"Jest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Mrs. Ashton Portway, apparently overcome by the merry jest. 'Now remember, I shall hold you to your promise. I shall write and remind you. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... almost over when Dan, still looking hungry, grinned and asked Dave if he was n't going to have some BREAD? Whereupon Dad jumped up in a tearing passion. "D—n your insolence!" he said to Dan, "make a jest ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... replied the crew, opening his mouth from ear to ear in one of his cheerful smiles. "She calls me Monkey, jest as other folks do. When I give her this dollar she'll be satisfied. Won't she open ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... melancholy, in his voice, and behold a distaste to his familiar chair with its stuffed and lazy arms. The Cornal's character suffered a change too. He that had been gruff and indifferent took on a pleasing though awkward geniality. He would jest with Miss Mary till she cried "The man's doited!" though she clearly liked it; to Gilian he began the narration of an unending series ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... come up there after you? Oh, my stars, an' that girl knows how partic'ler Poppa is about his biscuits; they gotta be jest so or he won't look at 'em, an' her gassin' and him likely to raise ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... ain't done nothin'. But he's about to have somethin' of a highly onusual nature done to him. You jest tell him I'm wishful to see him right away—that'll be ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Now nought they could wreak on him, and had to go back when the day was far spent. But when Grettir was going, he misses his coat, and he could see that the bear has it cast under him. Then he said, "What man of you has wrought the jest of throwing my ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... my poor-timed jest, and her eyes remained full with vision, and she would have passed on had I not again blocked ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... said a great statesman once, when some one related to him the saying of a well-known politician to the same effect—"you call that witty—I call it devilish." It is a just description. If the report is reliable that Bismarck, even in grim jest, spoke of truth in this sense as one of his great resources, the confession ought to cover his name with infamy. I do not commit myself to the statement that he ever said this; but whether he did or not, he is credited with acting ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... Special Messenger, who brought up the Traitor to Court, and provided him at the Kings Expence with proper Accommodations on the Road. As soon as he appeared he was known to be the Celebrated Rabelais, and his Powder upon Examination being found very Innocent, the Jest was only laught at; for which a less eminent Drole would have been sent to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the Irishman's heart was torn with conflicting feelings, and although, from the mere force of habit, he could jest with the old woman when she paid her daily visits, there was no feeling of fun in his bosom, but, on the contrary, a deep and overwhelming sorrow, which showed itself very evidently on his expressive face. He groaned aloud when he thought of Martin, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Congressional committee may be trusted, that old-fashioned kind of goblet has again come into use, at the expense of our Northern head-pieces,—a costly drinking-cup to him that furnishes it! Heaven forgive me for seeming to jest upon such a subject!—only, it is so odd, when we measure our advances from barbarism, and find ourselves just here! [Footnote: We hardly expected this outbreak in favor of war from the Peaceable Man; but the justice of our cause makes us ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Adams; but I am for softer measures. I would keep him to make fun of. He will then answer one of the ends for which he was born, and he ought to be thankful that I am arrived to take his part. I voted in earnest to save the life of one unfortunate king, and I now vote in jest to save another. It is my fate to be always plagued with fools. But to return to Federalism ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... contribute greatly to our convenience and safety. Such rules are the result of the common sense of man working upon his everyday problems. To violate one of these practical rules is to be a blunderer, and blundering is a subject for jest rather than bitter denouncement. Hence the humorous and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the end Diana had her little jest, and gave Johannesburg its shock and its nine days' wonder, and was certainly the most surprising bride of the year; though, of course, afterwards most people said they were not surprised at all, and had ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... Wellesly disregarded Haney's jest and looking him squarely in the eyes said: "I suppose, Mr. Mullford, if we keep on in this direction a matter of some twenty-five thousand miles we might reach Muletown. But don't you think we would save time if we were to turn around ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... acted like 'emselves! Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a little too good, mebbe, and the sisters was most too thunderin' bad to live on the face o' the earth, and that fayry old lady that kep' the punkin' coach up her sleeve—well, anyhow, you jest believe that punkin' coach, rats, mice, and all, when you're hearin' bout it, fore ever you stop to think ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wife,—the latter from up-river traders,—they found an admirable medium of communication, answering, better than French could, a similar purpose to that of the stick which we fasten to the bit of one horse and breast-gear of another, whereby each keeps his distance. Once in a while, too, by way of jest, English found its way among the ladies of Belles Demoiselles, always signifying that their sire was about to have ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... is Peter Bones, and I come from the town o' Hardtack in the next county; jest beyant the hill yander. I've a good eddication o' me own, too, though I never rubbed my back agin a college," remarked the applicant, sitting down and tilting his chair back on its hind legs, retaining his balance by holding on to ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... ready to go where-ever an opportunity offered itself for revolutionary activity. The Russian prince, Kropotkin, the fourth member of the group, was a descendant of the Ruriks, and it was said sometimes, in jest, that he had more right to the Russian throne than Czar Alexander II. The fascinating story of his life is told in the "Memoirs of a Revolutionist," but modesty forbade him to say that no one since Bakounin has exercised so great an influence as himself over the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... She is one of the most wonderful women of her time, alert, watchful, magnetic, earnest, with a mind as quick for a joke as for the truth. She points her arguments with epigrams and tips the arrows of her persuasion with a jest.... Even the unbelievers are carried away with her brilliancy, eloquence and mental grasp." There was no adequate report of her address but ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... shadowy bands That fly thy fond caress, with them abide In closest fellowship. And though they hide Sometimes from human ken their better selves, Still loved, remain these tricksy elves. Though yet indeed some quips and pranks they play, 'Tis but a jest, men know, when far away The flickering marsh-fires swift they light And children follow their false tapers bright Among the spongy bogs. The ship-lad smiles, When distant 'mid the waves the phantom isles Rise green. 'Tis but a harmless jest that sets On ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... of his jest. "Of course, he was in love with her. That was the light that came into his face when he was going to do what he thought she wanted ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... two she was well again; As who should say, "You labor in vain! This is all a jest against God, who meant {170} I should ever be, as I am, content And glad in his sight; therefore, glad I will be." So, smiling as at ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... uncomfortably. "That would please the American," he said, trying to jest, but his hand trembled as he touched the stem of his cigar-holder to shake off ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... have likewise been often an eye-witness) than those about the houses and gardens of pleasure belonging to the nobles and gentry of most other countries: And in effect it is a most ravishing object, to behold their amenities in this particular: With us, says he (speaking of France) they make a jest at such political ordinances, by ruining these publick and useful ornaments, if haply some more prudent magistrate do at any time introduce them. Thus in the reign of Henry the Fourth, (during the superintendency of Monsieur de Sulli) there was a resolution of adorning all the highways ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... dares say such a thing? Does she say so? It may be that once or twice a few words escaped me in jest. You know how it is—when I found myself face to face with a pretty woman—you know how it is—if only not to ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... town had made my name a by-word," she explained in a low, tense voice, her eyelids lowered. "My foolishness in running off with my Lord Rotherby—that I might at all cost escape the tyranny of my Lady Ostermore" (Mr. Caryll's eyelids flickered suddenly at that explanation)—"had made me a butt and a jest and an object for slander. You remember, yourself, sir, the sneers and oglings, the starings and simperings in the park that day when you made your first attempt to champion my cause, inducing the Lady Mary Deller to come and ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... my cows run away. Milt, she's wild when she gits loose in the woods. An' you'll have to track her, 'cause nobody else can. An' John Dakker's heifer was killed by a lion, an' Lem Harden's fast hoss—you know his favorite—was stole by hoss-thieves. Lem is jest crazy. An' that reminds me, Milt, where's your big ranger, thet you'd never ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... piece of work is a jest to the perpetration of the bough at the left-hand upper corner of the picture opposite to it,—the View near Albano. This latter is a representation of an ornamental group of elephants' tusks, with feathers tied to the ends of them. Not the wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... show, fur what might be good fur a man won't be of sarvice to a woman; and as fur the leetle uns, I don't know ef I've got a single thing but vict'als that'll fit 'em. Lord! ef I was near the settlements, I might swap a dozen skins fur jest what I wanted to give 'em; but I'll git the basket out, and look round and see what ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... She was thinking of the two in Tarrytown asleep for hours and snugly complacent. Her thoughts suddenly leaped back to the old days in Blakeville when she was the Town Marshal's daughter and he the all-important dispenser of soft drinks at Davis'. How she had hung on his every word, quip, or jest! How she had looked forward to the nights when he was to call! How she hated the other girls who divided with her the attentions of this popular young beau! And how different everything was now in these days of affluence ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... came to the court of King James, to find that his fame had preceded him, and he received the honour of knighthood at the time of the King's coronation. This gave the old knight a chance for a little jest, which his son must have found rather exasperating. When he came home, his father received him with all ceremony, though 'more jocularly than seriously ... saluted him with his title of Sir Edward Giles ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... League," said Busbecq, "is teaching the Duc d' Epergnon manners. 'Tis a youth of such insolence, that without uncovering he would talk with men of royal descent, while they were bareheaded. 'Tis a common jest now that he has found ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... less moralistically earnest the spice of the jest would disappear. His humor is not universal humor. It is topical humor; and topical humor derives its point from moral contrast,—the contrast in this case between the virtue of Mr. Shaw and the vices of ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... boy do be lovin' flowers! Sure, his bed in the horspital is jest covered wid 'em. He'd be a handy lad to have here ter give me aid, so he would. An' I been tellin' Mis' Tellingham that ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... all very simple, this man-to-man system of traffic, but no one took it lightly or in the spirit of jest. They were serious, they were sober-minded. Interest, incentive, grim determination centred in the seemingly childish arrangement. Greed was lacking, for there was no chance to hoard; confidence was paramount, for there was ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... a town where everybody will like you, and your wife will seduce everybody; and this,' I added, 'you cannot fail to obtain, especially if you give your dear Celeste to some man who can influence the Chamber.' Good reasons, stated in jest, have the merit of penetrating deeper into some minds than if they were given soberly. So Colleville and I became the best friends in the world. Didn't you hear him say to me at table, 'Rascal! you have stolen my speech'? To-night we shall ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... announced that Hatasu was the "first suffragette." But even those who thought her downtrodden nephew, Thothmes III, justified in erasing every trace of her existence wherever possible, did not smile at this jest. In fact, having Antoun and me to refer to, the Set as a whole sat upon the unfortunate dragoman, trying to talk him down in tombs and temples, or ostentatiously reading Weigall, Maspero, Petrie, Sladen, and Lorimer when he attempted ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... masque dull grief in joy! A sad heart's jest—what bitter mockery! With vain deceit my laughing lips employ Loud mirth that is ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... a young colt inseparable from the mare. I make this comparison not in disrespectful jest, but in deepest pity. Fetchke kept close to my mother at first for love and protection, but the petting she got became a blind for discipline. She learned early, from my mother's example, that hands and feet and brains were made for labor. She learned to bow to the yoke, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... are not affected. When they love they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but are binding themselves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomes almost a holy thing; the spectator no longer wishes to be malicious or to jest; women do not think of their own happiness, but of that of the loved ones; they aim not ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Heaven for that!" cried Bunker fervently. "The man who once dubs himself wise is the jest of gods and the plague ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... my child? Dost thou hear him mock at thy cheated hopes? Oh, truly, baron! It is so worthy of the deceiver to make a jest of his own crime! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... though she were trying to collect her thoughts, and could not. Then she suddenly turned to the prince, and glared at him with frowning brows; but this only lasted one moment. Perhaps it suddenly struck her that all this was a jest, but his face seemed to reassure her. She ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... go down into the canon on mule-back,—down, down, over four thousand feet,—and the jeering Scot went with us, sitting his mule uncompromisingly, and indulging in many a jest at the expense of the terrified women who felt, when too late to retreat, that it would have been better to heed his advice. Still, after the descent, and then the ascent, were safely accomplished, we were glad we had not let him dissuade ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... was ignoble, and he could not be surprised that Amy left the house without another word to him. Yet he resented that, as he had resented her sorrowful jest. The feeling of unmanliness in his own position tortured him into a mood of perversity. Through the day he wrote only a few lines, and on Amy's return he resolved not to speak to her. There was a sense of repose in this ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... and Christian jest, that a wife is a holy terror, occurs in the last scene, where the doctor (who wears a fur coat throughout, to make him seem more offensively rich and refined) is attempting to escape from the avenging demons, and meets his old servant in the street. The servant obligingly points out a house ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... he's an' old-fashion farmer an' he don' kere fur dese modern notions, an' so I don't git no help from him, an' that makes it hard for me 'cause it ain't nat'ral for der woman to lead. If I could only git him to move I'd be happier jest ter foller him." While these explanations are going on the farmers in the audience are naturally saying to themselves over and over again, "I could do that!" or "Why ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... abstinence which St. Paul takes, is from the prize-fighters, who were very numerous and very famous, in the country in which the Corinthians lived. "I fight," he says, "not like one who beats the air;" that is, not like a man who is only brandishing his hands and sparring in jest, but like a man who knows that he has a fight to fight in hard earnest; a terrible lifelong fight against sin, the world, and the devil; "and, therefore," he says, "I do as these fighters do." They, poor savage and brutal heathens as they are, go through a long and painful training. ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... receive the banter he expected at the office. The event was too great for a jest. Seymour Hicks, with a serious countenance, said Ferrars might get anywhere now,—all the ministerial receptions of course. Jawett said there would be no ministerial receptions soon; they were degrading functions. Clear-headed Trenchard congratulated ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... had arrived with the news, but his servant had not ventured to disturb him. I, however, would not be denied. I went up to him in his bed chamber, and I told him what I had seen, and warned him that there was need for prompt action. But he only answered with an oath and a ribald jest, which I will not repeat in the hearing of my wife or mother; and he would have turned again to his slumbers, had I not well nigh forced him to get up, and had not some of the aldermen arrived at that minute to speak of the matter, ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... friendliness. Apparently she thought it possible to worry him out of his adhesion to the wrong side in politics. She certainly had no conception of the nature of his political views, for one or two extreme propositions flung to him in jest, he swallowed with every sign of a perfect facility, as if the Radical had come to regard stupendous questions as morsels barely sufficient for his daily sustenance. Cecilia reflected that he must be playing, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Robert yielded sullenly to his fate. Mocked at by all, his only friend the ape, his food the scraps left by others, his heart was still haughty, his pride unsubdued. And when sometimes the angel meeting him would ask, half in jest, half in earnest, "Art thou the King?" he would draw himself up and fling back the haughty answer: "I am, ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... the road to Kotzebue, optimistic through and through, We'll hit the trail together, boy, once more, jest me an' you.' ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... addressed it with a broad generality to the horses, the stables, the surrounding country and the human underlings); when he discharged a facetious insulting personality at a hostler, that hostler was happy for the day; when he uttered his one jest—old as the hills, coarse, profane, witless, and inflicted on the same audience, in the same language, every time his coach drove up there—the varlets roared, and slapped their thighs, and swore it was the best ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Because I jest! Nay, hear me to the end! Think, Dagny, what it is to sit by the window in the eventide and hear the kelpie[1] wailing in the boat-house; to sit waiting and listening for the dead men's ride to Valhal; for their way ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... top de oven fo to get you bakin jes right. Dey wuz big black kettles wid hooks an dey run up an down like on pulleys ovah de oven stove. Den dere wuz de col'house. No 'lectric ice box lak now, but a house under groun' wheah things wuz kept jest as col' as a ice box. No'em don't 'member jes how it ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... safety of the people during the war. He decided to improve and beautify the towns as well as to fortify them, and to make an excursion to survey the country while his cousin was away in Finland. Presently the Kalevide felt in his pocket, and pulled out the boy, with whom he began to jest; but soon their conversation became more serious, and the Kalevide ordered him to wait for the expected messengers, while he himself should proceed to Lake Peipus, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... you say, the varmints are powerful plenty in these parts. Since you and me hadn't any trouble gettin' into this fort, as Jim Deane calls it, it follers that if the varmints should try it they would find it jest ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... definite enough to have reached the palace circle in mysterious undertones, quickly repressed when she turned to ask their meaning? Should Janus not have given up his pleasure to stay and examine into the cause which he had laughed away as a mere nothing—a jest of some discontented courtier of one of the old Greek families who had been in Cyprus before the days of the Lusignans; and all the more if they were always alert for ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... he has learnt, he teaches vehemently; and what he teaches, that he practises himself. There is a spirit of sincerity in all he says; you may easily discern that he is in earnest, and is persuaded of that truth which he inculcates. In this I am of opinion that he excels Horace, who is commonly in jest, and laughs while he instructs; and is equal to Juvenal, who was as honest and serious as Persius, and more he could ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... one present. Charlie had picked out with his eye a still youthful mama, who would not, he believed, refuse to dance, but would jest and appear flattered and, when after some hesitation she consented, lean in his arms only a little more heavily than her daughter. Gerald had singled a slender, faded woman in garments of ivory lace, who, seated near Mme. Vannuccini in the far corner of the room, was devoting herself ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... very unkind to poor Lilian," said Mrs. Ashleigh, between jest and earnest, "for I never saw her so cross to you before. And the first ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at least. Ha ha! I have perpetrated such a mad jest that I am myself entirely contented. Of course they will imprison me, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... taking it back. 'This money, if you doen't see objections, Mas'r Davy, I shall put up jest afore I go, in a cover directed to him; and put that up in another, directed to his mother. I shall tell her, in no more wureds than I speak to you, what it's the price on; and that I'm gone, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... tyranny of rank and wealth may have been, in these fleeting moments of meeting, again united, happy in the glitter of passing triumph, reveling in concealed and unsuspected joy! What interviews, commenced in indifference, prolonged in jest, interrupted with emotion, renewed with the secret consciousness of mutual understanding, (in all that concerns subtle intuition Slavic finesse and delicacy especially excel,) have terminated in the deepest attachments! What holy confidences have been exchanged in ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... ponderous flesh like Francis, or of great height and strength like Stuart. He sought a quarrel with the latter, during their canvass in 1838, in a grocery, with the usual result. A bystander who remembers the incident says that Stuart "jest mopped the floor with him." In the same letter Mr. Lincoln gives a long list of names to which he wants documents to be sent. It shows a remarkable personal acquaintance with the minutest needs of the canvass: this one is a doubtful Whig; that one is an inquiring ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the jest it is, Laugh and fool and (maybe!) kiss, Never for a moment, dear, Love so ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... glass—sir, here's to your tragedy. Now, pray, no more interruption; for this scene is one continual joke, and if you open your lips in it you will break the thread of the jest. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... invites his friends to a social reunion. He chats and laughs at the passing jest, or takes part in the music—the glee, or the comic song. A servant whispers in his ear. Ten minutes elapse, and he is standing by the bed of death. He watches the flickering flame; he endeavours to relieve the agonised frame; he wipes the cold ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... combustible matter, will run headlong into the fire upon a bravado? or that, being guilty of felony or murder, will desperately run himself into the hand of the officer, as if the law, the judge, the sentence, execution, were but a jest, or a thing to be played withal? And yet thus mad are poor, wretched, miserable sinners, who, flying from Christ as if he were a viper, they are overcome, and cast off for ever by the just judgment of the law. But ah! how ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... laughing when he spoke the jest, but his voice trembled, and all at once he broke down. Quickly withdrawing both hands, he put them over his face and cried like a heartbroken child. He had stood it like a hero to this point, but now, with the crowd outside peering ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... Here, too. It's money in our pocket to stop this thing right now, even if we pay big for it. No use jest sittin' around till ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... life and manners well could paint Alike the student and the saint; Alas! whose speech too oft I broke With gambol rude and timeless joke; For I was wayward, bold, and wild, A self-willed imp, a grandame's child; But half a plague, and half a jest, Was still ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... grief at my womb. Thou hadst, O Rishi, granted me the boon that I should have a hundred sons, but here is only a ball of flesh for those hundred sons!' Vyasa then said, 'Daughter of Suvala, it is even so. But my words can never be futile. I have not spoken an untruth even in jest. I need not speak of other occasions. Let a hundred pots full of clarified butter be brought instantly, and let them be placed at a concealed spot. In the meantime, let cool water be sprinkled ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... The jest was untimely, and the three walked on in silence. Once at the house the dinner was soon over, and not even Mrs. Branthwaite's homely, if hesitating, importunity could prevail with Robbie to make a ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... overbearing as of yore, and France joining to fill our waters with mighty naval armaments. We, having witnessed the dismemberment of our country, and possessing no longer a nationality, but broken into fragments, to become the jest and laughingstock of the world, which would point to us and say, 'These people began to build, and were not ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... replied Mirabeau, "since you will have it so, let her live! A humbled queen may be fit for something, but a queen with her throat cut is only good as the subject of a bad tragedy!" This atrocious remark, which treated the bloodshed of a woman as a jest, was subsequently known by the queen, who however forgave Mirabeau, and did not allow it to interfere with her liaisons with the great orator. But the cold-blooded infamy must have found its way to her heart as an ominous warning of what she might ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to the Jacobines, whom I went and saw their. In the falling of the palais it was observable that no harm redounded to any, and that a certain woman wt a child in hir armes chancing to be their on day raising out of a desk wheir she was sitting she was hardly weill gon when a great jest[110] fell (for it fell by degries) and ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... ter du thet, Miss Ruggles,—I kin kerry yer all through jest uz well uz Dr. Sprague, an' a sight better, ef the truth wuz knowed. I tuk Miss Deacon Smiler an' her hull femily through the measles an' hoopin'-cough, like a parcel o' pigs, this fall. They du say Jane's in a poor way an' Nathan'l's kind o' declinin'; but, uz I know they say it jest ter ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... and to the Pope of her fidelity to Rome. Like Henri IV., she may at this time have been capable of preferring a crown—that of England—to a dogma. Her Mass, Randolph wrote, "is rather for despite than devotion, for those that use it care not a straw for it, and jest ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... mourning, and erecting to the memory of her husband a magnificent monument. When Mr. Middleton saw the latter, he said, "Why the plague can't Dick have as good a gravestun as that young lieutenant? He desarves it jest as much"; so out came his purse, and when Mrs. Carrington went next to visit the costly marble at her husband's grave, she was chagrined to see by its side a still more splendid one. But there was no help for it, so she had to endure it in silence, consoling herself ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... to fit him. And the quality to which it points was what made his humor so sharp-tipped and so harmless. He had no hidden interest to serve—no malice—not a touch, not a trace of cruelty—so that men allowed him to jest about their most sacred idols and superstitions and bore him ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... evil spirits filled my sleep with dreams of terror. I saw her pleading for death, but thou wast unarmed as now; and another stood near, who murdered the child I gave thee. Speak! Was this all a horrid dream, a fearful jest of the summer's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... gleamed with a lustre like that of insanity, an utterance of astonishing rapidity, a nose and chin that almost met together, and a ghastly expression of cunning, gave her the effect of Hecate. Such was Bessie Millie, to whom the mariners paid a sort of tribute with a feeling between jest and earnest.' ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to understand the language of birds; but the passage in the text is probably intended only in jest. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... a bitin' jest, 'At may be thowtless spokken, May be like keen edged dagger prest Throo some heart nearly brokken. Then let love be awr rule o' life, This world's cares we shall find less; For nowt can put an end to strife, Like a few words ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... ordering. Some of them fellows that come up here have no more idee about what is wanted in a camp than nothing at all. They take along the most ridiculous things, and sometimes leave out coffee and sugar and salt and bacon and things like that which a feller has jest ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... we shall, my corporal, when you and I get there with our battalions," but the corporal was impervious to the harmless jest, and squared his shoulders as they came in sight of ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... got eyes? Can't I see the prairie? You call him round? He say, too, maybe so I tell you something you not know before. One time my grandfather he make long journey that way (pointing to the west). When he get on big mountain, he seen heap water on t'other side, jest so flat he can be, and he seen the sun go right straight down on t'other side. I then tell him all these rivers he seen, all e'time the water he run; s'pose the world flat the water he stand still. Maybe so he not ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... reclaimed from the sea by the patient toil of a thousand years, dotted the Lagunes, burdened with the group of some conventual dwellings, or picturesque with the modest roofs of a hamlet of the fisherman. Neither oar, nor song, nor laugh, nor flap of sail, nor jest of mariner, disturbed the stillness. All in the near view was clothed in midnight loveliness, and all in the distance bespoke the solemnity of nature at peace. The city and the Lagunes, the gulf and the dreamy Alps, the interminable plain of Lombardy, and the blue ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of lowlands on one side and the river on the other, the curling streaks of a little grey smoke made its appearance from under one of the forward cars. At first the merry good humor and enlivening effects of some amusing jest, the occasional round of a friendly bottle, prevented the men from noticing this danger signal of fire. However, a little later on this continuing and increasing volume of smoke caused an alarm to be given. Men ran to the doors on either side, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... familiar spirit called Brownie—the Lubber-Fiend of Milton—supplied his place, and brought the marvelling midwife in time to achieve the adventure of the future poet of Kilmeny. All this, and much more he related in a way hovering between jest and earnest, and in a strong Ettrick tone, to the consternation of the English part of the meeting, for whom it was rather peculiar and learned. The audience evidently, one and all, regarded the Shepherd with wonder, and hundreds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... "Jest yet 'taint easy to tell. Thar's somethin' on foot among 'em—some darned Injun trick. Clar as I kin see, that big chief wi' the red cross on his ribs, air him they call the Horned Lizard; an' ef it be, thar ain't a cunniner coon on all this contynent. He's sharp enough to contrive ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... to flow, Is our sinister-handed woe, Which downwards on its head doth go, And, ere that it is sown, doth grow. This makes her spleen contract, And her just pleasure feast: For the unjustest act Is still the pleasant'st jest. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... exertions, GOD only knows. My father and mother have written most warm and pressing invitations to her to come here immediately, and bring all her children. How fortunate it was that little Tom [Footnote: Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, author of The Bride's Tragedy, and of Death's Jest-Book.] came here last summer, and how still more fortunate that the little fellow returned with Henry to see his poor ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... applause which he would never have valued, but he has remained a bibliographical rather than a literary rarity. Few except the people who collect first editions—not, as a rule, the public for a poet—have had the chance of possessing Death's Jest-Book (1850) and the Poems (1851). At last Beddoes has been made accessible, the real story of his death, that suicide so much in the casual and determined manner of one of his ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... forgive me, as if you were to try to explain calculus to one of the street boys outside. But directly your phase of civilization has opened to you the secrets of the Fourth Dimension, much will be discovered to you which you do not now discern or dream, and among these, Yaque. I do not jest," he added wearily, "neither do I expect you to believe me. But I have told you the truth. And it would be impossible for you to reach Yaque save in the company of one of the islanders to whom the secret is known. I can not explain to you, any more ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... his eyes before Casanova's haughty gaze. He shook his head incredulously, as if he had been listening to a strange jest. Olivo, who had followed the conversation with the keenest attention, and had accompanied the skilful parries of his marvellous friend with approving nods, could hardly repress a gesture of alarm. They had just reached a narrow wooden door in the garden wall. Olivo produced ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... Rayne sur, shure he did bring the little bundles, ivery wan o' them, an' it's meself jest knows whare to lay the palm o' me hand on 'em this very minit 'idout troubln Mr. Fitts at all, at all," and away she darted again on a clatter down the inlaid passage to the letter box, and gathering up the contents, brought them back to ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... bird, and carried blankets up the hill, while Sue, at the foot, near the overturned boat, built a fire and prepared their first cooked meal out of doors. In the failing light, Sue got out her rifle and gave Sam his first lesson in marksmanship, his awkwardness making the lesson half a jest. And then, in the soft stillness of the young night, with the first stars coming into the sky and the clean cold wind blowing into their faces, they went arm in arm up the hill under the trees to where the tops of the trees rolled and pitched like the stormy waters ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... puts me in mind o' something that happened aboard the Nancy Belden, bound from the Congo to New York, jest eight years ago this summer," said Bahama Bill, who had searched as hard as anybody for the missing man. "We had on board a lot o' wild animals fer a circus man, an' amongst 'em was an orang-outang, big an' fierce, I can tell ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... him the stories in circulation, with the air of one who believed them "What treason is this," said the general, "that you have meditated against me,—me, who have ever treated you with honor, confiding in your words, as in those of a brother?" "You jest," replied the Inca, who, perhaps, did not feel the weight of this confidence; "you are always jesting with me. How could I or my people think of conspiring against men so valiant as the Spaniards? Do not jest with me thus, I beseech ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... favorite, apparently, with our old writers—the epithet jovial, which is derived from the Latin name of its head. It is a life of all the pleasures of mind and body, of banquet and of revel, of music and of song; a life in which solemn grandeur alternates with jest and gibe; a life of childish willfulness and of fretfulness, combined with serious, manly, and imperial cares; for the Olympus of Homer has at least this one recommendation to esteem—that it is not peopled with the merely lazy ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... approached Elfrida in the abandon with which they threw themselves into the representation—that all the others were more conscious than she of the wide-hipped incongruity of their role. To the man who beheld her there in an absolutely new world of light and color and course jest it seemed that she was perfectly oblivious of any other, and that her personality was the most aggressive, the most ferociously determined to be made the most of, on the stage. As the chorus ceased a half-grown ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... gilt ornament, under an arch, as a finishing touch to that panel, a very beautiful Tabernacle of the Sacrament, on the frontal of which he made a little shield a quarter of a braccio in length, containing the arms of the said owners—that is, the Ricci. And a fine jest it was at the opening of the chapel, for these Ricci looked for their arms with much ado, and finally, not being able to find them, went off to the Tribunal of Eight, contract in hand. Whereupon the Tornabuoni showed that these arms had been placed in the most ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... of the squeaking train"; but he was no sooner a minister of Charles than he flung himself into the debauchery of the Court with an ardour which surprised even his master. "You are the wickedest dog in England!" laughed the king at some unscrupulous jest of his counsellor's. "Of a subject, sir, I believe I am!" was the unabashed reply. But the debauchery of Ashley was simply a mask. He was in fact temperate by nature and habit, and his ill-health rendered any great excess impossible. Men soon found that the courtier ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... to my neighbors, who were well assured now that I had not promised them a novel entertainment without good grounds; for the grimaces of the two knaves thus bidden to jest if they would save their skins, were so diverting they would have made a nun laugh. They looked at me with their eyes as wide as plates, and for the whole of the time of grace never a word could they utter save howls for mercy. "Simon," I said gravely, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... laughter, and, excited by his success, the Demon threw his arms round Esther, and seizing her hands, said, "Now yer a jest beginning to get through yer 'osses, and when you get on a level——" But the Demon, in his hungry merriment, had bestowed no thought of finding a temper in such a staid little girl, and a sound box on the ear threw him backwards into his seat surprised and howling. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... in due tone and order, I remember my fears, only to make a jest of them to myself. And now, palpably mistress of any size of man, and triumphing in my double achievement of pleasure and revenge, I abandoned myself entirely to the ideas of all the delight I had swam in. I lay stretching out, glowingly alive all over, and tossing ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... a relative term, like anything else connected with morality. What would be stealing in the immediate neighborhood of a city is not even what the old South County oyster fisherman once described as "jest pilferin' 'round," out here on the edges of the wilderness. I go out with the trailer hitched to the back of my Ford, half a mile in any direction, and I pass roadsides where, if there are any farmer owners of the fields on the other side ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... with God, that, so long as that intercourse was not clouded by sin, to which they were delicately sensitive, they could afford to take the passing hour very lightly. They would even, to a certain extent, treat the surroundings of their religion as a subject of jest, joking very mildly and gently about such things as an attitude at prayer or the nature of a supplication. They were absolutely indifferent to forms. They prayed, seated in their chairs, as willingly as, reversed, upon their ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... sunk to the very depth of folly or craziness or I know not what. Often I cannot help dreading that some evil angel is persecuting us. For some ribaldry or petty spite or silly jest—in fact, for any reason whatsoever you invite hirelings to address you, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... say no more about "Jupiter" and "Venus"—what do you mean by such heathen trash? The fact is, no fallacy can be wilder, and I won't have it hinted at even in jest, because my common sense laughs it to scorn. The idea of the "little man" shocks me less—it would be a more likely match if "matches" were at all in question, which they are not. He still sends his little ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... great Council in London doth dvell; Jest vot they are arter 'tvould floor me to tell. They're qvite a young body—not seving years old— But they've spent a large fortin in silver and go-o-old. Singing, Ills ve vill cure ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... word spoke in jest, laddie,' said Archie, gravely; 'when we get to the Deil's Lead we may find ain ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... to us all a very merry jest, and we laughed with the same inextinguishable laughter which a practical joke, according to Homer, always used to raise in Olympus. It is one of the charms of life in the woods that it brings back the high spirits of boyhood and renews the youth of the world. Plain fun, like plain ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... had invited Teen Balfour to your estate; is she there yet?' he asked; and Gladys did not know whether he asked in scorn or in jest. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... ain't no friends of mine," he said. "Only four' poor devils of women. I thought they mightn't like to stand waitin' with the crowd on the platform, so I jest offered to get their tickets an' told 'em to wait round at the back of the station till the bell rung.... An' what do yer think they did, Harry?" he went on, with an exasperatingly unintelligent grin. "Why, they wanted ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... wars, conspicuous by their examples of daring, exhibit anything that within a brief space quite equals the self-immolating valour displayed in the disastrous openings of this war by those youths, the gens Fabia of modern days, prodigal of their blood, rushing into the Mauser hailstorm, as if in jest each man had sworn to make the sterile veldt blossom like the rose, fertilizing it with the rich drops of his heart, since the ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... chaplain during the Civil War; settled down as a pastor of a Presbyterian church at Highland Fells; made his mark as a novelist in 1872 with "Barriers Burned Away"; took to literature and fruit-gardening, and won a wide popularity with such novels as "From Jest to Earnest," "Near to Nature's ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... I dunno. I was going to sell 'em down to jest what the pasture'll keep. I'm gittin' too old to look after 'em. But I dunno— When Charlie ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... at this sort of a jest, but pluckily agreed to go on for at least one more day. This they did not regret, for they found themselves now in a country savoring more of the mountains than of the sea. Snow lay just above them, but the tops of the mountains seemed fairly open. Their little valley had ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... Glenfield.) "But that was more than the old cat could stand, and she turned and went for him. Ha, ha! 't was 'ki, hi!' out of the other side of his mouth then, I tell ye, Miss Hildy! You never see a dog so scairt. And jest then, as 't would happen, Mis' Hartley came in from the barn with a basket of eggs, and you may—you may talk Greek to me, if that pup didn't bolt right into her, so hard that she sat down suddent on the doorstep, and the eggs rolled every which way. Then I caught him; and the cat, she lit out ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... Progress"; the bearded and robed figure from any one of a thousand Bible pictures; and the shoe-horn was plagiarised from an old illustrated Bible, where it figured in the hand of Samuel anointing Saul, and had been pointed out to me as a jest by my father. It was shown me for a jest, remark; but the serious spirit of infancy adopted it in earnest. Children are all classics; a bottle would have seemed an intermediary too trivial—that divine refreshment of whose meaning I had no guess; and I seized on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... also the help of his hand to bring him to the Queen's great favour, for he was abundantly facetious, which took much with the Queen, when it suited with the season, as he was well able to judge of the times; he had a very quaint saying, and he used it often to good purpose, "that he loved the jest well, but not the loss of his friend;" and that, though he knew that "VERUS QUISQUE SUAE FORTUNAE FABER," was a true and good principle, yet the most in number were those that numbered themselves, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... a gambler, and far from my ho-o-me, And if yuh don't like me, jest leave me alo-o-ne!" chanted Big Medicine most horribly, and finished with a yell that almost scared himself and set ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... heart-broken. Although they searched everywhere no trace of it could they find, but as they were walking up the hill a week or so afterwards they thought they saw Mattie Hastings through the trees. They called as a jest, "We've seen you and you're discovered—come out!" Whereupon someone shrieked, and proceeding to the spot they found Mattie lying upon the ground. She had walked in the sun and had started to run ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... strength, and must I steady you? Lucetta, years ago you disarrayed me Upon my bridal night. I would you'd whisper The rogueries your tongue invented then. I have few moments, girl ... I'd have them wanton. Make jest this mantle hides the maid I was. I'll have no priest, no doctor—Fetch Tonino! I must present his son— [Lucetta runs out. All's acted quick: Bride-bed, conception, birth—and death! But he Shall sum it in one ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... men with their servile origin. So mischievous a thing did the Romans esteem it to use insulting words to others, or to taunt them with their shame. Whether this be done in sport or earnest, nothing vexes men more, or rouses them to fiercer indignation; "for the biting jest which flavours too much of truth, leaves always behind it ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... serpent—filled with envy and malice, sought to usurp his throne; but his plot was frustrated by Isis. Whereupon he resolved to kill Osiris. This he did, having invited him to a feast, by persuading him to enter a chest, offering, as if in jest, to present the richly carved chest to any one of his guests who, lying down inside it, found he was of the same size. When Osiris got in and stretched himself out, the conspirators closed the chest, and flung it into the Nile.[39] Thus far, the gods had not known death. They had grown old, with ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... come to this, that you make a jest of my poverty? Yet is my poverty only comparative. Many decent families are maintained on ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... where he had been? He replied, he had been seeing the lion, which was at that time an object of curiosity—(we are not sure whether it was Nero or Cato.) "And what," rejoined the querist, "did the lion think of you?" The jest passed as a good one; and yet under it lies something that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... fate I must Sigh at; Alaq, that such frolic should now be so quiet! What spirits were his! what wit and what whim! Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb; Now wrangling and grumbling to keep up the ball; Now teasing and vexing, yet laughing at all. In short, so provoking a devil was Dick, That we wish'd him full ten times a day at old Nick, But, missing his mirth and agreeable ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Rhodes, the two biggest men in the outfit, six-footers and an inch each, to sit one on each side of his cot until he went to sleep. He knew better than any of us how near he was to crossing. But it seemed he felt safe between these two giants. We kept up a running conversation in jest with one another, though it was empty mockery. But he never pretended to notice. It was plain to us all that the fear was on him. We kept near the shack the next day, some of the boys always with him. The ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... unmanageable goat in one of the palace courtyards, whose name was Old Rowley, and the courtiers considered the beast as affording so just an emblem of the character of the king, that they gave the king his name. Charles, instead of resenting it, entered into the jest; and one day, as he was going into the apartment of some of the ladies, be heard them singing a song, in which he figured ridiculously as the goat. He knocked at the door. They asked who was there. "Only ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... machai murionekroi, kai parataxeis ai megistai, kai poliorkiai poleon.] Nor is it always in the most distinguished atchievements that men's virtues or vices may be best discerned; but very often an action of small note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a person's real character more than the greatest sieges, or the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Too dumb, I tell you. Doesn't know the first principles of science. He thinks the only wave motion is that of the ocean." Shelton chuckled over his own jest. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... and set down. It's awful hot, ain't it? What you come to see me for? You says old uncle Boss tell you I'se old slave lady? That's right, that's right. Us old war folks never fergits the others. Anything you wants to know, honey, jest go on and ax me. I got ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration |
