"Pun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... o' fun," whispered McNutt. "Good night, gals. Ef ye didn't belong to thet gum-twisted nabob, ye'd be some pun'kins." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... aware that we have a practical pun now naturalised in our language, in the word "tandem." Are any of your correspondents acquainted ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... floral family, they call me Daisy. A dreadful American man once told me that my aunt was a Bluebell and that I was a Harebell—with two l's and an e—because my hair is so thick. I warn you, so that you may avoid making such a bad pun." ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... which Mr. STANLEY LUPINO bore the brunt, was here and there a little thin, and it is time that somebody let the Management of Drury Lane into the open secret that the pun, as an instrument of mirth, has long been a portion of the dreadful past. Mr. WILL EVANS, as the Baroness Beauxchamps, seldom let himself go, being no doubt held in restraint by a consciousness of his resemblance to Miss ELLEN TERRY. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... call it," said the poppy, In a tone of sleepy fun, "Flowers raised by crewel culture— Only, please, excuse the pun." "Oh, don't joke on such a subject," Said an innocent, rather low, While from sev'ral other quarters ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... completing, and the bank was closed. I have but just got it. I'm not going home." (He lived eight miles off, near Axe.) "I've got to go to a Church meeting at Red Cow, and I'm sleeping there. John's Ernest is calling here for me presently. I don't fancy driving over them moors with near a thousand pun in my pocket—and colliers out on strike—not at my age, missis! If you don't know what Red Cow is, I reckon I do. It's your money. Put it in a drawer and say nowt, and I'll fetch it to-morrow. What'll happen to it, think ye, seeing as it hasn't got legs?" He spoke with the authority ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... pun in the fourth line which suggests more than even a free translation can express. War['e] means "I," or "mine," or "one's own," etc., according to circumstances; and war['e] m['e] (written separately) might be rendered "its ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... your words; it was the truth they conveyed, pun-gently as it was expressed. But you shall not drive me off upon that, and so escape the expression of my deep gratitude, my—' he was on the verge now; he would not speak in the haste of his hot passion; he would weigh each word. He would; and ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... have observed, is only entrusted to the very basest plebeians; but, moreover, seemed to infer that our coat-armour had not been achieved by honourable actions in war, but bestowed by way of paranomasia, or pun, upon our family appellation,—a sort of bearing which the French call armoires parlantes, the Latins arma cantantia, and your English authorities canting heraldry, [Footnote: See Note 37] being indeed a species of emblazoning more befitting canters, gaberlunzies, and such like mendicants, whose ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... as a good-sized hotel," said the Don. "Then," he continued, "there's Bedford ditto again—septennel would do for that; then comes Northampton—they don't want no law there at all." (I leave the obvious pun to anyone who likes to make it). "Then Okeham again—did you ever hear of anyone who came from ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... hung up for sale over a bamboo to dry and harden in the sun. Hams there were, and dried bacon, and dirty brown biscuits, and uninviting pickled cabbage. By the side of the table where I sat was a wooden pun of unwashed rice bowls, against which ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... The lamp of a life that had burnt too fiercely was flickering to its close. "If we are not taken off with the sword," he writes on February 5th, "we are like to march off with an ague in this mud basket; and, to conclude with a very bad pun, better martially than marsh-ally. The dykes of Holland when broken down are the deserts of Arabia, in comparison with Mesolonghi." In April, when it was too late, Stanhope wrote from Salona, in Phocis, imploring him not to sacrifice health, and ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... more to do with it than Ev," said Adam, perpetrating a very poor pun and being immensely applauded therefor. It keyed Will Scott ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... said the Subadar-Major, 'you and I grow too old to care for the Kahar-ki-nautch—the Bearer's dance.' He named one of the sauciest of the old-time nautches, and smiled at his own pun. Then he turned to his nephew. 'When I was a lad and came back to my village on leave, I waited the convenient hour, and, the elders giving permission, I spoke of what I ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... that Shakespeare is at first unsure of his personage; he fumbles a little; yet the vivacity, the roaring life, is certainly a quality of the original Falstaff, for it attends him as constantly as his shadow; the pun, too, is his, and the phrase "sweet wag" is probably taken from his mouth, for he repeats it again, "sweet wag," and again "mad wag." The shamelessness, too, and the lechery are marks of him, and the love of witty word-warfare, and, above all, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... were going to say something right now," she smiled. "Jerry, and Michael, and I. We've been practising it in secret for a surprise for you. You just lie there and listen. It's the Doxology. Don't Laugh. No pun intended." ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... but even accepting your analogical pun, what does it amount to? Was the caterpillar one creature, and is the butterfly another? The butterfly is the caterpillar in a gaudy cloak; stripped of which, there lies the impostor's long spindle of a body, pretty much worm-shaped ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... shot," said Dick; "we'll toe him along at the end of a lariat if he does, that's all." He grinned feebly as he got off this atrocious pun, but Bert and Tom refused to be ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... jovial blade of thirty, with somewhat rough-looking features and active limbs, wearing his hat over his ear and displaying a flower in his button-hole. He was the Vicomte's ideal. The young aristocrat was delighted at having him there; and stimulated by his presence, he even attempted a pun; for he said, as they passed ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... of George Moore, thinks that Legrand is frankly a symbolist. We side with Mauclair in not trying to pin this etcher down to any particular formula. He is anything he happens to will at the moment, symbolist, poet, and also shockingly frank at times. Take the plate with a pun for a title, Le paing quotidien ("paing" is slang for "poing," a blow from the fist, and may also mean the daily bread). A masculine brute is with clinched fist about to give his unfortunate partner her daily drubbing. He is well dressed. His silk hat is shiny, his mustache curled in the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... The pun is in "Khattiyah" which may mean a writer (feminine) and also a spear, from Khatt Hajar, a tract in the province Al-Bahrayn (Persian Gulf), and Oman, where the best Indian bamboos were landed and fashioned ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... or pun, bad, good, or indifferent, was let slip, however much taking it up might interrupt ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... He pass jedgment on de moleses. Fus' He tuck an' made 'em lose der human shape an' den He swunk 'em up ontwel dey 'z no bigger'n dey is now, dat 'uz ter show 'em how no-kyount dey wuz in His sight. Den bekase dey thought derse'fs too good ter walk 'pun de bare groun' He sont 'em ter live un'need hit, whar dey hatter dig an' scratch der way 'long. Las' uv all He tuck an' tuck 'way der eyes an' made 'em blin', dat's 'kase dey done 'spise ter look at der ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... naturalistic tendency, reached the extreme of materialism, the influence of his philosophy—whose different phases there is no occasion to trace out in detail—had already passed its culmination. From his later writings little more has found its way into public notice than the pun, that man is (ist) what he ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... you first began to work for Stephens and Jarrott. So did my sister-in-law, but I noticed you first. We've often spoken of you, especially after we knew your name was Strange. It seemed to us so strange. That's a pun, isn't it? I often make them. We both thought you were like what Henry—that's Mr. Jarrott's oldest son—might have grown to, if he had been spared to us. We've had a great deal of sorrow—Oh, a great deal! It's weaned my sister-in-law away from the world altogether. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... sight too much—too much by half. I'll let 'e have the lot for a fi'-pun' note. An' I'd like it to be a new wan, if 'tis the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... for a pun?" Beatrice blinked her big eyes at him. "If you're quite through with the train-robbers, perhaps you will ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... and shaking hands with him. "I don't say it wasn't handsome in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equally good-tempered to me, old boy! Old William Tell, Old Shaw, the Life Guardsman! Why, he's a model of the whole British army in himself, ladies and gentlemen. I'd give a fifty-pun' note to be such a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... adventures, his successes at the Petersburg Opera, his bonnes fortunes, the sleeve-buttons the ladies had subscribed to present to him on his departure, extraordinary buttons, with, three notes of music engraved thereon, la do re (l'adore), which professional pun, repeated in the landau, caused such delight, the tenor himself swelling up with pride and twirling his moustache with so silly and conquering a look at Sonia, that Tartarin began to ask himself whether, after all, they were not mere tourists, and ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... may note that even the frailty of the material operates to some extent in disgusting us with wax-work. A higher temperature of the atmosphere, it strikes us too forcibly, would dispose the waxen figures to melt; and in colder seasons the horny fist of a jolly boatswain would 'pun[5] them into shivers' like so many ship-biscuits. The grandeur of permanence and durability transfers itself or its expression from the material to the impression of the artifice which moulds it, and crystallizes itself in the effect. We ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Produced the piece, but still had not deceived him)—Ver. 24. There is a pun here upon the resemblance in meaning of the words "verba dare" and "fabulam dare." The first expression means to "deceive" or "impose upon;" the latter phrase has also the same meaning, but it may signify as well "to represent" or "produce a Play." Thus ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... had then haunted her, till she found him playing with Gorgon in the road; and from that to her bewilderment twenty-four hours later, when he had called the dog Zola. She had reproved the enormity of the syncopated pun, but Dick had insisted that Zola fitted an animal whose expression was always either disgusted ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... their backs upon this cold, inhospitable New York and set up their household gods in the "City of Brotherly Love." The city of Penn, he added, was the place for one of his calling—laughing as he spoke, at the feeble pun—but there was new hope and life in the laugh. In Penn's city, even if disappointments should come they would be able to bear them, for how should human beings suffer in ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... made a lad into a ladder to climb out on.' Which bad pun served the purpose of making the boy laugh enough to be at his ease. 'She is much indebted, and so am I. I like to meet an old friend's son. Are ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... joke which had not long since appeared in Punch, to the effect that Pio "No, No," should rather have been named Pio "Yes, Yes," because, as the doctor explained, he granted everything his subjects asked for. Anything like a pun went straight to ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... immoderately, both from his aunt's notion of the universal autocracy of her will, and from her obvious bewilderment at the technical word "Trials," which had betrayed her unconsciously into a pun, which, of all things, she abhorred. However, he wrote back politely—explained what he meant by "Trials"—begged to be excused for a neglect of her wishes, which was inevitable—and reiterated his promise of joining his brothers, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... and on reflection I found that I never knew nor heard of one, though I have once or twice heard a woman make a single detached pun, as I have known a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... quite of another nature; the first thing I do is to have a good fire; for what I say is this, if a man is cold in his fingers, it's odds if ever he gets warm in his purse! ha! ha! warm, you take me, Sir? I mean a pun. Though I ought to ask pardon, for I suppose the young lady don't know ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... always strong," they said of him, making a pun on his name. "He is one of the Spanish Eminences who rule the Pope," a great English periodical stated, referring ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... depreciatory intonation, and throwing himself backwards in his large easy chair, repeated: "An orphan girl," at the same time putting a half angry, half comical expression into his countenance, and perpetrating a pun in what followed: "Yes, many of your Canadian noblesse would bless themselves to have been her father. The poor fellow, it is well he is not here to have overheard you. An orphan girl: true, as you say, I have an orphan ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Mike turning to the lieutenant. "We have struck the right man. But he don't mean that I am any wickeder than the rest of the world. I used to be called here by my last name, and Job invented the pun he ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... brandishing of spears. It was no longer fought by Spain on the principle of the raid,—to dash in, kill, plunder, and speed away with clatter of hoofs and rattle of spurs. It was Ferdinand's policy to take and hold, capturing stronghold after stronghold until all Granada was his. In a memorable pun on the name of Granada, which signifies a pomegranate, he said, "I will pick out the seeds of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... prove that Solomon was the author of the Iliad; and it has been said that this was done to interest his wife, who had some property, to lend her aid towards the publication of so divine a work. This happy pun was applied ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... first preparing for United Planets employment and then in working for the organization, Ronny Bronston had never been in the Octagon Building. He'd seen photographs, Tri-Di broadcasts and he'd heard several thousand jokes on various levels from pun to obscenity about getting around in the building, but he'd never been there. For that matter, he'd never been in Greater Washington before, other than a long ago tourist trip. Population Statistics, his department, had its main offices ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... pun, or what a bad one?" asked Bouldon with perfect simplicity. "But, I say, Gregson, are there any other fish but your friends, the newts, in this pond, do you think? because if there are not, I vote ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... The lark heralds the dawn, so Romeo must leave her, ergo, the lark sings 'out of tune,' his strains are full of 'discords' and 'sharps.' The last two lines contain an interesting allusion in the word 'division,' besides the pun ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... just outside Marguerite Audoux's house after my first visit to her. "Tiens," he said, "tu viens de la mansarde de Genie l'ouvriere." And the clever little pun was true. Marguerite Audoux is a genius, and she does not understand what people mean when they ask her "how" she "writes." She opens her weak eyes very wide at the question, laughs as a child laughs when it doesn't understand, and says, "But I don't know. The thoughts come, and I write them ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... manner or merits so well as Hazlitt: "He always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered out such fine piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half a dozen sentences, ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... it is probable took only a minor part in carrying the flat Norman wooden roof, were finished by a cap at the impost level of the triforium, and the later shaft was brought down and finished by the rebus of Bishop Lyhart, the constructor of the vault. This rebus should be noticed; it is a pun in stone, with its hart lying in water. It will also be noticed that the outer arches of the triforium are not concentric ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... in general and our parents and friends likewise, meets, I am sure, with the approval of us all. Some of our young ladies, I feel quite sure, show some talent for playing, and much interest therein. Without meaning to pun, I would add that I wish they showed as great talent for work as ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... for the writer of the above-mentioned leaderette had he referred to the ninth of ELIA's Popular Fallacies, and been thereby reminded how "a pun is a pistol let off at the ear; and not a feather to tickle the intellect." The Baron is prepared to admit that the lesson to be learned from this delightful Essay of CHARLES LAMB's is, that a pun once let off, has fizzled off, and cannot be repeated ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... about that most succulent edible, the crab, when the poet Crabbe is mentioned in their presence—and who can resist an obvious pun—are not really far astray. There can be little doubt but that a remote ancestor of George Crabbe took his name from the "shellfish," as we all persist, in spite of the naturalist, in calling it; and the poet did not hesitate ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... help smiling at Moran's pun. He was not a bad chap, and had he not been to a great extent under Duncan's influence he might have been a ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... me? He sends the girl a twenty-pun'-note, and I wish he'd a kep' it. As for t'other, she wouldn't let the girl inside her door! It's ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the pun and squeezed by the girl to get to his seat. "I'll take it now, pop," he said. "Go get your ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... account of Suffenus, as well as some other pieces, and come to that very short one in which he complains of the mortgage which is on his villa. It is a wretched pun on the word "opponere," and was scarcely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... himself, unless he is a stranger. As drawing out the people by whom one finds one's self surrounded in society will be treated in a forthcoming essay, I shall not deal with it here further than to tell how a famous pun of Charles Lamb's gave a thoughtful host not only the means of swaying the conversation of the entire table to a subject of universal interest, but as well the means of drawing out a well-informed yet timid girl. ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... are! Ah, you mean that infernal compound which they cover ships' bottoms with? What an atrocious pun!" The man looked puzzled. "Bullen, R.A., great at composition; it sounds well," continued Lightmark gaily, just touching in the brown sail ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... much as to say, the tough old knight hath a habit of swearing," said the keeper, grinning at a pun, which has been repeated since his time; "but who can help it? it comes of use and wont. Were you now, in your bodily self, to light suddenly on a Maypole, with all the blithe morris-dancers prancing around it to the merry pipe and tabor, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Bon-Mots, be quoted, from one of the Ana, an exquisite instance of flattery in a maid of honour in France, who being asked by the Queen what o'clock it was, answered, 'What your Majesty pleases.' He admitted that Mr. Burke's classical pun upon Mr. Wilkes's being carried on ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... object," replied Billy; "it ain't worth my while to earn a little money in any way, no matter how easy; I never deals in small sums. A fi' pun' note is the lowest figur' ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... tale should justify its appearance by the discovery of an apology for the tormented souls. Once they sang madrigals, once they danced on the green, they revelled in their lusty humours, without having recourse to the pun for fun, an exhibition of hundreds of bare legs for jollity, a sentimental wailing all in the throat for music. Evidence is procurable that they have been an artificially-reared people, feeding on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... animated interest in the language of both. But to me, who had no pretensions to be so critical, my companions seemed to form a very happy mixture of good-breeding and liberal information, with a disposition to lively rattle, pun, and jest, amusing to a grave man, because it is what he himself can least ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... bravest, the most modest, and, perhaps, the handsomest man in our corps; but you have not got a single rupee. You ask me for Julia, and you do not possess even an anna!"—(Here the old rogue grinned, as if he had made a capital pun).—"No, no," said he, waxing good-natured; "Gagy, my boy, it is nonsense! Julia, love, retire with your mamma; this silly young gentleman will remain and smoke a ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... don't know, nor yet anybody else! Why—he don't know, hisself! I says to him, I says, just you clear out them lodgers, I says, and give me the run of the premises, I says, and it shan't cost you a fi'-pun note more in the end, I says. Then if he don't go and tie me down to a price for to make good front wall and all dy-lapidations. And onlest he says wot he means by good, who's to know?... Mortar, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... 'This was Mimi's favorite wine,' said he, 'we have often drunk it together at this very table. I remember one day she said to me, holding out her glass, which she had already emptied several times, 'Fill up again, it is good for one's bones.' A poor pun, eh? Worthy, at the most, of the mistress of a farce writer. Ah! She could ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... vocabulary. Associated Words: glossary, glossarist, glossography, glossology, glossologist, lexicology, lexicologist, etymology, etymologist, etymologize, neology, lexicography, terminology, paronomasia, pun, punning, onomatopoeoea, syncope, syncopation, literal, literally, literalism, transliteration, verbal, verbalist, verbalism, battology, logomachy, logomachist, verbarium, apocope, kyriology, metonomy, autonomasia, multiloquence, perissology, purism, purist, elision, polysynthesis, coin, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laughing jackass that ever showed any disposition to be courteous to me. This one opened his head wide and laughed like a demon; or like a maniac who was consumed with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human laugh. If he had been out of sight I could have believed that the laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird, with a head and beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate the rest of the wild creatures of Australia, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thousand francs (the half of his savings) with which to buy a house in Paris, and I have charged Louis to find one in your neighborhood. My mother has given me thirty thousand francs for the furnishing, and I shall do my best not to disgrace the dear sister of my election—no pun intended. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... us a pun in our last number over again. It is none the worse, however, for its new ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... him. The fortune he possessed made him cautious. He was nicknamed, for two reasons, "captain of crows." In the first place, he could smell powder a league off, and took wing at the sound of a musket; secondly, the nickname was based on an innocent military pun, which his position in the regiment warranted. Captain Montefiore, of the illustrious Montefiore family of Milan (though the laws of the Kingdom of Italy forbade him to bear his title in the French service) was one of the handsomest men in the army. This beauty ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... glass. So Christianity could not settle down into the pagan simplicity that the man was made for the work, when the work was so much less immortally momentous than the man. At about this stage of a history of England there is generally told the anecdote of a pun of Gregory the Great; and this is perhaps the true point of it. By the Roman theory the barbarian bondmen were meant to be useful. The saint's mysticism was moved at finding them ornamental; and "Non Angli sed Angeli" meant more nearly "Not slaves, but souls." It is to the point, in passing, to ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... Irving expected a pun-ish-ment. But the master told him he was pleased to find that he liked to read such good books. He told him not to ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... scandal, for which there was no foundation, imputed to the Princess of Wales an undue intimacy with John Earl of Bute; and with a practical pun on his name the mob in some of the riots which were common in the first years of his reign showed their belief in the lie by fastening a jack-boot and a petticoat together and feeding a ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... your wife will reproach you for being sullen and not speaking to her; perhaps she will say that you are ridiculous, when you have just made a pun; but this is one of the slight annoyances incident to our system; and, moreover, what does it matter to you that the education of women in France is the most pleasant of absurdities, and that your marital obscurantism has brought a doll to your arms? As you have not sufficient courage ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... announced the important intelligence of my betrothal, in which I was then too much the neophyte to express any very opinionated judgment as to the pros or cons of my approaching benediction as a Benedick (if I may be allowed a somewhat humorous pun). ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... wineglass, "that's the range of his intellect,—only it had never any thing half so good in it." I quote this merely as one of the average bons-mots which made the small change of his ordinary conversation. He would pun, too, in talk, which he scarcely ever did in writing. Thus he extemporized as an epitaph for his friend Charles Knight, "GOOD NIGHT!"—When Mrs. Glover complained that her hair was turning gray,—from using essence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... thorough scrutiny of my surroundings, which I conducted with the aid of my late sleeping companion, merely served to confirm this belief, the search being bootless. I have no intention of making a pun here. Puns are to me vulgar, and hence odious. I mean bootless in the ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... bad pun if I say P. P. see," pointing to Paul, who was coming from the cabin attended by Captain Truck. The latter was conversing warmly, gesticulating towards the corvette, and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... A Gothic Story," was published in 1765.[12] According to the title page, it was translated from the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto—a sort of half-pun on the author's surname—by W. Marshall, Gent. This mystification was kept up in the preface, which pretended that the book had been printed at Naples in black-letter in 1529, and was found in the library of an old Catholic family in the north of England. In the preface ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... forcibly, and on reflection I found that I never knew nor heard of one, though I have once or twice heard a woman make a single detached pun, as I have known ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Cannibal. (To speak rationally, would not "man-evolved Godhead" be an English equivalent?) "Euhemeristic" also found me somewhat on my beam-ends, though explanation is here given; yet I felt I could do without Euhemerus; and you perhaps without the humerous. You can pardon me now; for so bad a pun places me at your mercy indeed. But seriously, simple English in prose writing and in all narrative poetry (however monumental language may become in abstract verse) seems to me a treasure not to be foregone in favour of German innovations. I know Coleridge went in latterly for as much Germanism ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... this letter," said Dr. Upround, holding council with himself; "evidently a good clerk, and perhaps a first-rate scholar. One of the very best Greek scholars of the age does all his manuscript in printing hand, when he wishes it to be legible. And a capital plan it is—without meaning any pun. I can read this like ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... gate-keeper, as our heroine left the yard, and then laughed as though he had committed a pun that would immortalize him from ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... intervals, silently, in the savage manner of Leather-stocking, or else, he burst out like a bomb, if the sentence pleased him. It needed to be pretty broad, and was never too broad. He melted with pleasure, especially at a silly pun inspired by his ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... a pun, Mrs. Braefield disdained to laugh; but turning away from its perpetrator she took off her hat and gloves and passed her hands lightly over her forehead, as if to smooth back some vagrant tress ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... testified to a keen recollection of his Viennese experiences and the double dealing (no pun intended) of the Austrian shopkeeper just at the present epoch in the national finance ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... rich, these Rollses! I could make a pun about their name and their money, but I won't, because it would be cheap, and nothing is cheap at Sea Gull Manor. You can get a faint idea what the house and the view are like from the hand-painted sketch at the top of this paper on the ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... is almost totally wanting, and only illuminates with rare and occasional glimpses the dreary obscurity of the African. The eclogues have more animation; but they can only be called poems by courtesy. They have nothing in common with his writings in his native language, except the eternal pun about Laura and Daphne. None of these works would have placed him on a level with Vida or Buchanan. Yet, when we compare him with those who preceded him, when we consider that he went on the forlorn hope of literature, that he was the first who perceived, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... question: "Why does Germany understand war so well? Because it has been declared upon her eight times!"—the point of the jest lying in the fact that the German word Erklaren, "to declare," means also "to explain." Another pun of the same kind was made out of the word Niederlage, which means both "defeat" and "depot." "Germany," said one of the characters, "is surrounded by enemies on all sides." "Yes," was the reply, "she is the head establishment, while ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... subject!" the Queen said, obviously delighted. "What a lovely pun! And how much better because purely unconscious! My, my, Sir Kenneth, I never suspected you of a pointed sense of humor—could you be a descendant of Sir ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... humourist had his share in common with the unjocular part of mankind) could altogether keep his humour down. Whatever his griefs might be, the thought of a dinner rallied his great soul; and when he saw a lord, he saluted him with a pun. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Admiral next time he makes a pun, I do not know that just now I need such a service. By to-morrow, though, or the next day, I may think of one. Until then"—she held out her hand—"wait patiently, and be ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... A pun will sometimes facilitate explanation, as thus;—the Understanding is that which stands under the phenomenon, and gives it objectivity. You know what a thing is by it. It is also worthy of remark, that the Hebrew word for the understanding, Bineh, comes from a root meaning ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... informed that I should have to stay there three days longer, because the "Adventure" had not yet arrived from Ekaterinograd and consequently could not start on the return journey. What a misadventure! [18]... But a bad pun is no consolation to a Russian, and, for the sake of something to occupy my thoughts, I took it into my head to write down the story about Bela, which I had heard from Maksim Maksimych—never imagining that it would be the first ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... report of the neighborhood of the Rue de Buffault, where he lived, was a man of exceeding stinginess, possessed of forty thousand francs per annum. A week after the instalment of the charming librarian he was delivered of a pun: ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... I left th' Five Towns fifty-two years sin' to go weaving i' Derbyshire wi' my mother's brother, tay were ten shilling a pun'. Us had it when us were sick—which wasna' often. We worked too hard for be sick. Hafe past five i' th' morning till eight of a night, and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to Glossop with a week's work on ye' back, and home again ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... throws a single ray, separated from the rest,—red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade,—upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit,—all the prismatic colors,—but never the object as it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind of wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics; throwing the shadows of two objects so that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always keeps its essential object ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... approaching peace. A sheet of blank paper that must have this new imprimatur clapped upon it before it is qualified to communicate anything to the public, will make its way but very heavily.... A facetious friend, who loves a pun, calls this present mortality among authors 'the fall of the leaf.' I remember upon Mr. Baxter's death there was published a sheet of very good sayings, inscribed: 'The last words of Mr. Baxter.' The title sold so great a number of these papers, that, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... that first book on my travel shelf. It is Knight's "Cruise of the Falcon." Nature was guilty of the pun which put this soul into a body so named. Read this simple record and tell me if there is anything in Hakluyt more wonderful. Two landsmen—solicitors, if I remember right—go down to Southampton Quay. They pick up a long-shore ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Cottage and Garden; so now I will shut up shop and have done. We have had a dismal wet May; but now June is recompensing us for all, and Dr. Blow may be said to be leading the great Garden Band in full chorus. This is a pun, which, profound in itself, you must not expect to enjoy at first reading. I am not sure that I am myself conscious of the full meaning of it. I know it is very hot weather; the distant woods steaming blue under the noonday sun. I suppose you are living without clothes in wells, where you ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... but is a play upon the name of Bishop Bloet,—the horn being intended to suggest "Blow it!" It seems hardly possible to credit the mediaeval wit with no keener sense of humour than to perpetrate such a far-fetched pun. ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... a pun might be a serious thing: witness the play in the last stanza on the words son and sun—not a mere pun, for the Son of the Father is the Sun of Righteousness: he is ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... leave, the b—y sans culotte" returned the captain, putting himself in a better humor with his own pun. "But did you ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the vulgar pronounce Anas) "al- Wujud"Delight of existing things, of being, of the world. Uns wa jud is the normal punlove-intimacy and liberality; and the caranomasia (which cannot well be rendered in English) re-appears again and again. The story is throughout one of love; hence ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton |
