"Humorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the house," he said with a humorous glance at the door. "I don't always bring one o' the walls with me when I come into ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... vicious models, and fantastic styles of architecture, and brought into fashion artists without capacity or taste. There was not in his kingdom a more discerning judge of painting; but he had no imagination for the higher class of art. He preferred the exquisite and humorous realities of the Dutch painters to the poetic or historic schools of Italy; and, though a studious collector, he gave no great impulse to native talent. In music he had both taste and skill: he encouraged an art which formed one of his enjoyments; and if ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... family, with his banjo, and strewed sand on the porch and danced "Chicken in the Bread Tray" and did buck-and-wing wonders for half an hour longer. Incredibly, wild and boisterous things he did. He sang, he told stories that set all but one shrieking, he played the yokel, the humorous clodhopper; he was mad, mad with the revival of the old ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the largest dogs had followed the first cat over the heads of the orchestra, and a stampede of the audience was in progress, the dogs and cats under the feet of men and women, who were jumping on chairs or rushing towards the exits. The curtain went down without the humorous dialogue that ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... promise to renew them when they drooped. On these occasions there was something in her smile which showed how conscious she was of the effect she produced, though it must be said that it was rather a humorous than a designing consciousness, and savoured more ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... TRAGEDY" brings us near to the period of the "Men and Women;" and displays, for the first time in Mr. Browning's work, a situation quite dramatic in itself, but which is nevertheless made by the characters, and imagined for them. It is a story of moral retrogression; but, setting aside its very humorous treatment, it is no "tragedy" for the reader, because he has never believed in that particular "soul," though its proprietor and his friends are justly supposed to do so. The drama is divided into two acts, of which the first represents the "poetry," the second the prose, of a certain Chiappino's ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... highly pleased with these lively and humorous compositions; and wherever this subject was mentioned, never failed to produce his supplement upon the occasion: "It is strange," said he, "that the country, which is little better than a gallows or ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... these writings of Mrs. Shelley's. The fact that the same mind which had revelled, a few years earlier, in the fantastical horrors of Frankenstein's abortive creation, could now dwell on the melancholy fate of Proserpine or the humorous disappointment of Midas, and delight in their subtle poetical or moral symbolism—this fact has its significance. It is one of the earliest indications of the revival, in the heart of Romanticism, of the old love of classical ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... alluded to will be familiar to all who know the poet as distinguished from the Bard of Avon. It is found in the second "English Eclogue," under the caption of the "Grandmother's Tale," and has to do with the escapade, long famous in the more humorous annals of Southey's native city, of blear-eyed Moll, a collier's wife, a great, ugly creature whose voice was as gruff as a mastiff's bark, and who wore habitually a man's hat and coat, so that at a few yards' distance ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... them." To illustrate the first clause he drew a graphic picture of a London carter in Cornhill loosening the harness, when his horse had surmounted the incline, taking the bit out of its mouth, and fastening on the corn-bag; and he applied the second clause with humorous wisdom to the behaviour of preachers. As the carter in the stable "lays" the hay to his horse, so the preacher has to "lay" the food to the congregation. The carter must not put the food too high, where ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... period, we find his Don Juan—in itself an epitome of all the marvellous contrarieties of his character—the Vision of Judgment, the Translation from Pulci, the Pamphlets on Pope, on the British Review, on Blackwood,—together with a swarm of other light, humorous trifles, all flashing forth carelessly from the same mind that was, almost at the same moment, personating, with a port worthy of such a presence, the mighty spirit of Dante, or following the dark footsteps of Scepticism over the ruins of past ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... in all his dealings with his fellow men, and meanness of any sort is utterly beneath him. He has a happy way of seeing the humorous side of life, and he is ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... at their own sweet will, see down the court along which they are strolling, three lampions flare, which indicate some big place or other where the "respectables" do congregate; and the woman says to her companion, with a humorous sarcasm, "Put forward your best foot!" that is, we must be very correct passing along here in ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... were wildly enthusiastic and were not particular as to how many troopers they fondly took farewell of, women smiled and laughed, though there were often tears in their eyes, and the men were laboriously humorous. A band played airs which the bandmaster considered suitable to the occasion, the troops, swarming on the railings and the rigging, sang lustily snatches of song; and finally, amidst the fortissimo strains of the National ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... these depending on whether Dauger has, or has not, told La Riviere the story of his past life.[1] Moreover, Lauzun was never, said Louvois, to be allowed to enter Fouquet's room when Dauger was present. The humorous point is that, thanks to a hole dug in the wall between his room and Fouquet's, Lauzun ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... sense of the humorous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of his thought. He felt his limbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he should be able to descend the steps of the scaffold. Morning would break and find him there. The neighbourhood ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... several books of verse, now out of print, before doing those which contain his representative work: "The Laughing Muse", 1915; "The Mirthful Lyre", 1917; and "Ballads of Old New York", 1920. While Mr. Guiterman is widely known as a humorous poet, he is also an accomplished poet ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... for it represents the loftiest and noblest type of the Anglo-Saxon race. The other portraits are vapid, affected, and conventional, without character or expression; but this is superb. The broad imperial brow, the firm, aquiline, and sensitive nose, the mouth proud, humorous, and passionate, the full orbits of the eyes, and the resolute, massive jaw, all indicate a temperament and brain of which the greatest deeds in letters, arts, or arms, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... he was twenty-five; he excelled my own adult stature, and walked with the free grace of a well-bred English gentleman. His dark hair grew thick, rising from his forehead in a wave; his face was long and thin, and a slight mustache veiled a humorous tender mouth. There was about the man a pervading sympathy; the desire to be friends was the first characteristic of his manner; he was talkative, eager, enthusiastic. If a man were good it seemed to Owen but natural; ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... no doubt that the part he had undertaken to play would be difficult. He could see its humorous side, but he had not been a prodigal; indeed he was by temperament and habit steady-going and industrious. The son of a small business man in Montreal, he had after an excellent education abandoned ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... me; then, although by nature a grave man, he gave a low, humorous chuckle, and regarded me ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... lifelong we may turn to the devotion that was loud and fleeting. The love-songs are many and well picked: one is the madrigal from Thomas Lodge's Eitphues' Golden Legacy, which "he wrote," he says, "on the ocean, when every line was wet with a surge, and every humorous passion counterchecked with a storm;" and which (the madrigal) had the good fortune to suggest and name Shakespeare's archest character, Rosalind. We cannot dwell upon this perfumed chaplet of love-ditties. Mrs. Richardson is here doubtless in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... monarchs of my acquaintance cannot be quite sure of their spelling, I could, at a pinch, make myself fairly well understood by the general public, as a skilled writer of polemics against myself!—as well as against the Secretary of State. This, so far as I personally am concerned, has been the humorous side of my little drama of disguise!—for sometimes I have had serious thoughts of appearing as a rival to our friend, Paul Zouche, in the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... of them, and rising, without altogether dropping his broadly humorous expression, extended an invitation to take ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... wrote some humorous verses. The dinner was given in the same native shed as before. As the table-boy passed the soup, one of the men made as if to begin. "Ma," who was sitting beside him, put her hand on his and said, "No, you don't, my boy, until ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... at the table of contents in the third volume will show the general nature of the selections. Fairy stories or tales with a highly imaginative basis predominate. There are some that are humorous, as for instance the selections from the writings of Lewis Carroll, and one ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Shoop waddled from the office with Bondsman at his heels. There was something humorous, almost pathetic, in the gaunt and grizzled Airedale's affection for his rotund master. And Shoop's broad back, with the shoulders stooped slightly and the set stride as he plodded here and there, often made the clerk smile. Yet ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... for all the letters of the alphabet, and many others more or less alliterative, while the humorous papers contain many exaggerated examples of this sort of thing. Of the last, the following on "Hottentottentaten" will serve as ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... close, you know what happened. I expect the first bids was made just as a josh. I hear that Gopher Development started at ten cents. Then someone sold a block at fifteen. By noon they'd gone to twenty. Durin' luncheon time a sporty bunch in a rathskeller cooked up the bright idea that it would be humorous to sell Gopher short and hammer the price down to five cents. Before three P.M. the gross transactions had run ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... attitude of surprise, feigns astonishment at the apparent absurdity of the request. Maintaining this position for a moment, the strange emotions depicted on his countenance soften down into one of humorous resignation to my will, and then looking wistfully up to the tufted top of the tree, he stands on tip-toe, straining his neck and elevating his arm, as though endeavouring to reach the fruit from the ground where he stands. As if defeated in ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... dull background. Their walks and drives and confidences, the night they watched the rabbit in the moonlight,—why were these things stirring to remember? Whenever he thought of them, they were distinctly different from the other memories of his life; always seemed humorous, gay, with a little thrill of anticipation and mystery about them. They came nearer to being tender secrets than any others he possessed. Nearer than anything else they corresponded to what he had hoped to find in the world, and had not found. It came over him now that the unexpected favors ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... us. Accordingly I set myself to recall some of the latest anecdotes of this kind which I had heard, and selected the one which follows, not because it was more interesting as a daw story than the others, but mainly on account of the shrewd and humorous and dramatic way in which it was related to me by a little ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... the bottom of the 'Bit,' a depth of twenty-six feet, and brought up the brush. He hastily put on his clothes, and when the Master returned, John held up the brush, and with that comical twinkle of the eye and humorous expression of the countenance, so common with sailors, said, 'Here's your brush. Sir.' 'What brush?' asked the Master. 'The brush I lost overboard an hour ago,' said John. 'That's a lie.' replied the Master, 'how could you ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... the poetry of life need not always be solemn, any more than life itself need not always be sober. It may be gay, witty, humorous, satirical, disbelieving, farcical, even broad and reckless, since life is all these; but it must never be insincere. Insincerity, which is not always one of the greatest sins of the moral universe, becomes in the world of art an offence of the first magnitude. ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... "bulls" and charters and proclamations and manuscripts, mostly eloquent now of the ill-faith of Serbia's neighbours. They were, however, humorous and vivacious and well-fed monks who bore no ill-will against Turk or Austrian or anyone; they were good fellows happily lodged by the Church, and without much care or sorrow of any kind; such a contrast to those ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... might be from such of the trunks as had been knocked out of the cabin by the barge and had been picked up. They were all dazed. Even Burlingham could not realize just what had occurred. They called to one another more or less humorous remarks while they were dressing behind piles of boxes, crates, barrels and sacks in the wharf-boat. And they laughed gayly when they assembled. Susan made the best appearance, for her blue serge suit had been taken out dry when she herself was lifted from the sinking wreck; the nightgown ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... had a fund of information regarding the history of the country, the legends of the gods, and the fabulous deeds of the ancient kings. He had a most interesting way of interspersing history with mythical tales and humorous incidents, and so kept the party in high spirits. Mahmoud was noted, too, for his ability to answer intelligently all reasonable inquiries and for his great patience in replying to many questions, that must have appeared to him very silly. Each day on the boat while ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... turned his head. Five hundred faces had regarded the act, without a consciousness that it was an interpolation; and four hundred and fifty mouths in those faces were smiling. About one half of them were tender smiles; these came from the women. The other half were at best humorous, and mainly satirical; these came from the men. It was a profanation without parallel, and his face blazed ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... second officer of a ship just like any other second officer, to that constable. I was moved by this solid evidence of my new dignity. Only his tone offended me. Nevertheless I gave him the tip he was looking for. Thereupon he lost all interest in me, humorous or otherwise, and walked away driving sternly before him the honest Ted, who went off grumbling to himself like a hungry ogre, and his horrible dumb little pal in the soldier's coat, who, from first to last, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... here and there in the night. Laughter! What on earth was there to laugh at? The wretched improvised shelters on and into which rain crept, lashed earthwards by a howling wind? The cold, chilly feet, clinging clothes and wet skin? Or is there anything refreshingly humorous in the knowledge that Death groped about in the night for his own ... found them? Is there a mirth-provoking element in the ten to one chance that YOU may not ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... Joe recited a humorous piece he had learned recently for delivery in the elocution class, and he recited it very well, too. When he had finished Mr. Allard called for more, and Joe obliged with the only ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... this time. How little I thought of meeting you! How very different the circumstances would have been if, instead of parting again as we must in half-an-hour or so, possibly for ever, you had been now just going off with me, as my wife, on our honeymoon trip. Ha—ha—well—so humorous is life!' ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... Yorkshire, and the gentleman, whatever was his name, was a Colonel. Stay! I recollect one more particular, which it is lucky I do remember. Your father in giving me, as I said before, in his own humorous strain, the history of his adventures, his hair-breadth escapes from his duns, the various disguises, and the numerous aliases he had assumed, mentioned that the name he had borne in India, and by which, he assured me, he had made quite a good character—was Clarke: ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Captain Lascelles. Here's your coat, which you were so good as to spare me; I am afraid it is not a valuable acquisition in its present spongy state;" and "Good-bye, old man," from the two friends as Lascelles ran off; shooting a momentary humorous glance ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Colonel invariably got his humorous effects by a good-natured but sometimes sharp ridicule, the process of which was to exaggerate the argument or travesty the cause he was attacking ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... benevolence of aspect which somewhat misrepresented him. As a matter of fact, although good-humored and not without a still surviving capacity for generous impulse, he was only less "near" than his wife. Childishly vain, he bore himself with an air of self-satisfaction not without its charm for humorous neighbors. They said that they guessed he ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... called "The Naughty Boy," that, it is true, is an old story. The poet Anacreon wrote it long, long ago; but Andersen has here re-told it in so humorous a manner, that it will no doubt amuse you as much as though it had been written originally by him. He has given the whole, too, quite another dress; and "the naughty boy" himself he has tricked out so drolly, and related such amusing ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... was too large-minded and honest to be mean or overreaching. His large head was thatched with thick, bristling iron-gray hair, his face was swarthy and clean-shaven, his black eyes were deep-set and keen, his nose prominent, yet well-shaped, and his mouth firm and resolute, having a humorous curve; he was plainly dressed in a black broadcloth suit which hung loosely over his bony frame. He threw down the ribbons upon the floor with an impatient gesture, and watched the news of the world, as it coiled ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the Party, by Irvin S. Cobb (George H. Doran Company). I shall claim no special literary quality for this short story which Mr. Cobb has reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post, but America usually shows such poverty in producing humorous stories that the infectious quality of this wildly improbable adventure makes the story seem better than it really is. It cannot be regarded as more than a diversion from Mr. Cobb's rich ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... he visited the south of Russia and stayed at the Holy Mountains, which gave him the subjects of two of his stories, "Easter Eve" and "Uprooted." In the autumn of that year he was asked by Korsh, a theatrical manager who knew him as a humorous writer, to write something for his theatre. Chekhov sat down and wrote "Ivanov" in a fortnight, sending off every act for rehearsal as ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... The Sun for the association of the names of several worthy gentlemen with the ownership of the only first-class Illustrated Humorous and Satirical paper published in America: (Subscription price, for one year, $4.00. Single copies 10 cents. Office, 83 Nassau St., ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... expectation as to what might be coming next, Thomas rose deliberately from his arm-chair, which he had drawn to the head of the table, and looking round on the young people with a half-serious, half-humorous expression, said: "Well, I suppose, girls, it may be as well if I tell you what I've asked you here ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... company I more delight in than that of artists. Their innate and highly-cultivated power of observation, not only as regards the ever-varying aspects of nature, but also as regards the quaint, droll, and humorous varieties of character, concur in rendering their conversation most delightful. I look back on these walks as among the brightest points in my existence. I have been led to digress on this subject. Although more correctly belonging to my father's life, yet it is so amalgamated with my own that it ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... strong, ugly creature bulging with knotty and unshapely muscles, an ogre of composition. He has little delicacy, little finesse of spirit. In listening to these works with their clumsy blocks of tone, their eternal sunless complaining, their lack of humor where they would be humorous, their lack of passion where they would be profound, their sardonic and monotonous bourdon, one is perforce reminded of the photograph of Reger which his publishers place on the cover of their catalogue of his works, the photograph that ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... could see Kara smiling up at her in the old humorous fashion. She could hear her voice with the gentle drawl that had attracted her so strongly at ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... a boy's heart, full of the lovable, humorous, tragic things which are locked secrets to most older folks. It is a finished, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... treated this remarkable event in humorous style. The proceedings at Charleston were likened to a cricket match or a regatta in England. The ladies turned out to view the contest. A good shot from Fort Sumter was as much applauded as a good shot from Fort Moultrie. When the American flag was shot away, General Beauregard sent ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... had arrived, and he and George were sitting together on the opposite side of the lawn. Edgar was a handsome, dark-haired lad, with a mischievous expression, and he sometimes owned that his capacity for seeing the humorous side of things was a gift that threatened to be his ruin. Nevertheless, there was a vein of sound common sense in him, and he had a strong ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... tone was quite composed and equable. "Well, she's safe, and she'll keep him in order if anybody can." Again that grimly humorous smile played about his mouth. "Why did she bring ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of Darby Grimshaw's great anvil. This hut was a general resort to all the idlers in the vicinity; Grim, as he was generally styled for the sake of abbreviation, discharging the office of "preses," or chief moderator, in all debates held therein. He was a shrewd fellow and a bold one. A humorous and inquisitive cunning lurked in the corner of his grey and restless eye. His curiosity was insatiable; and as a cross-questioner, when fairly at work, for worming out a secret he had not his fellow. His brain was ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that silly grin of hers, as usual. No matter what I say, it gets open-faced motions out of Helma. But I really wasn't feelin' so humorous. Whoever he was, this Creighton guy had come the wrong evenin'. Course, I judged it must be Vee he's callin' on, and I wasn't strong for a three-handed session just then. There was something special I wanted to talk over with Vee this particular ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... known copies of the ballad are as early in date as The Knight of the Burning Pestle (a play by Beaumont and Fletcher, first produced, it is said, in 1611), in which the humorous old Merrythought sings two fragments of this ballad; stanza 5 in Act II. Sc. 8, and the first two lines of stanza 2 in Act III. Sc. 5. As there given, the lines are ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... miraculously, resembled the girlish portraits of his mother—or he imagined so—until he noticed that her hair was yellow and her eyes blue. And he laughed crazily to himself, inwardly convulsed; and then his own voice sounded again, low, humorous, caressingly modulated; and he listened to it, amused that he was ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... to extravagance in his kindly demonstrations toward genius. However, Mr. Dickens went home rather more impressed by our faults, which he had had every opportunity of inspecting, than by our virtues, which possessed fewer salient features to his humorous eye. Two books—American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit—were the product of his tour through America. Thereupon, the American people grew very indignant. Their Dickens-love, in proportion to its intensity, turned to Dickens-hate, and ingratitude was considered to be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... squalor of the passage, the poverty stricken aspect of the stairs,—items which had prepared her on other occasions for the starvation rate of pay offered for her work,—now passed unheeded. This affectation of scanty means was humorous. Obviously, some millionaire had secured what the newspapers called "a ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... as that proceeding from any liquid confined in a cask, when shaken, if the cask be not full;" and to guggle, as a "straight-necked bottle, when it is emptying;" and yet I am inclined to believe that the word also signifies to swallow, as in England. In the humorous ballad of "Rise up and bar the door," clunk seems to be used in the sense ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... humorous and original impersonation of the Yarra-banker was his waggish begging. When he had danced, before leaving his partner, he assumed a most lugubrious manner, ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... less than 'two hundred.' Of all my little affairs of that nature, his was the most preposterous and absurd. That one human being should expect and seek from another what is so impossible to give produces a certain half-humorous irritation that ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... their contact with the Celts, both in Scotland and in Ireland. Both peoples had valour, intellect, imagination: but the Celt had that which the burly angular Norse character, however deep and stately, and however humorous, wanted; namely, music of nature, tenderness, grace, rapidity, playfulness; just the qualities, combining with the Scandinavian (and in Scotland with the Angle) elements of character which have produced, in Ireland and in ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... such braggadocio. But this is a digression. Public libraries can never satisfy the longings of book-collectors any more than can the private libraries of other people. Whoever really cared a snap of his fingers for the contents of another man's library, unless he is known to be dying? It is a humorous spectacle to watch one book-collector exhibiting his stores to another. If the owner is a gentleman, as he usually is, he affects indifference—'A poor thing,' he seems to say, 'yet mine own'; whilst the visitor, if human, as he always is, exhibits disgust. If the volume proffered ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... out between them, till the undefeated brute Made a humorous obeisance at the General Salute! Then his owner kicked him wildly in the stomach for his pranks, Said he'd stand the beast no longer, and returned him ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... great paleness and painful sensation of coldness in those, who had been some time confined in an atmosphere of only 86 or 90 degrees. Analogous to this, an observing friend of mine assured me, that once having sat up to a very late hour with three or four very ingenious and humorous companions, and drank a considerable quantity of wine; both contrary to his usual habits of life; and being obliged to rise early, and to ride a long journey on the next day; he expected to have found himself weak and soon fatigued; but on the contrary he performed his journey ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... was young in a keen, hard fashion; the mouth and eyes were those of a Spanish-American mother, golden eyes and a mouth originally beautiful, soft, and cruel, which had been tightened and straightened by a man's will and experience. It had been used so often for careless, humorous smiling that the cruelty had been almost worked out of it. Almost, not altogether. His mother's blood kept its talons on him. He was Latin and dangerous to look at, for all the big white Anglo-Saxon teeth, the slow, slack, Western American carriage, the guarded and amused expression ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... we could get wood in abundance, and perhaps," he added, looking slyly over to the stove where some bread-soup was in preparation for their very temperate repast, "some better fare for dinner. But," he continued in a tone of humorous banter, which he frequently adopted, and pushing back his chair a few paces as he spoke, "while you superintend the household concerns, and give the necessary orders to the cook, I will withdraw into my study. Now, what would I not write if only pen, paper, and ink, were to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... as where the narrator, wishing to describe the terror produced by Grendel's midnight visits to Heorot, says (ll.138-139), "Then was it easy to find one who elsewhere, more commodiously, sought rest for himself." It is hard to believe that the poet saw nothing humorous in this ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... droll, laughable, farcical, witty, jocular, jocose, ludicrous, burlesque, facetious, risible, absurd, waggish, humorous, jesting. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... pardon—I press it very hard!" And Lord John, as taking from his face and manner a cue for further humorous license, went so far as to emulate, though sympathetically enough, their companion's native form. "You don't mean to say you don't feel the ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... a lay-brother swung open the door, and two other lay-brothers entered leading between them a young novice of the order. He was a man of huge stature, dark-eyed and red-headed, with a peculiar half-humorous, half-defiant expression upon his bold, well-marked features. His cowl was thrown back upon his shoulders, and his gown, unfastened at the top, disclosed a round, sinewy neck, ruddy and corded like the bark of the fir. Thick, muscular ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a woman ought to be able to do this in the vast majority of cases. Her own intuition is seldom at fault. Even at the eleventh hour she may save the situation by a timely jest, a kindly bit of inconsequence, a sudden humorous inspiration—not at his expense, of course—and the man who is not a fool will see that it is not the psychological moment. Above all she must avoid being alone with him. Let her keep a child at her side, pay attention to the greatest bore, listen with grateful patience to the most prosy person ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... courted the society of actors and actresses. It was in this way that he gained that correct and valuable knowledge of the texts and characters of the drama, which enabled him in after years to burlesque them so successfully. The humorous writings of Seba Smith were his models, and the oddities of "John Phoenix" were his ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Mrs. L.S. are seated in the back seat, supported on one side by the Humorous 'ARRY and his Fiancee, and on the other by a pale, bloated youth, with a particularly rank cigar, and the Sturdy Democrat, whose two small boys occupy the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... engineer." He writhed as was his habit over his jokes, and then fell to work at the drawing again. "A book," he said, "and an axe, and a gibbet or gallows. B-a-g—that makes 'bag.' Doesn't go far, does it? Humorous duck, isn't he? Any one who can write 'ha! ha!' under a gallows ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... first great literary success. He had proved himself master of a fluent humorous style which might have been applied indefinitely to the treatment of similar themes. He was twenty-seven years old, and there was no reason why the next ten years should not be a most fruitful period. Unfortunately, during ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... fellow-men that their weakness is his pain; and the warmest corner in all Russia for the very men Gogol satirizes would doubtless have been found in his own heart. It is this spirit in which "Dead Souls" is writ which makes "Dead Souls" a model for all humorous writing. ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... the insipid regularity which, where all shaved, passed for masculine beauty; the nose ended largely, the cheek-bones were high, and the chin projected. But from the risk and even the edge of ugliness it was saved by a pair of grey eyes, keen, humorous, and kindly, and a smile that showed the eyes at their best. Of late those eyes had been known to express weariness and satiety; the man was tiring of the round of costly follies and aimless amusements in which he passed his life. But at twenty-six pepper is ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... nothing humorous or grotesque in her measure of a gentleman, for he realized that she was strung to a pitch of unreason and unnatural excitement, and that she was ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... you more.' Then, after expressing a wish that the Lord might send his friend refreshing sleep, and free his heart from care, he told him about his residence at the castle, in the 'empire of the birds.' In his letters to Jonas and Spalatin he indulged in humorous descriptions of the cries of the ravens and jackdaws which he had heard since four o'clock in the morning. A whole troop, he said, of sophists and schoolmen were gathered around him. Here he had also his Diet, composed ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... two sisters-in-law, had, along with a number of maids, waiting-girls, and other servants, come as far as the ceremonial gate to receive them, and Mrs. Yu, upon meeting lady Feng, for a while indulged, as was her wont, in humorous remarks, after which, leading Pao-y by the hand, they entered the drawing room and took their seats, Mrs. Ch'in handed ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Ferret, "you set up for a modern Don Quixote? The scheme is rather too stale and extravagant. What was a humorous romance and well-timed satire in Spain near two hundred years ago, will make but a sorry jest, and appear equally insipid and absurd when really acted from affectation, at this time of day, in a country ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Company)—"I shall be delighted if you'll place an order for a dozen of real, live, snappy, humorous anecdotes as told ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... was in facetious mood. He chaffed Dunstable genially about his prospectus, and admitted that it had amused him. Dunstable smiled without enjoyment. It was a good thing, perhaps, that Mr. Appleby saw the humorous rather than the lawless side of the Trust; but all the quips in the world could not save that ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... was his humorous complaint. "The smell of eats makes my mouth water so fast I have to gasp for air. Must tickle your nose, ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... this—Miriam loves you . . . If she should ever know, or even guess it,— What would she do?—Listen!—I'm not absurd . . . I'm sure of it. If you had eyes, for women— To understand them—which you've never had— You'd know it too . . . ' So went this colloquy, Half humorous, with undertones of pathos, Half grave, half flippant . . . while her fingers, softly, Felt for this tune, played it and let it fall, Now note by singing note, now chord by chord, Repeating phrases with a kind of pleasure ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... this letter of Mrs Ashburnham's to Mrs Powys that had caused the letter from Colonel Powys to Colonel Ashburnham—a letter that was half-humorous, half longing. Mrs Ashburnham caused her husband to reply, with a letter a little more jocular—something to the effect that Colonel Powys ought to give them some idea of the goods that he was marketing. That was the cause of the ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... been connected with an inn at Mauchline, and had seen the poet often. "Rabbie was a funny fellow," she said; "I ken'd him weel; and he stoppit at our hoose on his way up to Edinburgh to see the lairds." I asked her if he was not always humorous. "Nae, nae," she replied, "he used to come in and sit doun wi' his hands in his lap like a bashful country lad; very glum, till he got a drap o' whuskey, or heard a gude story, and then he was aff! He was very poorly in his latter days." Those closing days in Dumfries, steeped in poverty to ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... prominent. Laughing, he recalled the amusement of the college boys at Fiske's comical efforts to discover a piece of chalk dropped during his lecture on "Immortality." Standing on the hearth, a merry twinkle in his eyes, he recited some humorous lines which he had written concerning ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... front steps, explaining in a sort of humorous panic that he, Commissar of Commerce, knew nothing whatever of business. In the upstairs cafe sat a man all by himself in the corner, in a goat-skin cape and clothes which had been-I was going to say "slept in," but of course he hadn't slept-and a three days' growth of beard. He was ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... when I know it, is but this, A deep alloy whereby man tougher is To bear the hammer; and the deeper still, We still arise more image of His will; Sickness, an humorous cloud 'twixt us and light; And death, at longest, but ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... which had never heard a word ending in a consonant, this was apparently intensely humorous. They burst into loud guffaws, supplemented with resounding slaps of their cupped hands on their stomachs, at the same time raising an imitative ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... the king and shortly afterward was given, not the great sea monster he had been led to expect, but an insignificant looking craft called Le Duras. In compliment to Dr. Franklin's magazine of the name and in humorous comment of the ship's appearance, he renamed it the Bon Homme Richard, meaning the Poor Richard. But with the Poor Richard, as with the human form, the spirit which animated it was the controlling power; and the valor of Paul ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... answers her companion with commendable gravity, but with humorous twinkle about his eyes. "Is it worth all the long journey, and all the excitement in which your mother tells me you've been plunged for the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... He answers, "Yes, everybody may help something."—Don't you see how curiously he contrives to vex me; for the dog knows that with half a word I could do more than all of them together. But he only does it from the pride and envy of his own heart, and not out of a humorous design of teasing. He is one of those that would rather a service should not be done, than done by a private man, and of his own country. You take all this, don't you? Nite dee sollahs, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... and encouraged soldiers in the Queen's army to rear such pets as monkeys and parrots by regulations for their transport on route and transfer marches, which afforded material for many humorous sketches and paragraphs in the pages of The Delhi Punch. Wise and considerate regulations which are continued in the existing concessions as to the carriage of "soldiers' pets" by troop trains ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... general history of quadrupeds appeared with its vivid animals and its humorous and mordant tailpiece vignettes, he was hailed in terms that have hardly been matched for adulation. Certainly no mere book illustrator ever received equal acclaim. He was pronounced a great artist, a great man, an outstanding moralist and reformer, ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... completed a costume singularly suggestive of his occupation in life. His face was round and broad, like that of a cat, and a complexion stained, by constant exposure to the sun and wind, to a color of newly polished mahogany. But a countenance which otherwise might have been humorous, in this case was rendered singularly repulsive by the fact that his nose had been broken so flat to his face that all that remained to distinguish that feature were two circular orifices where the nostrils ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... roar had seemed to be almost at his side. What he saw drew an exclamation from Phil that, at other times, might have been humorous. There was no humor ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... never forget your loving kindness and protection," continued the young girl, tenderly. "You will let me come to you always when you want me; but you will let me also shape my life anew, and work for my living." The duchess turned her grave, half humorous face towards her. "That means you have determined to seek HIM. Well! Perhaps if you give up your other absurd idea of independence, I may assist you. And now I really believe, dear, that there is that dreadful South American," pointing to a figure that ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... the first man to shake his hand and greet him with affection. The boys who had gathered in the canyon to see the shooting were naturally indignant. Their indignation might have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in Tennessee's Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation. In fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to practical detail which was unpleasant in ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... neatness in language and ease and suavity of manner, with archness and sagacity of thought, his sarcasms assumed a garb at once so courtly and so careless, that they often diverted almost as much as they could mortify even their immediate objects. His humorous reproof to a gentleman vaunting with self-complacency the extreme beauty of his mother, and apparently implying that it might account for advantages in person in her descendants, is well known: 'Cetait donc,' ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... council had not yet begun; but it was characteristic of Togo that he saw me the instant I entered the cabin, and rose to shake hands with me, exclaiming, "Ah! here comes our young British giant." Then, pointing to a chair near himself, he motioned me to be seated, saying as he did so with a humorous smile: ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... divided the iliac artery; he was bleeding to death—nothing could save him. The cold perspiration on his forehead, and the glassy appearance of his eye, too plainly indicated that he had but a few minutes to live. Courtenay, shocked at the condition of the poor fellow, who was not only the most humorous, but one of the ablest seamen in the ship, knelt down on one knee beside him, and took ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat |
