"Witty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... here we met the Archbishop of Minsk, once Rector of the Theological Academy at Petrograd. He had lost his diocese and lost his academy; a little old, stooping, grey-haired man, very witty, very sardonic and indulging in endless pleasantries at the expense of us all. He drank to England but not to Lloyd George. He drank to meeting me again—in Moscow. He drank to Serbia, and hoped they'd raise ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... to see why Father disliked slang—it was a perversion of his art, and as I have said he had the true pride of the craftsman in his art. No one loved more the apt and witty expression; he was forever seeking them, and slang was something that overstepped the bounds and was therefore something truly abhorrent. Often I have heard him tell the story with delighted relish ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... and fishing for frogs and crabs. But although that day was passed without books or lecture, yet was it not spent without profit; for in the said meadows they usually repeated certain pleasant verses of Virgil's agriculture, of Hesiod and of Politian's husbandry, would set a-broach some witty Latin epigrams, then immediately turned them into roundelays and songs for dancing in the French language. In their feasting they would sometimes separate the water from the wine that was therewith mixed, as Cato ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... which, according to M. Champfleury, consecrated Daumier's reputation. The subject, the legend, was in most cases, still according to M. Champfleury, suggested by Philipon. Sometimes it was very witty; as for instance when Bertrand, the muddled acolyte or scraping second fiddle of the hero, objects, in relation to a brilliant scheme which he has just developed, with the part Bertrand is to play, that there are constables in the country, and he promptly replies, "Constables? So much the better—they'll ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... and Slavonic hearts beat high with hope in their bosoms. They had all the delightful Slavonic zeal, the Slavonic dash, the Slavonic imagination. They were easy to stir, they were swift in action, they were witty in speech, they were mystic and poetic in soul, and, like the Irish of the present day, they revelled in the joy of party politics, and discussed religious questions with the keenest zest. With them religion came first and foremost. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... as a friend in the home circle, sharing its joys and sorrows—a faithful nurse, a willing slave, a happy spirit in spite of all. I fancy I hear her singing over her work in the kitchen, pausing from time to time to make some witty reply to Miss Abigail—for Kitty, like all her race, had a vein of unconscious humor. Her bright honest face comes to me out from the past, the light and life of the Nutter House when I was ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... whether he will open his lips," said Lady Laura. Immediately after that Mrs. Bonteen took her leave. "I hate that woman like poison," continued Lady Laura. "She is always playing a game, and it is such a small game that she plays! And she contributes so little to society. She is not witty nor well-informed,—not even sufficiently ignorant or ridiculous to be a laughing-stock. One gets nothing from her, and yet she has made her footing good in ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... to be told what we think of this farce, they will be disappointed; if they wish to know whether it is good or bad, witty or dull, lively or stupid—whether it ought to have been damned outright, or to supersede the Christmas pantomime—whether the actors played well or played the deuce—whether the scenery is splendid and the appointments appropriate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... with a somewhat voracious haste, but that appeared to be the custom of the country, and Agatha could find no great fault with their manners or conversation. The latter was, for the most part, quaintly witty, and some of them used what struck her as remarkably fitting and original similes. Indeed, as the meal proceeded she became curiously interested in ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... express her regret without blaming Mrs. Jameson. As for Elijah M. Mills, Louisa said she heard him say something which she would not repeat, when he was putting on his hat. He is a fine speaker, and noted for the witty stories which he tells; we felt that we had missed a great deal. I must say, to do her justice, that Mrs. Jameson seemed somewhat perturbed, and disposed to be conciliating when she bade the guests good-by; she was even apologetic ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... day should mark the last, that the tail of the snake should return into its mouth precisely at that time, and that they should wind up upon the day of their nativity, is indeed a remarkable coin- cidence, which, though astrology hath taken witty pains to solve, yet hath it been very wary in making predictions of it," should himself die on ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... quiet, benevolent, anxious that people should enjoy themselves in their own way, and yet with a genial firmness of administration which is the greatest of all luxuries if it co-exists with much liberty. He was not a great talker, though he occasionally uttered a witty epigram, often of a somewhat caustic kind; but the air of serene benevolence with which he used to preside always set people at their ease. There was, too, another friend, who was there less often, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... thoughts, and contemplating beautiful things, has drawn honeyed lines as in silver point about her eyes and mouth, the wild-roses of her cheeks still go on blooming—like wild-roses in moonlight. And over all glow her great clear witty eyes, the eyes of a grand dame who has still remained a girl. Her humour, no doubt, has much to do with her youth, and I have seen strangers no little surprised, even disconcerted, at finding so keen a humour in one so beautiful; for beauty ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... more exhilarating than the innocent mirthfulness, the unaffected kindnesses, the witty speeches, the sprightly conversations which are universally incident to such occasions? No wonder Lycurgus decreed that the Spartans should eat in public. Ostensibly, it was for the sake of the grave conversations of the elders at such times, but really, I imagine, it was to keep the citizens (who ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... 'carry' them. Are not all forms of heroism, conceivable in doing these serviceable deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might be ascertained by push of spade, as well as push of sword. Who is wisest? There are witty things to be thought of in planning other business than campaigns. Who is bravest? There are always the elements to fight with, stronger than men; and nearly as merciless. The only absolutely and unapproachably ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... good Intention to be witty, And rally the Grave Cuckolds of the City; But disappointed of your Recreation, I in your Looks can read the Play's Damnation. Lord! how ye stare to find an honest Bride, A thing you think a Monster in Cheapside. Whither you boast that you so often come, And leave your footmen to perform ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... Perchance than maketh for her lord's repose; Then well befits the reverend charge he bore. He, wedded, strait in jealousy outgoes All jealous men that ever were before: Yet she affords not other cause for care But that she is too witty and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... evening gatherings at their home in New York, where the choice spirits of the literary world held converse after the manner of their kind, as at the assemblies in the Paris salons of the 18th century. In this company Mr. Greeley was at his best, animated, witty and charmingly affable. He realized, only too well, that his best was wasted in the strife which was his daily portion and which ended in the disastrous defeat that cost him his life. The flashes of aroused egotism ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... in St. James's Street, in a house which has long since been demolished, and thither people resorted to enjoy the idle, witty, and often scandalous gossip of the time. It was as easy to lose your reputation there as your money at Crockford's, and far more difficult to keep it. The only really innocent conversation was when a man ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... city neither large nor small, Its air and situation sweet and pretty. It matters very little if at all. Whether its denizens are dull or witty. Whether the ladies there are short or tall, Brunettes or blondes—only there stands a city. Perhaps 'tis also requisite to minute, That there's a castle and a cobbler in it. It is not big enough to boast a barber. These indispensable adjuncts ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... ardour waxed. Sometimes Magdalena was driven to wonder if his yearning for California or herself were the greater; but on the whole she was satisfied, for she liked to accept his fancy that the two were indissoluble. He wrote delightful letters, witty and graceful, full of interesting gossip, and with many personal and tender pages. But the novelty of his absence had worn off some time since, and she longed impatiently for his return. She was caught in the whirl of social activity, and was the restless Helena's constant companion; ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... is true, possess the gift of pleasing and persuading in a higher degree than the Duke of Otranto: equally profound and witty, equally endowed with foresight and ability, his mind embraces at once the past, present, and future: he alternately seduces and astonishes by the boldness of his thoughts, the acuteness of his perception, and ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... be sufficient time for the advocates to be heard, and the cause brought to an issue. Cicero, therefore, came forward, and said there was no need of speeches; and after producing and examining witnesses, he required the judges to proceed to sentence. Many witty sayings are on record, as having been used by Cicero on the occasion. When a man named Caecilius, one of the freed slaves, who was said to be given to Jewish practices, would have put by the Sicilians, and undertaken the prosecution of Verres himself, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... declare, with his bright air of saying something witty; and immediately interrupt the general laughter which he had provoked much more by his air than his words, "Mind you, it's all very well laughing, but I'm not very well pleased. Poor Archie is a good fellow, an ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sir Henry," I said, much put out, and pocketing my paper—for I do not like to be thought one of those silly fellows who consider it witty to tell lies, and who are for ever boasting to newcomers of extraordinary hunting adventures which never happened—"if you think that, why, there is an end to the matter," and ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... Mary, "is so amusing when she chooses to be; Alice More is so witty; and the Misses Sliver so learned, Henry ought to have seen that Emma was where she would be pleasantly entertained; but I will make amends for this when we get to the plain—I will introduce her, and ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... with a shrug of her graceful shoulders, "'tis impossible to hate Sir Percy for anything; his witty sallies would disarm ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... latest of the more or less witty labels applied to Heyst during his aimless pilgrimage in this section of the tropical belt, where the inane clacking of ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... this jeu d'esprit as if it had been something exquisitely witty; and I forgot my disheveled condition in watching the sun rise over the broad river, in feeling our noiseless progression over it, and, above all, in the divine sense of oneness and harmony with him at my side—a ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... At a distance from the sea and in favorable situations these trees grow to good forest size, even beyond the middle latitudes of Labrador. In latitude 53 deg. a resident told me that trees were found eighteen inches in diameter. This statement was derided when I told it on board, and the witty Judge kept the table in a roar for half an hour with pleasantries about it. But at Hopedale, two and a half degrees farther north, we learned that sticks of timber fifty feet in length were often brought to the station; while one had found its way there which was fifty-six ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... in all Paris there. On reaching it I found my guest had been the first to arrive. We accordingly ascended the stairs to the room above, where we selected our table and sat down. My companion was a witty little man with half the languages of Europe on his tongue, and a knowledge of all the tricks and dodges of all the criminal fraternity at his finger-ends. He has since written a book on his experiences, and a stranger volume, or one more replete with a ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... life he pressed to the front. He was the most genial, witty guest at social dinner tables. Strapped to his horse, he hunted foxes in Yorkshire, or tigers in India, and with his brothers made long journeys in other parts of the world. Everywhere his cheerfulness and gaiety gave ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... only, the authority and sovereignty of saving souls, he has magnified not only his love, but his wisdom and his prudence before the sons of men. This, then, is his great device, the master-piece of all his witty inventions; and, therefore, it is said, as was hinted before, in this thing he hath proceeded towards us in ALL wisdom and prudence ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... can now be ascertained, are as we have stated. The deed is in perfect accordance with the whole course pursued by the miserable men who perpetrated it. The author of Hudibras unjustly—we hope not maliciously—in his witty doggerel, ascribes this transaction of the miscreants at Weymouth to the Pilgrims at Plymouth. The mirth-loving satirist seemed to rejoice at the chance of directing a shaft ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Rabelais, the eternal honour of Touraine, addressed himself. Be it nevertheless understood, the author has no other desire than to be a good Touranian, and joyfully to chronicle the merry doings of the famous people of this sweet and productive land, more fertile in cuckolds, dandies and witty wags than any other, and which has furnished a good share of men of renown in France, as witness the departed Courier of piquant memory; Verville, author of Moyen de Parvenir, and others equally well known, among whom we will specially ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... of plot, glancing play at witty talk, characters really human and humanly real, spirit and gladness, freshness and quick movement. 'Half a Rogue' is as brisk as a horseback ride on a glorious morning. It is as varied as an April ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Miss Dido (as she was called) to the hospital at Wapiti, and had raised a subscription for her maintenance there, heading it herself with a liberal sum. Then the atmosphere round her became less trying; yet her temper remained changeable, and had it not been that she was good-looking and witty, her position might have been insecure. As it was, she ruled in a neutral territory where she was the only woman. One night, after an inclement remark to Jacques, in the card-room, Blanche came back to the bar, and not noticing that, while she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this, that every one sees vulgarity in what is directed against himself. Mark the world, and see if anything be so common as the description of the other side's remarks as "vulgar attempt at wit." "I suppose you think that very witty:" the answer is "No my friend! your remark shows that you feel it as wit, so that the purpose is answered; I keep my razor for something else than cutting blocks;" I am inclined to think that "out of place" is ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... clergymen,(22) Swift was born in Dublin in 1667, seven months after the death of his father, who had come to practise there as a lawyer. The boy went to school at Kilkenny, and afterwards to Trinity College, Dublin, where he got a degree with difficulty, and was wild, and witty, and poor. In 1688, by the recommendation of his mother, Swift was received into the family of Sir William Temple, who had known Mrs. Swift in Ireland. He left his patron in 1693, and the next year took orders in Dublin. But he threw up the small Irish ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tread strange paths, and the punishment for the elimination of natural wantonness is the appearance of hideous hypocrisy. Driven from the haunts of the Muses, expelled from the symposia of the wise and witty, the spirit of sexual irreverence takes refuge in the streets; and the scurrilous vulgarities of the tavern balance the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... of nothing but his Belly, and the like. Our Plots go chiefly upon variety of Love-Intrigues, Ladies Cuckolding their Husbands most dextrously; Gallants danger upon the same account, with their escape either by witty Fetches, or hiding themselves in dark Holes, Closets, Beds, &c. We are all for Humour, Gallantry, Conversation, and Courtship, and shou'dn't endure the chief Lady in the Play a Mute, or to say very little, as 'twas agreeable to them: Our amorous ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... gray sky, rain, storms. Altogether one was reminded of one of Heine's witty, drastic criticisms in reference to a well-known German university town. "Dogs on the street," Heine writes, "implore strangers to kick them, so that they may have some change from the awful monotony ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... remembering faces, and could generally be trusted to address by name anybody whom he had once met, so that he was more popular with high and low than any of his predecessors. He had, William also reports, a gift of impromptu eloquence, and a faculty both for saying witty things pleasantly at other people's expense and for listening placidly to witticisms directed against himself; while he was generous to excess without needing to make exactions in order to support his generosity, and always respected the Church. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... why my muse, To rural pastimes so profuse? The crouded city surely yields, More joy than ice and snowy fields? Here folks are witty and well dress'd, And blooming beauty is caress'd In ev'ry form art can devise— } With soothing flattery solemn lies, } And all that nymphs deluded prize } Here fashions reign, and modes prevail, And in twelve moons again grow stale, Thus ever vary, ever change, Yet ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... Maurice lay in a pleasant half-doze, smiling at the absurd old servant with her labored determination to be thought witty, and wondering at the caprices of existence. He was interrupted by the arrival of his breakfast, and after that had been disposed of he received a visit from Mrs. Morison. She was a fine old lady with snowy hair, her sweet face wrinkled into a relief-map of the ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... system, Cooperstown, rendered famous by James Fenimore Cooper in his works, is reached. On alighting from the train at Binghamton I was greeted by my old friends, Col. Arthur MacArthur, the genial and accomplished editor of the Troy Budget, and that witty soul, Rev. Cornelius L. Twing, Rector of Calvary Church, Brooklyn, N.Y., who had come here for the purpose of attending the Annual Conclave of the Grand Commandery of the State of New York. At Buffalo I had sufficient ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... which and the like of which the British Government has almost no call to get into, at this new epoch of time. And not Sotomayor only, nor Sapienza only, in regard to that Foreign Office, but innumerable other things, if our witty friend of the "live coal" have reason in him! Of the Colonial Office, too, it is urged that the questions they decide and operate upon are, in very great part, questions which they never should have meddled with, but almost all of which should have been decided in the Colonies themselves,—Mother ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... popular of the Park speakers was the Antiguan. His arguments were so clever it was obvious that he was well and widely read. His absolute understanding of the crowd and his witty repartee used frequently to cause his opponents to lose their tempers, and that was always their undoing. The crowd as a rule was very fair and could easily distinguish arguments from abuse. Thus, on one Sunday the debate was as to whether nature was God. The atheist representative ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... self-sufficiency, the British public has never resented these much. But, in the first place, the thing was a falsetto. Mr Arnold had plenty of wit but not much humour; and after a time one feels that Bottles and Leo & Co. may be, as Dousterswivel says, "very witty and comedy," but that we should not be altogether sorry if they would go. Further, the direct personalities—the worst instances concerned Lord Elcho, Mr Frederic Harrison, and the late Mr Sala—struck, and strike, some people as being not precisely in good taste. The constant allusions and ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... cardinal which has attained the greatest historical notoriety is that associated with the name of Cinq-Mars, the famous favorite of Louis XIII. Brilliant and witty, a true type of the courtiers of the time, this handsome youth so amused and interested the king that, when he was only nineteen years of age, Louis made him master of the wardrobe and grand equerry of France. M. Le Grand he was called, and grand enough ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... affect the spirits of such little-minded women. It requires a certain mental reserve from which to extract cheerfulness over a chop and a pint of beer withal, served on a doubtful cloth. But some of us find it easy enough to be witty and brilliant over good wine and ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... make a laugh by mentioning the Duchess of Devonshire leaving no stone unturned to carry Fox's election. There was a Mr. Smith who mentioned how Homer described AEneas leaving his wife and carrying his father out of flaming Troy. He had heard somebody (I suppose) witty on the occasion; but if he had ever read it he would have said Virgil. The President kept a fork in his hand, when the cloth was taken away, I thought for the purpose of picking nuts. He ate no nuts, however, but played with the fork, striking on the edge of the table with ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the subject to a more innocent theme; and if a stranger chanced to mention so delicate a matter as, say, the dinner which had been given by the emperor's nephew at Very's, which cost seventy-five thousand francs, while forty thousand laborers were starving, then the witty Countess Themire herself turned the conversation to the "toilet rivalry" between the Mesdames ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... which have been condemned to the flames, suppressed, or censured. We do not require to go far through his alphabet to see how futile the burnings and condemnations have been in their effect on the giants of literature. The first name of all is that of Abelard, and so going on we pick up the witty scamp Aretin, then pass on to D'Aubigne the great warrior and historian, Bayle, Beaumarchais, Boulanger, Catullus, Charron, Condillac, Crebillon, and so on, down to ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... of great and virtuous men In godlike beings shall revive again; But base and vicious spirits wind their way In scorpions, vultures, sharks, and beasts of prey. The fair, the gay, the witty, and the brave, The fool, the coward, courtier, tyrant, slave, Each one in a congenial form, shall find A proper dwelling ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... tamed? Was not this common-sense view, so strongly insisted on by Fontenelle and Vico in the eighteenth century, carried even to excess by such men as De Brosses (1709-1771)? And have the lessons taught to De Brosses by his witty contemporaries been quite forgotten? Must his followers be told again and again that they ought to begin with a critical examination of the evidence put before them by casual travellers, and that mythology is as little made up of one ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, profound, and sensual, but not subtle; hence what they think to be humorous is merely witty. ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... for a Lady, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1941. Bright, witty, penetrating; anecdotal. Best account of frontier life from woman's point of view yet published. New Mexico is the setting, toward turn of the century. People who wished Mrs. Cleaveland would write another book were disappointed when her ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... your Bacchanalian song? Witty, certainly, but the recollection of the scores a little ghastly for the occasion, perhaps. You have yourself sung into silence, too, all possible songs of Bacchus, as the god and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... disport themselves in the water, and a girl I knew slightly pointed at a male diver and asked me if I didn't think his legs were about the silliest-looking pair of props ever issued to human being. I replied that I did, indeed, and for the space of perhaps two minutes was extraordinarily witty and satirical about this bird's underpinning. At the end of that period, I suddenly felt as if I had been caught up in the tail of ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... minded to put down some intuitions about brotherhood and trust in persons. A witty friend writes, "Now that I have made up my mind, I intend looking at the evidence." A position like that is not so absurd as at first it seems. It is folly only to those who regard reason alone ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... satirist, Ulric von Hutten, memorable for his threat to the citizens of Mainz, when they proposed to destroy his library, and he answered, 'If you burn my books, I will burn your town.' The Grand Inquisitor was utterly overwhelmed by his volume of Pasquinades, a work so witty that it was constantly attributed to Erasmus, and so carefully destroyed that Heinsius gave a hundred gold pieces for the copy which Count Hohendorf afterwards placed among the imperial rarities at Vienna. ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... always are, and we are justly proud of them. There may be a slight tendency toward placing too much value upon book-learning; too little upon home culture. Our girls are acknowledged to be uncommonly pretty, witty and wise, but some of us wish they had more health and less excitement, more domestic accomplishments and fewer ologies and isms, and were contented with simple pleasures and the old-fashioned virtues, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... and witty, with a philosophical trend that will entertain men and woman alike—the older ones—the younger ones. Read this book for a mirror likeness ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... being witty: Fame Gathers but winde to blather up a name. Orpheus must leave his lyre, or if it be In heav'n, 'tis there a signe, no harmony, And stones, that follow'd him, may now become Now stones againe, and serve him for his Tomb. The Theban Linus, that was ably skil'd ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... an unimportant decision, Bell raised his hand to an approaching cab. It had two men on the chauffeur's seat. Of course. All taxis in Rio carry two men in front. One drives, and the other lights his cigarettes, makes witty comments upon passing ladies, and helps in collecting the fares from recalcitrant passengers. The extra man is called the "secretary," and he assists materially in giving an impression ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... does a little crochet-work with a collar of some sort, and so with all manner of maidenly tasks. Barbro is not put out by their visit, and all the better; they can talk naturally, and Eleseus can be all on the surface again, young and witty as he pleases. ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... driver. When her husband took her visiting she went and behaved there just as queerly as at home; when guests came to her house, she zealously served them refreshments, taking no interest whatever in what was said, and showing preference toward none. Only Mayakin, a witty, droll man, at times called forth on her face a smile, as vague as a shadow. He ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Courier, he transferred his services to those journals, as well as occasionally to The Star, which belonged to a brother of Stuart. Southey and Wordsworth's contributions to Stuart's papers were principally poetry. Charles Lamb's contributions were principally short, witty paragraphs, which he contributed to any of the papers that would receive them, and for which he received the magnificent remuneration of sixpence each! Coleridge had first appeared in the newspaper world as a contributor of poetry to The Morning ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... where, on paying sixpence, a letter could be obtained to the address of the inquirer. Blanche had been very anxious to try, but Flora had pronounced it nonsense; however, Hector declared that Flora was not his master, tapped at the sliding panel, and charmed Blanche by what she thought a most witty parody of his name as Achilles Lionsrock, Esquire. When the answer came from within, "Ship letter, sir, double postage," they thought it almost uncanny; and Hector's shilling was requited by something so ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... war and death, and I had to flee for my life. "There," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; the Serpent mentioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut, and said it was coeval with the creation." Alas, I am indeed to blame. Would that I were not witty; oh, would that I had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ancestress, with just enough of warmth to be subdued by the vigorous passion of such a fine fellow as Carnaby. On the whole, Rolfe preferred this hypothesis. He had never heard her say anything really bright, or witty, or significant. But Hugh spoke of her fine qualities of head and heart; Alma Frothingham made her an exemplar, and would not one woman see through ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... were sweet and bitter; they made her heart glow and ache. Vellan, as she recalled him, had been, before all things, gentle. He was witty, he had humour, he had imagination; but he was, before all things, gentle—with the gentlest voice, the gentlest eyes, the gentlest manners. His gentleness, she told herself, was the chief element of his ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... pages we can see, as it were with our own eyes, assassinations, battles, heroic deeds, flights, pursuits and the sufferings of the vanquished from the retribution exacted by the victors. Numerous wise and witty sayings are scattered throughout the work, many of which are in current use at ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... affair was received with quiet incredulity. The general verdict was that he had brought his punishment entirely on his own head. Tammas, indeed, who was always rude when he was not witty, and, in fact, the difference between the two things is only one of degree, told him straight: "It served yo' well reet. An' I nob'but wish he'd made an end ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Peter was neither particularly glib nor witty. Instinctively he knew the values of the full moon, the stars, and he had the look of a young man who has drunk at the fountain of life on more than one occasion, finding the waters thereof bitter, with a trace of sweetness and a decided ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... little, brown, thin, almost skinny, woman, with big, rolling, violet-blue eyes, and the sweetest manners in the world. You had only to mention her name at afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise up, and call her—well—NOT blessed. She was clever, witty, brilliant, and sparkling beyond most of her kind; but possessed of many devils of malice and mischievousness. She could be nice, though, even to her own sex. But that ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... their opinions. It was the habit of each head of a department to present any questions of general interest in his department, but as a rule he decided it with the approbation of the President. Evarts was always genial and witty, McCrary was an excellent Secretary of War. He was sensible, industrious and prudent. Thompson was a charming old gentleman of pleasing manners and address, a good advocate and an eloquent orator, who had filled many positions of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... - Your picture of the church, the photograph of yourself and your sister, and your very witty and pleasing letter, came all in a bundle, and made me feel I had my money's worth for that birthday. I am now, I must be, one of your nearest relatives; exactly what we are to each other, I do not know, I doubt if the case has ever happened before - your papa ought to ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... witty appeal of the Indian had the effect of bringing forth Mr Gold from his hiding place is not said, but we hope it moved some of the wealthy among his hearers to contribute a few sovereigns or gold dollars to the missionary work of converting the poor Indians in the far west regions ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... One who loved him asked me to go through his journals, and nearly all I know of him is derived from them. By chance I have heard that he was passionately fond of children, but avoided women. One who knew him said that he was witty, and often strung off epigrams by the hour together, but he was always subject to fits of blind frenzy, during which his wit and his genuine sagacity left him. No one followed him to his grave; but he was visited in hospital by a tall, fair lady, who gazed on him with stern composure. He ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... neo-classical period,[10] as did the Renaissance supposition that each genre has a style and subject matter appropriate to it. This supposition discouraged any "mixing" of the genres: in Richard Blackmore's words, "all comick Manners, witty Conceits and Ridicule" should be barred from heroic poetry.[11] The influence of the genres theories even after Pope's death may be shown by the fact that Pope, for the very reason that he had failed to work in the major genres, was often ranked below such epic or tragic ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... liberality to the Baronet. Profuse in giving him a colossal magnitude of person, he exhibits a most disproportionable endowment of intellect. Unlike his great prototype Sir John, in one sense, but yet resembling him in another, 'He is not witty himself, but he occasions ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... feet shaved, Miss Coventry, and his head bare and a rope round his neck?" Sir Brian was getting confused, and had slightly transposed the clerical costume to which he alluded; but was quite satisfied that his little badinage was witty and amusing in the extreme. Indeed, Mrs. Plumridge and I couldn't help laughing; but poor Squire Haycock's embarrassment was so intense that he ordered his carriage immediately, and took leave, venturing, however, at the very last, to shake me by the hand, and braving once again the banter ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the poetry of life need not always be solemn, any more than life itself need not always be sober. It may be gay, witty, humorous, satirical, disbelieving, farcical, even broad and reckless, since life is all these; but it must never be insincere. Insincerity, which is not always one of the greatest sins of the moral universe, becomes in the world of art an offence of the first magnitude. Insincerity ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... first shall be all forgotten. The great hunger of these latter years shall consume all the plenty of the first years. The latter dream pertaineth to the same, because God would that it should be fulfilled. Now therefore let the king provide for a man that is wise and witty, that may command and ordain provosts and officers in all places of the realm, that they gather into garners and barns the fifth part of all the corn and fruits that shall grow these first seven plenteous years that be to come, and that all this wheat ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... comparison of mine?) Well—like a June rose and a violet blue In one bouquet! I fancy that will do. And now I crave your patience and a boon, Which is to listen, while I read my rhyme, A floating fancy of the summer time. 'Tis neither witty, wonderful, nor wise, So listen kindly—but don't criticise My ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... company. He placed me on his left hand, Darrell being on my other side, while opposite to me sat my lord the Earl of Carford, a fine-looking man of thirty or a year or two above. Among the guests Mr Darrell indicated several whose names were known to me, such as the witty Lord Rochester and the French Ambassador, M. de Cominges, a very stately gentleman. These, however, being at the other end of the table, I made no acquaintance with them, and contented myself with listening to the conversation of my neighbours, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... a voice that quivered like a fiddle-string, "you are older than I am, and should know your manners. Do you think it either very wise or very witty to cast my politics in my teeth? I thought, where folk differed, it was the part of gentlemen to differ civilly; and if I did not, I may tell you I could find a better taunt than some ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Ingersoll, who was familiarly called by his friends Clark Ingersoll, served in that Congress. He was a very clever man, possessed of considerable talent, and could on occasions deliver a capitally witty speech. I remember a rather ingenious passage from one of his speeches delivered when the controversy between the President and Congress was at its height. He asserted that the country was sorely afflicted; that it suffered all sorts of troubles, trials, embarrassments ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... the French Constitution?" was asked of a bookseller during the second French Empire, and the characteristically witty Gallic reply was: "We do not deal in ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... wrote some critical essays, witty and satirical in tone, in which his genius appears in another light. It is not generally known that he was the translator into French of De Quincey's 'Confessions of an Opium Eater' (1828). He was also a prominent contributor ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... were very diverse: the court was in consternation. "What penalty would King Louis XIV. have inflicted upon a minister who spoke of convoking an assembly of notables?" asked old Marshal Richelieu, ever witty, frivolous, and corrupt. "The king sends in his resignation," said the young Viscount de Segur. At Paris curiosity was the prevalent feeling; but the jokes were bitter. "The comptroller-general has raised a new troop of comedians; the first performance will take place on Monday ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... person to the best advantage, asked her, what she would give to be 'as handsome as her mamma?' To which Miss replied; 'As much as your ladyship would give to be as young as me.' This smart repartee which was at once pungent and witty, very sensibly affected the countess; who for the future was less lavish in praise of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Furious against Lincoln, but unwilling to go along with the waiting policy of the Vindictives, these visionaries held a convention at Cleveland; voted down a resolution that recognized God as an ally; and nominated Fremont for the Presidency. A witty comment on the movement—one that greatly amused Lincoln—was the citation of a verse in first Samuel: "And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and there were with him ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... time of his boyhood he kept a common-place book, in which he entered down any valuable or witty sayings, inquiring carefully, as Cicero takes pains to tell us, after any smart observation of his own. Niebuhr remarks that no pointed sentences of Caesar's can have come down to us. Perhaps he had no gift that way, and admired in others ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... an impression such a phenomenon must have made upon a people so lost in profligacy and sensuality of all sorts. What wonder that the unprincipled though gifted Demades, the very personification of the witty and reckless libertinism of the age, should deride and scoff at this strange man, living as nobody else lived, thinking as nobody else thought; a prophet, crying from his solitude of great troubles at hand; the apostle of the past; the preacher of an impossible restoration; the witness to his ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... consumption, that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit; which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end proposed, that is, an extension of the revenue. When applied to this object, the saying is as just as it is witty, that, "in political arithmetic, two and two do not always make four.'' If duties are too high, they lessen the consumption; the collection is eluded; and the product to the treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. This ...
— The Federalist Papers
... house, and were beginning work on the walls. It was a roomy place they were building, a palace as houses went in the Bad Lands. Roosevelt worked with them for two days. Both men were excellent company, Dow a delightful spinner of yarns, witty and imaginative, Sewall full of horse sense and quiet philosophizing. Roosevelt himself was much depressed. His virtual elimination from politics, together with the tragic breaking-up of his home life, had left him for the moment aimless and without ambition. There ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... for ever gone, Mr. PERCY WHITE'S sense of irony ran away with him. He seemed to have said to himself, "I can write witty dialogue and I have a shrewd eye for foibles, and if you are not satisfied with that you can take it or leave it." I for one took it, but always with a feeling that he was offering me a sparkling wine of a quality not first-rate, whereas with a little more trouble and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... agonistically [14], the most important branch of that study, has been deliberately, purposely, and, with one or two exceptions, uniformly avoided by the English metaphysicians so-called, with Locke at their head, and equally by their Scottish successors, until the recent "Institutes" of the witty Professor of St. Andrew's. Locke's "Essay concerning the Human Understanding," a century and a half ago, diverted the English mind from metaphysic proper into what is commonly called Psychology, but ought, of right, to be termed Nology, or "Philosophy of the Human Mind," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... is so bedazzled with the goodly show of her suitor, that I much fear he can have her for the asking, especially as her father, to my knowledge, doth greatly favor him. And, indeed, by reason of her gracious manner, witty and pleasant discoursing, excellent breeding, and dignity, she would do no discredit to the choice of one far higher than this young ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of the Philosophes included many famous names. There was the brilliant and witty mathematician, Dalembert; there was the grave and noble statesman, Turgot; there was the psychologist, Condillac; there was the light, good-humoured Marmontel; there was the penetrating and ill-fated ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... was, I must confess, anxious to see Miss Trevannion, for she had often occupied my thoughts during the cruise. She met me with great friendliness and welcomed me back. Our dinner was very agreeable, and Philip's sallies were much approved of. He was, indeed, a mirthful, witty lad, full of jest and humour, and with a good presence withal. Mr. Trevannion being called out just as dinner was finished. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... naturalist, educator, and controversialist was one of the commanding figures of the nineteenth century. To physiology and morphology his researches added much of importance: as an expositor he stood unapproached. As the bold and witty champion of Darwinism he gave natural selection an acceptance much more early and wide than it would otherwise have enjoyed. In 1876 he delivered in America three lectures on Evolution: the third of the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... personage, being young, audacious, witty, and animated by the vicinity of the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, soon deprived the anniversary of that solemn character Mr. Raby desired to give it. Yet his volubility, his gayety, and his chaff were combined with a certain gentlemanlike tact and dexterity; ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Gate,' sleeps sound under a green heap of turf. To trace the Teviotdale dynasty of song further in the female line, Mrs. Cockburn's niece, Mrs. Scott, was that 'guidwife o' Wauchope-house,' who addressed an ode to her 'canty, witty, rhyming ploughman,' Robert Burns, with an invitation to visit her on the Border—an invitation which the poet accepted, and on the way thither, as he relates, chanced upon 'Esther (Easton), a very remarkable woman for reciting poetry of all kinds, and sometimes ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... man, single-handed, with easy gallantry, to encounter and overthrow the charge of three giants of the North combined against him. I believe I am right in saying that, in the progress of the controversy, the most scientific, the most critical, and the most witty, of that literary company, all of them now, as he himself, removed from this visible scene, Professor Playfair, Lord Jeffrey, and the Rev. Sydney Smith, threw together their several efforts into one article of their Review, in order to crush and pound to dust the audacious controvertist who had ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... is witty and talented, and from the way she treats me, I know she has a tender heart. And her mother is a perfect wonder of a manager, and never makes mistakes except such as happen to be the fad of the hour. And Mr. Edgerton Compton could be splendid, ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... very few individual exceptions, do not understand any people but themselves. They have a way of looking at life which surprises and sometimes amuses men of all other nationalities; they take some matters very seriously which seem of trivial consequence to us, but they are witty at the expense of certain simple feelings and impulses which we gravely regard as fundamentally important, if not sacred. They can be really and truly heroic, to the point of risking life and limb and ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... it's being good," I said. "Ask somebody who knows. The fact that I like it is a proof that it's bad, bad art, if it's a proof of anything. I never really admire anything good, can't bear, simply can't bear old masters, or"—I dimly recollected some witty essays by my brilliant fellow-countryman Mr. George Moore—"I detest Corot. My ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... great fireplace stood silver candlesticks with wax tapers. The candlestick in the center of the table was composed of twelve branches. The cuisine was delectable, the wines delicious. Madame and the countess were in evening dress. The Colonel was brimming with anecdote, the countess was witty, Madame ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... snorting of the horses passed me, and wicked laughter of the men. One was telling a horrible tale, and the rest rejoicing in it; and the bright sun, glowing on their withered skin, discovered perhaps no viler thing in all the world to shine upon. One of them even pointed at my mill-wheel with a witty gibe—at least, perhaps, it was wit to him—about the Sawyer's misfortune; but the sun was then in his eyes, and my dress was just of the color of the timber. So on they rode, and the pleasant turf (having ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... sometime before, heard the squealing, and ran back in time to see Odysseus shaken off upon the straw-heap, and Achilles in the act of grasping the pig by its tail. They broke into jeering laughter, shrill whistles, and witty speeches which stung the ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... went instantly out of the record, and wasted a deal of time reading Clara's poetry, and trying to be witty. He raised the question whose book this was. The girl swore that it WAS given her by a lady who was now in Rome. Staines swore he bought it of a certain stationer, and happening to have his passbook in his pocket, produced an entry corresponding with the date ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... witty woman said of a man that "he played the politician about turnips and cabbages." That might be retorted (by a snob and brute) on her own sex in general, and upon Mrs. Bazalgette in particular. This sweet lady maneuvered on a carpet like Marlborough ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... question whether so much good was done by these towards the stability of the cause of the Protestant Religion and King George, or so much harm to that of the Pretender, Popery, brass money, and wooden shoes, as by a little series of Pamphlets put forth by the witty Mr. Henry Fielding, a writer of plays and novels then much in vogue; but a sad loose fish, although he afterwards, as I am told, did good service to the State as one of the justices of peace for Middlesex, and helped to put down many notorious gangs of murderers, highwaymen, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... obligation by that blot. Make your transparent sweetmeats truly nice With Indian sugar and Arabian spice. And let your various creams encircled be With swelling fruit just ravish'd from the tree. The feast now done, discourses are renewed, And witty arguments with mirth pursued; The cheerful master, 'midst his jovial friends, His glass to their best wishes recommends. The grace cup follows: To the President's health And to the country; Plenty, ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... Secession masters fairly flocked into camp on many occasions. When near Lebanon, Ky., a bright darkey, very witty, kept the camp alive with his humor. During the day some Kentuckians had posted up in camp an advertisement: "One Hundred Dollars Reward. Ran away from the subscriber, my man Bob," etc. Jim Duncan, the darkey I have referred to, ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... laughed loudly at this witty speech, and the poor man was about disappearing outside the door, when Col. Malcome prevented his exit by bidding him be seated, and ordering Sylva to drive Fido from the room. Quiet being restored, and Mr. Pimble ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... so good as to give me leave," said Piedro, laughing, and repeating his father's proverb, "'Venture a small fish to catch a large one.'" * He had learned to think that to cheat in making bargains was witty ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... witty, you rogue. I shall want your help. I'll have you learn to make couplets to tag the ends of acts. D'ye hear? Get the maids to Crambo in an evening, and learn the knack of rhyming: you may arrive at the height of a song sent by an unknown hand, or a ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... both white and colored visitors followed. The eloquent periods of Dr. L.P. Todd, dwelling fully upon the brotherhood of man, the witty and practical remarks of Prof. John Schackleford, of Kentucky State College, and the wise and cogent exhortations of Rev. W. S. Fulton, D.D., cannot be reported; suffice it to say, that they gave a spiritual uplift and fine dignity to the occasion. ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 44, No. 4, April, 1890 • Various
... know the very man you are looking for. He has come up from the ranks and is now the most popular member of the Legislature. He can make a stirring speech and they say he is going to be the President of the United States. He's wise and witty and straight as a string but a rough diamond—big, awkward and homely. You're just the girl to take him in hand and give him a little polish and push him along. His name ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... maidens. The eldest, though but in her early teens, is intellectual and studious; the second has a decided talent for painting, whilst the third, says her mother, laughing, 'is a consummate idler, but witty and clever'. ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... draught of rich, ripe American slang as a glorious pick-me-up. No wonder the French officers in liaison have caught the new "code." The coming of those brown boys with their bright and glittering teeth and witty words made up to us for miles of trenches we hadn't seen. Gee, but they were bully! Oh, boy! ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a wolf crossed his path amid the thicket. When his companions told him that a young colt had met him, he retorted, that in Feng's stud there were too few of that kind fighting. This was a gentle but witty fashion of invoking a curse upon his uncle's riches. When they averred that he had given a cunning answer, he answered that he had spoken deliberately; for he was loth, to be thought prone to lying about any matter, and wished ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... became his guest and chosen companion. And yet, while he lived in the court, he spent the most of his time in intellectual seclusion. As a guest of the king he may have become acquainted with Hincmar, or his acquaintance with Hincmar may have led to his friendship with Charles. He was witty, bright, and learned, like Abelard, a favorite with the great. In his treatise on Predestination, in which he combated the views of Gotschalk, he probably went further than Hincmar desired or expected: he boldly asserted the supremacy of reason, and threw off ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... widow and inheriting her property. Her will was contested on the ground that this handsome and accomplished young literary man had exercised magic in winning his elderly bride! The successful defense of Apuleius before his judges—a most diverting composition, so jaunty and full of witty impertinences that it is evident he knew the hard-headed Roman judges would dismiss the prosecution as a farce—is still extant under the name of 'The Apology; or, Concerning Magic.' This in after days became ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... you were saying. Did the reason never occur to you, why you so soon become tired of your admirers? You see through them, you say. Is it not possible that a lady who has the reputation of caprice,—a flirt, as the world is apt to call her,—though ever so brilliant, witty, and accomplished, may not attract the kind of men that can bear scrutiny, but only the butterfly race, fit for a brief acquaintance? Believe me, Marcia, there is a reason for everything, and, with all your beauty and fascination, you must yourself have the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... to baby. "Dear me, tink of mudder wanting to look at a big u'gy t'ing like fadder, when she could look at a 'itty witty t'ing like dis," and he rose and crossed to the crib where he deposited the small creature with yet more gurgling ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... grace beginning to speak, said, "Noble damsels, like as in the lucid nights the stars are the ornament of the sky and as in Spring-time the flowers of the green meadows, even so are commendable manners and pleasing discourse adorned by witty sallies, which latter, for that they are brief, are yet more beseeming to women than to men, inasmuch as much and long speech, whenas it may be dispensed with, is straitlier forbidden unto women than to men, albeit nowadays ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and brilliant state of being flooded him; he felt capable of profoundly witty conversation, and laughed at the solemn absurdities of the Ammidons, at his father attempting to call down a blessing out of the empty sky upon their food, at his sister's lugubrious countenance, the childish emotions of Nettie. What a nonsensical ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... authors he so oft had named, For learning, wit, and wisdom, famed;) Was struck with love, esteem, and awe, For persons whom he never saw. Suppose Cadenus flourish'd then, He must adore such godlike men. If one short volume could comprise All that was witty, learn'd, and wise, How would it be esteem'd and read, Although the writer long were dead! If such an author were alive, How all would for his friendship strive, And come in crowds to see his face! And this she takes to be her case. Cadenus answers every end, The book, the ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... entered more fully into the "fast" life of a man about town, and the dangerous ignorance of the society girl. Fitch loved to sketch the smart woman, like Mrs. Lorrimer, who, as someone has said, is frivolously constituted, but sharply witty and with some depth of heart. The fancy-dress party scene is autobiographic, he having attended such an occasion at Carroll Beckwith's studio, in New York. In technique, this scene is comparable with ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... the nearest chair and laughed as if Stiles had said something which was exceedingly witty. The outburst was so spontaneous and unaccountable that the bookkeeper stared at him. He could not know that Phil would laugh with equal abandon just then if somebody were to inform him that the real reason a hen crosses the road is to get ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... which I have says the same kind of thing in a variety of ways. For instance, it says that one may have many, many fancies, my Barbara—that as soon as the spring comes on, one's thoughts become uniformly pleasant and sportive and witty, for the reason that, at that season, the mind inclines readily to tenderness, and the world takes on a more roseate hue. From that little book of mine I have culled the following passage, and written it down for you to see. In particular does the author express a longing ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... father decided he should go to Vienna, for there he would meet all the great musicians of the time. The boy was at the most impressionable age: he was lively, witty, with pleasant manners and amiable disposition; he soon became a favorite in the highest musical circles. It was a gay life and the inexperienced youth yielded to its allurements. In the meantime he did some serious ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... the hair of Eric, was golden, and she was white as the snow on Hecla; but her eyes were large and dark, and black lashes drooped above them. For the rest she was tall and strong and comely, merry of face, yet tender, and the most witty of women. ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... at Eton has done him good service with the aristocratic patrons of the drama," remarked a lady to a witty friend of ours. "Yes, madam," was the reply, "he seems to have gained by Eaton what ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various |
