"Jocular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the poet-by-stealth, and he hurried across the street with hungry alacrity. The poem-maker was tall and loose-jointed, and the breadth of his shoulders and long muscular limbs decidedly suggested success at the anvil or field furrow. He made a jocular pass at placing his arm around the uncompromising waist-line of his portly wife, and when warded off by an only half-impatient shove he contented himself by winding one of her white apron strings around one of his long fingers as they leaned together ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... sky—everywhere gray and thick: turning black beyond the distant hills. An hour ago the Department wagon had rattled away with the body of Mr. Poddle; and with the cheerfully blasphemous directions, the tramp of feet, the jocular comment, as the box was carried down the narrow stair, the last distraction had departed. The boy's mother was left undisturbed to prepare for the crucial ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... at the Tower, he and those who were in his interest met in separate council at his own residence, Crosby Palace, in Bishopsgate Street. Being at last quite prepared, he one day appeared unexpectedly at the council in the Tower, and appeared to be very jocular and merry. He was particularly gay with the Bishop of Ely: praising the strawberries that grew in his garden on Holborn Hill, and asking him to have some gathered that he might eat them at dinner. The Bishop, quite ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... his material interests, he every now and then requires a change of scene and of occupation. Something to divert the mind from its ordinary series of ideas—something to enable us to lose ourselves in a temporary illusion, were it only a jocular supposition of our being something a good deal worse than we are—something, above all, to stir the hearty laugh, which proves its being good for us by the very help it gives to digestion—is required at frequent intervals—all free from what tends to debase and corrupt. Such is the theory of Amusement; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... them, or if they gave them any attention it was jocular. Even Marvin viewed the day as lost, but Scattergood held him to the mark with a word passed now and then. It came three o'clock of the afternoon before nominations for the high office of legislator were the order of proceeding. Jim Allen and Pazzy Cox were placed before the meeting as candidates ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... cheruby-cheeked little man, with a ready smile and white teeth: I thought he might help me to understand what was amiss in Joseph's affairs. But I would not make the attempt except openly. I therefore said half in a jocular fashion, as with gloomy, self-withdrawn countenance the smith was fitting one loop into another in two ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... day, a week before, had offended Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, who came a part of the way with him from Chinon. As the lance, the special symbol of investiture, was placed in his hand, he turned to make some jocular remark to his boon companions who were laughing and chattering behind him, and carelessly let it fall, an incident doubtless considered at the time of evil omen, and easily interpreted after the event as a presage of the loss of the duchy. From Normandy John sent over to ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... of jocular bravado; for, as might be supposed, the deformed wretch could have little hope of deliverance, save by the gallows, to which he had actually been condemned. A creature of indomitable pluck, however, this had not so far frightened him as to hinder jesting—a habit to which he was greatly given. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... White presently fell upon Sheffield. "I defy you," he said, with an attempt to be jocular, "to prove what you have been hinting; it is a great shame. It's so easy to speak against men, to call them injudicious, extravagant, and so on. You are the ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... might, The little pig laughed outright, Giving a jocular, scornful shout With his saucy snout, As he cried, "O, how would you like to learn 'Twas a churn, and that I ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... only proof he vouchsafes of this startling statement is a single sentence from one of her letters, which Mr. Watkinson misunderstands, as he misunderstands so many passages in Carlyle's letters, through sheer inability to comprehend the existence of such a thing as humor. He takes every jocular expression as perfectly serious, being one of those uncomfortable persons in whose society, as Charles Lamb said, you must always speak on oath. Mr. Watkinson's readers might almost exclaim with Hamlet, "How absolute ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... clapping me on the back. "Pope" was my pseudonym at the University, conferred in a jocular moment by Ballard himself on account of a fancied resemblance to Urban the Eighth. "Just the man! Wonder why I didn't think of you before!" And while I wondered what he was coming at, "How would, you like to make a neat five thousand ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... stone, unconsciously, simply because the style had become customary. One of the most charming little groups of figures in ivory is in the Louvre, the Coronation of the Virgin. The two central figures are flanked by delightful jocular little angels, who have that characteristic close-lipped, cat-like smile, which is a regular feature in all French sculpture of the Gothic type. In a little triptych of the fourteenth century, now in London, there is the rather unusual scene of Joseph, sitting opposite the Virgin, and ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... spring flood, an' the old Cumberland is bank-full an' still a-risin'. The flat boat is softly raisin' an' fallin' on the sobbin' tide. It's then them jocular impulses seizes me, that a-way; an' I stoops an' casts off her one line, an' that flat boat swims silently away on the bosom of the river. The sports inside knows nothin' an' guesses less, an' their gayety ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... be a friend of his. He did not always trouble to ask for a receipt: he kept a rough account of what was owing to him, and never asked for payment before it was offered him. He believed in the good faith of other men, and supposed that they would believe in his own. He was much more timid than his jocular, easy-going manners led people to suppose. He would never have dared to refuse certain importunate borrowers, or to let his doubts of their solvency appear. That arose from a mixture of kindness and pusillanimity. He did not wish to offend ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... called Bangwe they were pursued by a body of Mazitu, who retired when they came within ear-shot. This little adventure seemed to give rise to the report that Dr. Livingstone had been murdered by the Makololo, which reached England, and created no small alarm. Referring to the report in his jocular way, in a letter to his friend Mr. Fitch, he says, "A report of my having been murdered at the lake has been very industriously circulated by the Portuguese. Don't become so pale on getting a ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... company. "I remember," says he, "it was on just such a morning as this, that I and my Lord Mumble and the Duke of Tenterden were out upon a ramble: we called at a little house as it might be this; and my landlady, I warrant you, not suspecting to whom she was talking, was so jocular and facetious, and made so many merry answers to our questions, that we were all ready to burst with laughter. At last the good woman happening to overhear me whisper the duke and call him by his title, was so surprised and confounded, that we ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... frequently helped "the generalissimo's aide- de-camp," especially in pouring out his wine, which he limited in a marked degree; but the jocular lieutenant-commander passed this off by saying that his distinguished friend—whom he exchanged a word with occasionally, of some outlandish language, a mixture of Spanish and High Dutch, with a sprinkling of the Chinese tongue—was in the most feeble health and acting under the doctor's ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... doubt, be eagerly accepted by one of your lordship's supporters in the Upper House." On another occasion, when Lord Normanby was soliciting Lord Melbourne to be made a marquis, the noble Premier observed, in his jocular way, "Why, Normanby, you are not such a d——d fool as to want that!" The favour, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... when he stood in the same place and watched the mob rushing his client's guards. But to-day their temper was different, and as he paused a moment, looking down on the upturned, laughing faces, with a hundred jocular and congratulatory salutations shouted up at him, somebody started a cheer, and it was ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... what to do," cried Mrs. Hazleton, with a slight laugh, as if at her own perplexity. "I was never in such a situation in my life;" and then she added, very rapidly and in a jocular tone, as if she were afraid of pausing upon or giving force to any one word, "if my poor father had been alive, he would have settled it all after his own way soon enough. He was a great match-maker you know, Sir Philip, and he would have proposed, in spite of all obstacles, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... and he had called the meeting to order before Douglas arrived. He was making a few opening remarks, and was in an excellent frame of mind, and inclined to be somewhat jocular. He realised the importance of having an archdeacon present, and referred to it several times. To Douglas, he seemed most ridiculous as he stood there endeavouring to be as pompous as possible that all might ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... answering in the same jocular vein, "I confess I have 'the actor's high ambition.' It is astonishing how my heart beat when Richard cried out, 'Come ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to traditions preserved in the family of Lamarck things did not happen so at all. During a reception given to the Institute at the Tuileries, Napoleon, who really liked Lamarck, spoke to him in a jocular way about his weather probabilities, and Lamarck, very much provoked (tres contrarie) at being thus chaffed in the presence of his colleagues, resolved to stop the publication of his observations on the weather. What proves that this ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... poet fell upon the hard rocks beneath his chamber window and was injured fatally. Frischlin was considered one of the best Latin poets of post- classical times; but his genius was marred by his immoderate and bitter temper, which caused him to imagine that the gentle banter and jocular remarks of his acquaintances were insults to be repaid by angry invective and bitter sarcasm, with which ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... time before this curious superstition had attained its present jocular popularity among white people, and while I had heard of it before, it had not yet outgrown ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... started to set the thing going, the poet guiding the making of the sauces. Amidst the general merriment Vigee Le Brun suggested that they should dress for the fantastic affair in Greek costume, and arrange the tables and seats after the antique fashion. So the jocular business went apace. It was a merry party of Athenians that sat down to the feast—"Pindar" Le Brun wearing laurels in his ridiculous hair, and a purple mantle round about him; the Marquis de Cubieres tricked out with a guitar as a golden ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... happiness and his own standing in society, but one that called aloud the act of the parties to make it perfect and complete. How he should communicate his intentions to get a favorable reply, he was at a loss to know; he knew not whether to address Esq. Valeer in prose or in poetry, in a jocular or an argumentative manner, or whether he should use moral suasion, legal injunction, or seizure and take by reprisal; if it was to do the latter, he would have no difficulty in deciding in his own mind, but his gentlemanly honor was at stake; so he concluded to address the following letter ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... forty years of age, who was rather a weak man, happened to be drinking wine in jocular company, and by accident swallowed a part of the seal of a letter, which he had just then received; one of his companions seeing him alarmed, cried out in humour, "It will seal your bowels up." He became melancholy from that instant, and in a day or two refused to swallow any kind of nourishment. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. (He wags his head with cackling raillery) Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the bureau in my study. I don't know how much I've got. It may be L1,500—it may be L1,700. I have not counted; I am such a bad man of business; but I am sure it is more than L1,400.' Losely made some jocular observation to the effect that if Gunston never kept an account of what he had, he could never tell whether he was robbed, and, therefore, never would be robbed; since, according ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gradually, and with a kind of jocular moroseness, crept into their intercourse. The exciting thing about it was the silent reservation felt by both: We know how different things could be, so soon as we desired. To-day, for the first time, this game at renunciation seemed to ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... It is extraordinary, the number of persons who are being educated in this country; and yet, at the same time, the tone of the people is less scholarly than one might expect. A lady, a few days since, described to me her daughter as being always "on the go," which I take to be a jocular way of saying that the young lady was very fond of paying visits. Another person, the wife of a United States senator, informed me that if I should go to Washington in January, I should be quite "in the swim." I inquired the meaning of the phrase, but her explanation made it rather more ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... macaroni Daniel usually had a place at the table. The pianist was easy in his manners, and not finding his man presumptuous he made him a companion. They had both eaten in silence, Mychowski gluttonously. Looking at Daniel and drinking a glass of chianti, he said in his most jocular manner: ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Murtagh received them with great apparent cordiality, and entered into a long discourse with them, promising them the assistance of himself and order, and received from them a profusion of thanks. After a time Murtagh, observing, in a jocular tone, that consulting was dull work, proposed a game of cards, and the leaders, though somewhat surprised, he went to a closet, and taking out a pack of cards, laid it upon the table; it was a strange dirty pack, and exhibited every mark of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... tall houses vanishing in darkness, the unending noise, the sudden and vague figures passing; some with unclean gaze, others in mysterious haste, the courtesans springing from hansoms and entering their restaurant, lurking prostitutes, jocular lads, and alleys suggestive of crime. All and everything that is city fell violently upon his mind, jarring it, and flashing over his brow all the horror of delirium. His pace quickened, and he longed for wings to rise out of the ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... this yer a d—d picnic?" said Uncle Billy, with inward scorn, as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing fire-light, and the tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist into ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... but to women, especially if they were young and pretty, he was ever ready to talk at length about himself. He was good-looking, and talked well, so women always felt for him affectionate pity. On this occasion also, if jocular at the outset, Yourii relapsed into his usual tone; discoursing at great length about his own life. From his own description he appeared to be a man of extraordinary powers, cramped and crushed by the force ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... of very different qualities in relation to different subjects. Certainly he was at times capable of considerable heaviness of hand,—of the Scotch "wut" which has been so irreverently treated by English critics. His rather elaborate jocular introductions, under the name of Jedediah Cleishbotham, are clearly laborious at times. And even his own letters to his daughter-in-law, which Mr. Lockhart seems to regard as models of tender playfulness and pleasantry, seem to me decidedly elephantine. Not unfrequently, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... landlady, to begin with, who spies out every detail of my daily life; of decent birth and richer than Croesus, but inflamed with a peevish penuriousness which no amount of plain speaking on my part will correct. Never a day passes that she does not permit herself some jocular observation anent my spendthrift habits. The following is an example ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... great many jokes made at first, and a general spirit of hilariousness reigned, but it was observed by one of the keener witted ones that, despite his jocular tone, there was an underlying seriousness in Tom's air which might argue that he felt the weight of his responsibility. When the women began to come in, as they did later in the day, he received them with much cordiality, ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that he was fidgety. He had put on superior clothes to get up with; and the clerks had whispered to one another that it must be his wedding day, and ought to end in a half-holiday all round, and be chalked thenceforth on the calendar; but instead of being joyful and jocular, like a man who feels a saving Providence over him, the lawyer was as dismal, and unsettled and splenetic, as a prophet on the brink of wedlock. But the very last thing that he ever dreamed of doubting was his power to turn this old soldier ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... yesterday, my lord, I assure you," said the doctor in his jocular way. "They have found me a nurse. She will come to-day. My patient's life is, humanly speaking"—Lord Harry ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... of the rubato in Chopin cannot be more readily realized than by his concession that he could never play a Viennese waltz properly, and by the fact that sometimes, when he was in a jocular mood, he would play one of his mazurkas in strict, metronomic time, to the great amusement of those who had heard ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... on the way home from the races, he may relax a little. Certainly, if he has backed Cutandrun, he will. For Cutandrun won at ten to one, and his pocket is full of five-pound notes. He feels quite jocular now that the strain is over. He makes puns on the names of the defeated horses. "Lie Low lay low all right," he announces to the compartment, indifferent to the scowls of the man in the corner who had backed it. "Hopscotch didn't hop quite fast ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... of the past and future did these few jocular words awaken in the mind of our young sealer! He fancied that he saw Mary standing in the porch of her uncle's habitation, a witness of the approach of the schooner, looking wistfully at the still indistinct images of those who were to be seen on ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... a good deal to most people at thirty-five," said Mr. Skratdj, as he walked towards the door. "They would make a remarkable difference to me, I know;" and with a jocular air Mr. Skratdj departed, and Mrs. Skratdj had the rest of ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... deep sigh from a half-dozen throats in which some strong but hitherto repressed passion, totally incomprehensible to me, found sudden vent, rose in one simultaneous sound from about that table, and I heard one jocular voice sing out: ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... watching him, as with affected hilarity he began to take the dishes from the basket. But she noticed that in spite of this jocular simulation his grasp was firm and delicate, and that there was no clatter—which would have affected her sensitive ear—as he put them down. She laid a pencil and account book beside him and ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... all this morning?" said Captain Wragge, in his easy jocular way. "And how's the wind? Nor'-west and by west, is it? Very good. Who ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... rather jocular sentence in your note I judge you may include some sonnets of your own. I see no possible reason why you should not. You are really now, at your highest, among our best sonnet-writers, and have written two ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... high post of the platonic successor; but he had left the Athenian school to Zenodotus, a pupil of Proclus, and had removed to Alexandria. Salustius the Cynic was a Syrian, who had removed with Isidorus from Athens to Alexandria. He was virtuous in his morals though jocular in his manners, and as ready in his witty attacks upon the speculative opinions of his brother philosophers as upon the vices of the Alexandrians. These learned men, with Damascius and others from Athens, were kindly received by the Persians, who soon afterwards, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... A jocular, jibing account. Then Alten gave it up. He had about decided to plead guilty in the Magistrate's Court to disorderly conduct and all the rest of it! That was preferable to being judged ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... of Commons, grew "jocular upon the cruelties and sufferings almost unparalleled in the world's history," and expressed his belief that the outrages committed by the Turkish troops had been exaggerated, and sneered at the rumor as "coffee-house babble;" while ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... well-conditioned uniform, as shoes and stockings. After sunset every person who passes the governor's house is challenged. "Who goes there?" is the first question; the second is Que gente? (what country?) The sailors amuse themselves by returning jocular answers to these challenges; and the sentinel, irritated by their jeers, sometimes runs after them through part of the town, and when weary of the chace returns ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... began, therefore, to smile with a patronizing air, and, nodding his head, replied in the same jocular spirit: "Ha! Ha! Ha! You are right; the Prophet is out in his prophecy. You shall not pay him any damages. The faults on both sides are equal, and the injuries balance one another. He has been wounded, your horse has been killed; ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... me, Juve," he declared, in the same jocular strain, "for passing by such a sensational ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... village churchyards. The gratitude felt by both rector and people for many years of faithful service is thus set forth, sometimes couched in homely verse, and occasionally marred by the misplaced humour and jocular expressions and puns with which our forefathers thought fit to honour the dead. In this they were not original, and but followed the example of the Greeks and Romans, the Italians, Spaniards, and French. This objectionable fashion of punning ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... the dresses they had for afternoon calls at home in the towns moved slowly along in small groups, with a solid man or so in attendance who smoked his pipe or cigar and said little, but that little rather jocular. Girls tripped by, either pale with the heat, or flushed, or protected from extremes of temperature by a heavy layer of powder: and flappers with pert faces and fluffy hair swung gaily along, always with a generous display ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... Bas-Bleu, "I hear you have said Intellectual women are always your dread; Now tell me, dear sir, is it true?" "Why, yes," answered Tom, "very likely I may Have made the remark in a jocular way; But then on my honour, ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... say, that years after these events transpired, as the "Eclipse" passed up and down the Mississippi, on her trips to and from New Orleans, the jocular clerk was wont to call the attention of his passengers to a beautiful English cottage, surrounded by vines and shrubbery, which stood on the Tennessee shore, and exclaim, "The dwellers in that cottage learned their first lesson of love on the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... left for cleaning it. It was a tirade against the oppressor but the comic, good-natured "It means nothing" was there to be held up to those calling the one repeating it to task. The parody on "Reign, Master Jesus, Reign!" when heard by the Master meant only a good natured jocular appeal to him for plenty of meat and bread, but with the Negro it was a scathing indictment of a Christian earthly master who muzzled those who produced the food. "He Paid Me Seven" is a mock at the white man for failing to practice his own religion but the clown mask is there to be held ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... mortuis nil, nisi bone 'em!" suggested Miss Hurribattle, with such perfect gravity that neither Miss Prowley nor the clergyman suspected the jocular atrocity that was hidden in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... know it," replied the stranger, with a smile. "What I said was intended to be jocular, and to put Brokedale at his ease. The Americans present, with their usual astuteness, would term it bluff. It was. I merely rattled on. I simply did not wish to offend the gentleman by letting him know that I had penetrated his ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... for Jocular Jimson Jones?" suggested the head and leading spirit of the Improvement Company. "We can offer him one of our cottages, and pay his debts if he has any, if he will live here and give us the benefit of ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... on. The regular pacing of the sentinel ceased and he hailed the approaching quartet in a jocular way. They answered with thick tongues and coarse laughter. Presently they passed out of view of the boys, having come close within the shadow of the ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... carefully strangled before the fire touched her. Burning was simply a method of disposing of the body so expeditiously as to give no occasion and opportunity for the unseemly social rites commonly performed about the scaffold of the erring male by the jocular populace. As lately as 1763 a woman named Margaret Biddingfield was burned in Suffolk as an accomplice in the crime of "petty treason." She had assisted in the murder of her husband, the actual killing being done by a man; and he was hanged, as no ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... mysteries," Mr. Blake was beginning in a jocular way, when the serious look on the boy's face checked him. "What is it? What has happened, Merritt?" he asked soberly, while Rob regarded the spectacle of his usually placid ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... for no apparent reason, his eye brightened suddenly. But the source of his inspiration he kept to himself. His manner was jocular as ever as ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a complex trophy of Moreau's horrible skill,—a bear, tainted with dog and ox, and one of the most elaborately made of all his creatures. It treated Montgomery with a strange tenderness and devotion. Sometimes he would notice it, pat it, call it half-mocking, half-jocular names, and so make it caper with extraordinary delight; sometimes he would ill-treat it, especially after he had been at the whiskey, kicking it, beating it, pelting it with stones or lighted fusees. But whether he treated ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... introduce this jocular note into our meditation, for we are honestly aggrieved that so many of the Christmas cards hark back to an old tradition that is gone, and never attempt to express any of the romance of to-day. You may ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... gruesomeness of lewd, warty devils, made up of snouts, hoofs, bills, claws, and incoherent parts of incoherent creatures; of perpetual skeletons climbing in trees, or appearing behind flower-beds. But there is also—and Holbein's Dance of Death, terrible, jocular, tender, vulgar and poetic, contains it all, this German world—a great tenderness. Tenderness not merely in the heads of women and children, in the fervent embrace of husband and wife and mother and daughter; ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... you know—just pot luck with us, with your old superintendent, you rascal," he uttered nervously, poking Martin in an attempt at jocular fellowship. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... she might lack in goodness of heart and honesty of purpose; she too being wrapped in the silvery drapery which the moon throws pell-mell around pyramid and mud hut, humble fellah, descendant maybe of some long dead Pharaoh, and the jocular, jubilant millionaire, who with luck can trace ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... The talk grew less jocular as the drinks took effect, and Neill Ballard, separating himself from the crowd, came forward, calling loudly: "Come out o' there, Joe! Youse a hell of a sport! Come out ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... what was certainly an excellent counterfeit of it—though Sanderson was in no jocular mood, for at that moment he felt himself being drawn further and further into the meshes of the trap he had laid for himself—and she smiled trustfully at him, drawing a deep sigh of satisfaction and laying ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was—and for some nights there was a great deal of angry discussion and violent altercation on the subject. In these debates, however, in accordance with my natural disposition, I took no part whatever, except by making some fruitless attempts to abate the resentment of the parties, by thrusting in a jocular remark or so, when anything particularly severe was said. Well, gentlemen, how was I rewarded for this charitable conduct, think ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... strongest argument, or his boldest proposal, to the last, and invariably remembered it at the door (after previously taking his leave), as if it was a purely accidental consideration which had that instant occurred to him. Jocular friends, acquainted by previous experience with this form of proceeding, had given it the name of "Pedgift's postscript." There were few people in Thorpe Ambrose who did not know what it meant when the lawyer suddenly checked his exit at ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... a honest hearty laugh, when any thing really calls for it. Beware, however, of the practice of laughing when there is nothing to laugh at. Some people fall into a way of giving the accompaniment of a laugh to almost every thing that they utter, especially if they have any direct intention to be jocular. This habit is disagreeable to most of those who witness it. It proceeds, I believe, generally from a sort of shyness and awkwardness contracted in early youth, and is, as I know from experience, difficult to get rid of. It certainly is inconsistent with the manners and habits of ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... give them a dinner of the three orthodox courses— fish, flesh, and fowl—was only meant in a jocular sense. For the flesh, their stock of charqui is not drawn upon; and as to fowl, the soldier-crane would be a still more unpalatable morsel. So it results in their dining simply upon fish; this not only without ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the jocular persons who make weddings more dreadful than they need to be came forward and touched Dick on the arm. "Come along, old fellow," he said; "no skulking, it's too late to draw back. The bridegroom's carriage ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... feathers, came running to know if we wished to see the church—by which name he put the synagogue to the Gentile comprehension. The street through which we passed had shops on either hand, and at the doors groups of jocular Hebrew youth sat plucking geese; while within, long files of all that was mortal of geese hung from the rafters and the walls. The ground was webbed with the feet of geese, and certain loutish boys, who paused to look at us, had each a goose dragging at his heels, in the forlorn ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... reply, though I sent a few jocular remarks flying after what must have been the most horrified ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... above the tops of the mountains, and shone brightly in the very centre of the valley through which the Toptdal River wound. Not a cloud spotted the sky, and the declining languid motion of the atmosphere gave token of a torrid noon. Entering into jocular conversation with our Anglo-Norwegian friend, who was bustling about the cottage on our behalf, we became so intimate and open-hearted, that R—— begged him to partake of breakfast if he had not eaten his own; and seating himself in the third vacant chair, the Norwegian ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... inadequate to his demands, and so levied tribute not only upon Fanny and Tom but also upon Mr. Cornelius, who still abode in the Faringfield house, and upon Philip Winwood. To Phil his manner was more than civil; 'twas most conciliating and flattering, in a pleasantly jocular way. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... care, that it may be as perfect in all its parts as you can make it. Let the subject be sense, expressed in the most plain, intelligible, and elegant manner that you are capable of If in a familiar epistle you should be playful and jocular, guard carefully that your wit be not sharp, so as to, give pain to any person; and before You write a sentence, examine it, even the words which it is composed, that there be nothing vulgar or inelegant in them. Remember, my dear, that your letter is the picture of Your ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... glass with him, and insisted I should take a dram. 'Ay,' said Dr Johnson, 'fill him drunk again. Do it in the morning, that we may laugh at him all day. It is a poor thing for a fellow to get drunk at night, and sculk to bed, and let his friends have no sport.' Finding him thus jocular, I became quite easy; and when I offered to get up, he very good-naturedly said, 'You need be in no such hurry now.' [Footnote: My ingenuously relating this occasional instance of intemperance has I find been made the subject both of serious criticism and ludicrous banter. With the banterers ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... steamboat, but it had so few of the bustling features of an American excursion that I thought it might be a pilgrimage. Yet it doubtless was a highly developed provincial lark. For a certain portion of the passengers had the unmistakable excursion air: the half-jocular manner towards each other, the local facetiousness which is so offensive to uninterested fellow-travelers, that male obsequiousness about ladies' shawls and reticules, the clumsy pretense of gallantry ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... chafed and tetchy humour toward the hour of five P. M. Having bitterly schooled himself to see men as paragraphs walking, he finds that his most august musings have a habit of stewing themselves down to some ferocious or jocular three-line comment. He may yearn desperately to compose a really thrilling poem that will speak his passionate soul; to churn up from the typewriter some lyric that will rock with blue seas and frantic hearts; he finds himself allaying the frenzy with some jovial sneer at Henry Ford or a yell ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... and round, shouting and dancing, and cuffing one another, in sheer enjoyment of living and the knowledge that something unusual was on foot. Inside them stood a number of the town loafers, all facing in towards the centre of the ring, and laughing and making jocular remarks to one another. Closer in still, came an excited circle of our friends who, like the old ladies, ought to have been living in the cottage, but were not. The irascible old gentleman was there, purple in the face and swearing frightfully; the solicitor was there, ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... above that of his equals in navy rank—the Chaplain, Surgeon, and Professor. Moreover, he is frequently to be seen in close conversation with the Commodore, who, in the Neversink, was more than once known to be slightly jocular with our Purser. Upon several occasions, also, he was called into the Commodore's cabin, and remained closeted there for several minutes together. Nor do I remember that there ever happened a cabinet meeting of the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the motion picture audience total about two hundred, any time, but they come in groups of two or three at no specified hour. The newcomers do not, as in Vaudeville, make themselves part of a jocular army. Strictly as individuals they judge the panorama. If they disapprove, there is grumbling under their breath, but no hissing. I have never heard an audience in a photoplay theatre clap its hands even when the house was bursting with people. Yet they often see the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... sons. The eldest, Stephen, entered the Church and held the living of Salehurst, where he offered, we may hope, an extreme example of the clergy of the age. He was a handsome figure of a man; jovial and jocular; fond of his garden, which produced under his care the finest fruits of the neighbourhood; and like all the family, very choice in horses. He drove tandem; like Jehu, furiously. His saddle horse, Captain (for the ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... applause was his leading passion; yet in candour it must be acknowledged, that he always discovered a warm zeal for the honour of God and the happiness of men. While he was almost worshipped by the vulgar, men of superior rank and erudition found him the polite gentleman, and the facetious and jocular companion. Though he loved good cheer, and frequented the houses of the rich or more hospitable people of America, yet he was an enemy to all manner of excess and intemperance. While his vagrant temper led him from place to place, his natural discernment ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... whom the very mildest of faecetiae sets off into such convulsions of laughter, that one is afraid lest they should injure themselves. Even when a jest misses fire completely, so that it is no jest at all, but only a jocular intention, they laugh just as heartily. Leave out the point of your story, get the word wrong on the duplicity of which the pun that was to excite hilarity depended, and they still honor your abortive attempt with the most lusty ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... houses. Mechanical religion—a dry, hard church, shut off from the real life of the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top-hat. Mechanical golf and dinner-parties and bridge and conversation. Save with Paul Riesling, mechanical friendships—back-slapping and jocular, never daring to essay the test ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Comforts of Life" were written in prison; "The Miseries" (by Jas. Beresford) necessarily in a drawing-room. The works of authors are often in contrast with themselves; melancholy authors are the most jocular, and the most humorous the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... truth, and the hatred of such as do not please me." There was no reasoning in what he said. He inveighed bitterly against Christianity, made an idol of worldly honour and virtue; and in a half serious and jocular vein took on himself to pronounce the Emperor Julian's eulogium for his apostasy, and his philanthropic efforts to eradicate all traces of the gospel from ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... rapid caligrapher, and one accustomed to write a great deal. This certainly was his reputation. The numberless memoirs, petitions, and letters which flew from his pen gave even rise to jokes and bywords. Francesillo de Zuniga, Charles V.'s jester, in one of his jocular epistles exclaims: "I hope to God that Gutierrez will always have all the paper he wants, for he writes more than Ptolemy and than Columbus, the discoverer of ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... that it was only by chance that Doctor Bonamy had detected the imposition. Moreover, the Fathers had immediately required that the incident should be kept secret. What was the use of stirring up a scandal which would only have led to jocular remarks in the newspapers? Whenever any fraudulent miracles of this kind were discovered, the Fathers contented themselves with forcing the guilty parties to go away. Moreover, these feigners were far from numerous, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... these Saturae he wrote no less than 150 books, of which fragments have been preserved amounting to near 600 lines. Menippus of Gadara, the originator of this style of composition, lived about 280 B.C.; he interspersed jocular and commonplace topics with moral maxims and philosophical doctrines, and may have added contemporary pictures, though this ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... with the purchasers of better style, since the articles were, in general, tasteful, and fairly worth the moderate price set on them. At Miss Cleveland's counter there was much noisy laughter— many jocular cheats—tricks for gaining money, and refusals to give change; and it seemed to be very popular with the Stoneborough people, and to carry on a brisk trade. The only languor was in Lady Leonora's ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... life wonderful?" Clavering's jocular faculty was enfeebled, but it came to the rescue. He was staring at Vane. Evidently this young man was unimpressed by searing phrases and he must have heard several, for, if he remembered aright, "Polly Vane" with "her head like a ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... to bring to the surface the black diamonds of the earth. It was not altogether a pleasant occupation, but still, the task had to be accomplished. His Majesty was fond of ferocious practical jokes, and perchance this may have been the origin of the jocular description attached to his name. One day, some of his subjects complained that their hours of labour were ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... up with stock and other material, so that in case of fire they could not be closed without great exertion; or they have been allowed to get out of order, so that in case of fire they are useless. This has been so common that it has given rise to the jocular expression of insurance men, when they are told that a fire door exists between the two buildings, "Warranted to be open in case of fire." The strictest regulations should exist in regard to closing the fire doors nightly. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... master's manner could not have been very different at the head of his table as originally laid. It was not festive, it was neither unnaturally jocular nor showy in any way, but it was delightfully confident and serene. And the mistress was as calm in her way, though for once hers was the colder way, and it was the opinion of the pantry that she felt more than ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... be open, and you can take your turkey feather fan with you." And then I dropped my half jocular tone and sez ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... no provision whatever for courting couples," said Doctor Gordon suddenly, and to James's astonishment his whole manner and voice had changed. It was far from gloomy. It was jocular even. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... yet, from his surprise at the continuing reaction of his friends. He was deeply touched by the realization that even those who were most jocular were regarding him with new respect. Instead of losing caste, he seemed to have risen higher than before; certainly he had never been made to feel so sure of his place in the affection of his own set. And almost more satisfactory than that, the older men in the Citizens Club were treating ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... the gravest import in her eyes, bound up with a man's duty and honour and religion, and lo! here was this Gallio who not only adorned a party she had been led to regard as reprobate, but treated the whole affair as a half-jocular business, on which one should not be serious. It was sheer weakness, her heart cried out, the weakness of the philanderer, the half-hearted. In her vexation her interest flew in sympathy to Mr. Stocks, and she viewed him for ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan |
