"Humourous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with proeme, prolegomena, testimonia scriptorum, index authorum, and notes variorum. As to the latter, I desire you to read over the text, and make a few in any way you like best; whether dry raillery, upon the style and way of commenting of trivial critics; or humourous, upon the authors in the poem; or historical, of persons, places, times; or explanatory, or collecting the parallel passages of the ancients. Adieu. I am pretty well, my mother not ill, Dr. Arbuthnot vexed ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... to Belford.— Has no subject worth writing upon now he has lost his Clarissa. Half in jest, half in earnest, [as usual with him when vexed or disappointed,] he deplores the loss of her.—Humourous account of Lord M., of himself, and of his two cousins Montague. His Clarissa has made him eyeless and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... unprejudiced mind, dominated and inspired English biology until his death on June 29, 1895. He had the satisfaction shortly before his death of learning of Dubois' discovery, which he illustrated by a humourous sketch.[119] But there are still many followers in Darwin's footsteps in England. Keane has worked at the special genealogical tree of the Primates; Keith has inquired which of the anthropoid apes has the greatest number of characters in common with ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... heard, it is said, with wonder, the sarcastic sallies and eloquent bursts of the inspired Scot, who, in his turn, surveyed with wonder the remarkable corpulence, and listened with pleasure to the independent sentiments and humourous turns of conversation in the joyous Englishman. This Poem was the fruit of the interview, and it is said that Grose regarded some passages as ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Salem, is preserved a two-thirds length picture of the first Sir William Pepperell, painted in 1751 by Smibert, when the baronet was in London. Of this picture, Hawthorne once wrote the humourous description which follows: "Sir William Pepperell, in coat, waistcoat and breeches, all of scarlet broadcloth, is in the cabinet of the Society; he holds a general's truncheon in his right hand, and points ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... used to rattle round if you walked abroad. Here on the second day I took a small party of men, as a working party, to the shelters at the 'Sunken Road,' rather nearer the line. I think we were engaged in clearing the road of mud and generally cleaning up. On the way there I saw some rather humourous notices stuck up at various points. 'This is a dangerous spot.' It was kindly meant no doubt, but on the whole no part of the Salient afforded much of a rest-cure, and it was practically all under direct observation of the enemy. We existed simply ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... politeness, though she seldom understood what I said. When I finished speaking she answered what I had said indirectly, like one whose mind was not quite capable of following any conversation except the most trite. She laughed if she thought I had said anything humourous, and sometimes looked a little embarrassed; she only seemed to be at her ease when speaking of her mother. If, for instance, we were speaking of books, she would break in with her mother's opinions, thinking it wonderful that her mother had read—shall we say, "The Three ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... with gay coloured ribbons tied in large knots and bows, and their hats are smartened in the same way. They are usually accompanied by an old woman, or a boy dressed up to represent one; she is gaily bedizened, and called the Bessy. Sometimes the sport is assisted by a humourous countryman to represent a fool. He is covered with ribbons, and attired in skins, with a depending tail, and carries a box to collect money from the spectators. They are attended by music and Morris Dancers, when they ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... mathematician, a curious calculator of nativities, a general-read scholar, a thorough-paced philologist, and one that understood the surveying of lands well. As he was by many accounted a severe student, a devourer of authors, a melancholy and humourous person, so by others who knew him well, a person of great honesty, plain dealing and charity. I have heard some of the ancients of Christchurch often say that his company was very merry, facete and juvenile; and no man in his time did surpass him for his ready and dexterous interlarding his common ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... my reader why I have pourtrayed the Baron in many particulars different from the German author, and carefully prepared the audience for the grand effect of the last scene in the fourth act, by totally changing his conduct towards his son as a robber—why I gave sentences of a humourous kind to the parts of the two Cottagers—why I was compelled, on many occasions, to compress the matter of a speech of three or four pages into one of three or four lines—and why, in no one instance, I would suffer ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... the most thoroughly representative British humourous journal, and since its birth in the forties has been domiciled in Bouverie Street, just off the main thoroughfare ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... Strickland was staying. His partner, in a violent letter, sent to his bank, had taunted him with hiding his whereabouts: and Strickland, in a cynical and humourous reply, had told his partner exactly where to find him. He was ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... Now the Classic Drama, as we have it in Sophocles, though exquisitely clear and simple in form, and austerely beautiful withal, is comparatively limited in its scope, with few characters, little change of scene, no blending or interchanging of the humourous and the grave, the tragic and the comic, and hardly exceeding in length a single Act of the Shakespearian Drama. The interest all, or nearly all, centres in the catastrophe, there being only so much of detail and range as is needful to the evolving of this. Thus ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... see the silly play of my Lady Newcastle's, [Margaret, daughter of Thomas Lucas of Colchester, and sister to John Lord Lucas, married William Marquis of Newcastle, created a Duke 1664.] called "The Humourous Lovers;" the most silly thing that ever came upon a stage. I was sick to see it, but yet would not but have seen it, that I might the better ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... Judge Haliburton published several volumes bearing upon colonial manners and history: "Bubbles of Canada;" "The Old Judge, or Life in a Colony;" "Historical and Statistical account of Nova Scotia;" "Rule and Misrule of the English in America;" "Letters to Lord Durham." His more strictly humourous writings include "Nature and Human Nature;" "Wise Saws;" "The Letter Bag of ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... she cried in her half tender, half humourous way, "by the way you talk folk might guess you were scared to death of the wife who didn't know better than to take you for better or worse. Steve doesn't need to worry a thing. You know that. I don't know the rights of his claim by the laws of the folks who're set to worry us. But there's ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... of Shakespeare they were not held in such esteem. Coghan, writing in 1596, says of them: "Being eaten raw, they engender all humourous and corruptible putrifactions in the stomacke, and cause fearful dreames, and if they be much used they snarre the memory and trouble the understanding" ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Docthor," said a young giant in a tam-o'-shanter. "In fac', Docthor," he argued with a humourous smile, "we maun ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... afraid to confide that deep secret to me? Now I should have no sort of difficulty in proclaiming mine to anybody who had any business to ask it. It must be a queer thing to be a woman!' said Dane, with a dry, humourous, but at the same time wholly tender and ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... playing about; the bluefish, who are not in the least afraid of the snakes, rolled lazily round and round the rock; in the recesses lurked unseen the great conger-eel, which dreads nothing but the thing of long and horny tentacles, the ourite or squid: round and round the rock darted the humourous tazaar, which bites the bathers in shallow waters all for fun and mischief, and with no desire at all to eat their flesh; and besides these a thousand curious creatures, which this man, who had trained his eyes by days and days of watching, came here every day to look at. While he stood ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... men as himself, gains the habit, and the privilege of talking about himself as familiarly as about other men. Fond of the curious, and a hunter of oddities and strangenesses, while he conceived himself, with quaint and humourous gravity a useful inquirer into physical truth and fundamental science,—he loved to contemplate and discuss his own thoughts and feelings, because he found by comparison with other men's, that they too were curiosities, and so with a perfectly graceful and interesting ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... before the palace; and then a humourous little scene, a reflex of the old Dionysiac comedy—of that laughter which was an essential element of the earliest worship of Dionysus—follows the first chorus. The old blind prophet Teiresias, and the aged ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... hands in his sides, with his usual humourous positiveness. "Why, then tell her she is a very saucy lady, for her last letter to you, and her lord and master is not to be trusted; and it is my absolute will and pleasure that you ask me no ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Locke, and Lord Reggie, while Tommy in a loose white sailor suit scampered about from one place to another, simmering in perfect enjoyment. And the central figure of all was Esme Amarinth, who stood leaning upon an ebony stick with a silver knob, surveying his audience with the peculiar smile of humourous self-satisfaction that was so characteristic of his ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... white of no remembered fashion, with the green gem burning on his breast, but his manner was that of one perfectly tailored and about the most cosmopolitan offices of modernity. One might have told him one's most subtly humourous story and rested ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... Broadway, New York, doesn't begin to be the only place where she lives it. Look abroad, look abroad!" She was altogether fascinating as she pointed out to Steering little typical features that he would have missed without her humourous, boastful sallies. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... the house at Marigold Lake on the afternoon of the day before Christmas, a triumphal procession. The moose was driven, a peaceful captive with a wreath of cedar leaves around its neck—the humourous conception of Gregory Thorne. Malbrouck had announced their coming by a blast from his horn, and Margaret was standing in the doorway wrapped in furs, which may have come originally from Hudson's Bay, but which had been ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... glory and money. In the next envelope a man using the note-paper of a Boston journal begged to know if the accompanying article would be acceptable; if not it was to be kindly returned in the enclosed stamped envelope. It was a humourous essay on trolley cars. Adventuring through the odd scraps that were come to the great mill, Baker paused occasionally ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... manager of the Haymarket Theatre, London, and to Charles Reade, the collaborator, with Boucicault, in so many plays. Then the company heard it, after which Jefferson proceeded to study it, literally living and breathing the part. Many are the humourous records of the play as preserved in the Jefferson "Autobiography" and in the three books on Jefferson by Winter Frances Wilson and ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... said to be in complete training," he said with a humourous look as he seated himself. "It would be strange if they were, when there has been no one to ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... again, and in a burst of confidence, related the outcome of his having adopted the course that had been advised. His friend, wise in the ways of women, listened with his tongue in his cheek. Not being in love, himself, he could afford to see the humourous side of Jack's trouble. This time he ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Valentinian Wife for a Month Wit at several Weapons Woman Hater Humourous Lieutenant Love bleeding Spanish Curate Chances Custom of the Country Coxcomb Bonduca Bloody Brothers Maid's Tragedy Double Marriage Island Princess Loyal Subject Love's Cure Prophetess Pilgrim Maid ...
— The Annual Catalogue (1737) - Or, A New and Compleat List of All The New Books, New - Editions of Books, Pamphlets, &c. • J. Worrall
... streets, and discovers traces of beauty and joy in the most monotonous of lives, is, in the true and best sense of the term, Christ-like, with a message and gospel of hope. Thackeray must have had Charles Dickens in his mind when he wrote: "The humourous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture—your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy." Charles Dickens, of all writers of our age, assuredly did this in every work of his pen, for thirty-three ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... morning when the dark mist outside and badly made porridge inside tempted the children to their very worst. Miss Jones had had a wakeful night struggling with neuralgia and her own hesitating spirit. The children had lost even their customary half-humourous, half-contemptuous reserve. They let themselves appear for what they were—infant savages discontented with food, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... unexpected death. He remained perfectly still, but the slight colour seemed slowly to be drawn from his cheeks. Yet the newcomer himself seemed in no way terrifying. He was tall and largely built, clean-shaven, and with the humourous mouth of an Irishman or an American. Neither was there anything ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on any subject that came on the board; and, what was less usual in these days of universal knowledge, there was invariably some point in what she said. She had, in the ordinary sense of the word, no manners at all, but essentially made up for this lack by her sincere and humourous kindliness. She saw with acute vividness the ludicrous side of everybody, herself included, and to her mind the arch-humourist of all was her brother, whom she was quite unable to take seriously. She dressed as if she had looted a milliner's shop and had put on in a great ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... around, and with a humourous twinkle in his eye, that belied the gravity of the rest of his face, he said: "The Americanos are a great people—a wonderful people—and how unlike the Filipinos! When a Filipino wants sunshine or rain or wind, he must wait until ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... stories of our own day—pathetic, humourous, entertaining, powerful—in which the element of romantic love is altogether subordinate, or even imperceptible. THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM does not owe its deep interest to the engagement of the very charming young people who enliven it. MADAME DELPHINE and OLE 'STRACTED ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke |
