensues; for they are quite knowing in each other's ways and in the art of teasing and fretting each other. Notwithstanding these doughty brawls, however, there is nothing that nettles ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... the roads above the town. At a tea-room in the outskirts army officers ate at a neighboring table. Later, it is likely, they were in the retreat from Mons: for the expeditionary force crossed the channel within a week. Yet so does farce march along with tragedy that our chief concern in Rochester was the old inn where the ball ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... conjure by in Lost Valley. Steptoe Service prated of Gov'ment. It was a farce, a synonym for juggled duty, a word to suggest the one-man law of the place, for even Courtrey, who made the sheriffs—and unmade them—did it under the grandiloquent name of Government. She looked at him keenly, and there was a sudden ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... Mr. Tilley showed the great advantages which would accrue to New Brunswick eventually in consequence of confederation. He combated the statement made by Mr. Smith that after confederation the provincial legislature would become a mere farce, showing that of all the Acts passed during the previous two years there were only seven which would have come under the control of the general legislature. Mr. Tilley closed by dwelling on the impression of power which union would have on the minds of those abroad who were plotting our ruin. The ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... telephone has become, of course, a farce, and the sooner the Government take it up the better. Several large business houses have given it up, and in the working of the telephone London, which ought to be the most favoured, is probably the most unfortunate city ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... said," I have been tortured by this useless and expensive farce. If counsel for the People had been other than play-actors, they would have known in the beginning that Victor Ancona could not be convicted for murder, unless he were confronted in this court room with a living witness, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... in real life, and I'm best out of it." She turned the knob with eager fingers and pulled the door toward her. It opened on a dumbwaiter shaft, empty and impressive. Patsy's expression would have scored a hit in farce comedy. Unfortunately there was no audience present to appreciate it here, and the prompter forgot to ring down the curtain just then, so that Patsy stood helpless, forced to go on hearing all that Marjorie and her leading man wished to improvise in ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... capacity for wit, but, as he was fond of saying himself, no sympathy with farce or mere high spirits. I doubt even if he had a sense of humour in the ordinary meaning of that term, or in the Frenchman's definition: "la mlancholie gaie que les Anglais nomment 'humour.'" To say this is not to say that he did not enjoy a ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... barbarity, and blasphemy to proclaim the reign of "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality," with Marat for their leader, and Danton for their orator, and Robespierre for their high-priest; and, finally, to consummate the infamous farce of reform by openly setting up a wanton woman as the idol of their worship, under the name of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... communicate this to his friends, and thus fix them to the French party. Montluc was too penetrating for this young political agent, whom he discovered to be a spy, and the pursuit of his fellows to have been a farce; he sent the page back to his master, the evangelical count, observing that such tricks were too gross to be played on one who had managed affairs in all the courts of Europe before he came ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... devoted to the marionnette and dialect performances. The principal are the "Salvini," "Ristori," "Majeroni," "Sedowsky," and "Rossi" for tragedy, the "Bellotti Bon" for high comedy, and the "De Mestri" for farce and vaudeville. The "Ristori," "Salvini" and "Rossi" troupes have been the round of the world. The "Bellotti Bon" has, I believe, never quitted Italy. It is a remarkable combination of well-trained actors, devoted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Countess von Rosen is not a complete failure, and would perhaps have been a bit of a success, if only she had made Prince Otto come nearer to losing his virtue. The most perfect in style, perhaps, of all Stevenson's efforts it is yet most out of nature and truth,—a farce, felt to be disguised only when read in a certain mood; and this all the more for its perfections, just as Stevenson would have said it of a human being too icily ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... absurdness &c adj.; imbecility &c 499; alogy^, nonsense, utter nonsense; paradox, inconsistency; stultiloquy^, stultiloquence^; nugacity^. blunder, muddle, bull; Irishism^, Hibernicism^; slipslop^; anticlimax, bathos; sophism &c 477. farce, galimathias^, amphigouri^, rhapsody; farrago &c (disorder) 59; betise [Fr.]; extravagance, romance; sciamachy^. sell, pun, verbal quibble, macaronic^. jargon, fustian, twaddle, gibberish &c (no meaning) 517; exaggeration &c 549; moonshine, stuff; mare's nest, quibble, self- delusion. vagary, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... afterwards, fully loaded, in his roll-top desk. After their arrest the loggers were taken to the city jail which was to be the scene of an inquisition unparalleled in the history of the United States. After this, as an additional punishment, they were compelled to face the farce of a "fair ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... to their very dulness a charm. In a word it was he who first opened to men the world of modern fiction. Nor does English literature owe less to him in its form. Humour has always been an English quality, but with the essayist humour for the first time severed itself from farce; it was no longer forced, riotous, extravagant; it acquired taste, gentleness, adroitness, finesse, lightness of touch, a delicate colouring of playful fancy. It preserved indeed its old sympathy with pity, with passion; but it learned ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... prove so constant a Butt, to Farce-wrights, and Hackney Laughers; when, upon Examination, he is, by a thousand Degrees, preferable to the British Hobbinol, or French Gregoire? For Teague is a very Pattern of Hospitality; so much so, that if a Gentleman should happen to miss his Road, and be nessitated to seek the Shelter ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... may be trying but they end happily; the sun shines and the air is clear; if storms appear they are the showers of a summer day, not awful tempests. The comedy descends through various forms to the travesty and farce whose purpose is solely to excite laughter by ludicrous scenes and absurd incidents. The melodrama abounds in thrilling situations and extravagant efforts to excite emotions, but its final outcome is a happy one, and the villain is punished and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... comedy of the kind that runs for a year and costs the price of two books for a good seat. Its humor is either good horseplay or vulgar farce, and its literary quality nil. Its music is better, less banal than the words, and, sometimes, almost excellent. But its setting, the costumes, the scenic effects, the stage painting, and, most of all, the color schemes are always artistic and sometimes exquisite. They ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... appears to have been the forerunner and origin of all musical farce and "opera comique," only naturalised in our country during the present generation. The theatres in all the provinces are always full, always popular; the pieces only run for short periods, a perpetual variety being aimed at by the managers—a thing easily to be understood ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... giant pool; thereby creating the mother of trusts, controlling a corruption fund of enormous magnitude. A monopolistic trust, grown so rich and powerful, as to be beyond the reach of law; boldly corrupting courts, buying legislators, and turning the administration of justice into a farce. In fact, this monstrous combine, has become so dangerous to every interest of good government, that the law of self-preservation demands that it shall be speedily wiped out, by the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... seriously to make it worth while, and as in the teaching of needlework, the foundations must be plain. To begin by fancy-work in one case and bonbons in the other turns the whole instruction into a farce. In this subject especially, the satisfaction of producing good work, well done, without help, is a result which justifies all the trouble that may be spent upon it. When girls have, by themselves, brought to a happy conclusion the preparation ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... this, Doret. You're a part of this little farce. You trapped me here to make a fool of me, did you? Well, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... chance in a hundred. See those two posts in the full glare of light? Well, to those posts the captives are to be tied. It is plain that the tribunal have doomed them to death by shooting. What a farce!" ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... well-preserved papyrus, which contains on one side a prose mime in two scenes, a work of the school of Sophron, having points of resemblance to the fifth mime of Herondas; while on the other side is an amusing farce, partly in prose, partly in verse. The scene is laid on the shores of the Indian Ocean, and the plot turns upon the rescue of a Greek maiden from the hands of barbarians, who speak a non-Greek language with elements apparently derived ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... sickening parade of redundant saintly virtues, which the Roman Church had converted into stock, and dispensed for the benefit of the believers. This is not the place to pour out our nausea on so poor, yet so detestable a farce. But it seems with all human matters, that as soon as spiritual truths are petrified into doctrines, it is another name for their death. They die, corrupt, and breed a pestilence. The doctrine of good works was hurled away ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... sadly, her thin hands supporting her chin. "It seems as though we had played our long farce to its end. Death is as inexorable in its demands as life." The circles under her ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... took an Englishman to a theater. An actor in the farce, about to die, exclaimed: "Please, dear wife, don't bury me ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... has only been a play of love, to which the soul would easily become accustomed if her Beloved did not change His conduct. O poor hearts who complain of the flights of love! You do not know that this is only a farce, an attempt, a specimen of what is to follow. The hours of absence mark the days, the weeks, the months, and the years. You must learn to be generous at your own expense, to suffer your Beloved to come and go at His pleasure. I seem to see these young brides. They are at the height of grief ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... three a fortnight regularly registered throughout the whole year, and hardly more than one a week during the second half of the year! Clearly, censorship and registration had then become an absolute farce. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the death of Caesar, the comitia continued to be held, but was always controlled by the rulers, whose unlimited powers were ultimately complied with without resistance. Finally the comitia became a mere farce, and all legislation passed away forever, and was completely in the hands of ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... one morning, as he sometimes did in the effort to establish more amicable relations, and had found it occupied only by the valet, who was dusting the furniture and bric-a-brac with a feather broom rather in the style of a man-servant at the rise of the curtain of an old-fashioned farce. After a courteous exchange of greetings, Archie sat down and lit a cigarette. Parker went ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... the shrubs around seemed ever to be murmuring your name. Oh, my love, my love, sometimes I wonder that I have lived through the anguish of these days. But it is over! You have come to me, and the evil days are past. I renounce my priesthood! It has become only a barren farce to me! Heaven or hell, what matters it? I leave here with you to-night never to return! Never! ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... evidently baffled by these precautions, and, having smoked their pipe, and vapored off their valor, took their departure. The farce, however, did not end here. After a little while the warriors returned, ushering in another savage, still more heroically arrayed. This they announced as the chief of the belligerent village, but as a great pacificator. His people had been furiously bent upon the attack, and would have doubtless ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... growing too savage: don't let us forget our usual amenity, and that tone of playfulness and sentiment with which the beloved reader and writer have pursued their mutual reflections hitherto. Well, Snobbishness pervades the little Social Farce as well as the great State Comedy; and the self-same ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he; "wilt thou not tremble beneath the glance of those who seek the secret of thy life? Yes; study well thy part; have ready thy mask; go on bravely with thy cowardly farce! And now begone; thy nightly task is done;—beg, beg from sleep the oblivion of what thou art and of thy threatening future! Sleep! I tremble at the very thought of it! Father in heaven, have ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... judging the fifteenth-century French tale, that just as it was to some extent hampered by the long continuing popularity of the verse fabliau on the one hand, so it was, as we may say, "bled" on the other by the growing popularity of the farce, which consists of exactly the same material as the fabliaux and the nouvelles themselves, with the additional liveliness of voice and action. These later additions imposed not the smallest restraint on the license which had characterised and was to characterise ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... next neighbour. The latter was equally astonished and disgusted with its unexpected sourness, but, rather than admit his disappointment and be laughed at by the others, he also pretended that it was delicious, and passed it along. Six men in succession went through with this transparent farce with the greatest solemnity; but when they had all tasted it, and all been victimised, they burst out into a simultaneous "ty-e-e-e" of astonishment, and gave free expression to their long-suppressed emotions of disgust. The vehement spitting, coughing, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan |
