"Humour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Bengalees to form a very exaggerated estimate of the personal part played by Lord Curzon in the question of Partition, and they not unnaturally concluded that, if the Secretary of State had merely sanctioned the Partition in order to humour the Viceroy, he might easily be induced to reconsider the matter when once Lord Curzon had been got out of the way. Their hopes in that quarter were, it is true, very soon dashed, but only to be strung up again to the highest pitch of expectancy when the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... concluded, and Mr. Chalk's eye brightened again as he looked on his new property. Captain Brisket, in high good-humour, began to talk of accommodation, and, among other things, suggested a scheme of cutting through the bulkhead at the foot of the companion-ladder and building a commodious cabin with three berths in ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... her Art; No theme but truth, no prompter but the heart! But, Ladies, say, must I alone unmask? Is here no other actress? let me ask. Believe me, those, who best the heart dissect, Know every Woman studies stage-effect. She moulds her manners to the part she, fills, As Instinct teaches, or as Humour wills; And, as the grave or gay her talent calls, Acts in the drama, till the curtain falls. First, how her little breast with triumph swells, When the red coral rings its golden bells! To play in pantomime is then the rage, Along ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... laughed in good humour. "Does it offend one of your prejudices, Eliza?—a thousand pardons, then. But really, nonsense apart, I can't see why the carriage should not have gone for her. We are told she is a gentlewoman. Indeed, I suppose anyone else would not be ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... were rude enough to laugh at this very candid confession; but the judge himself failed to see any humour ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... appreciated the unconscious humour of Chetwood's assertion about "some husbands" more than Farquhar himself. One trembles to think, by the way what a "mere husband" must have been in the reigns of ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... average height. He had small green eyes like his mother's; his light sandy hair had a natural ripple, and his pale face expressed nothing beyond an assured consciousness of his own superiority. And yet he was not without a certain sense of humour in matters which did not immediately concern himself, though, owing to particular circumstances, it was just ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... step the other way. It has to be, Mary. He is too much in earnest, and too good, and too fit for the place to which he aspires, to miss his object. Come, we'll go in. Mind, you and I are one again, let it go how it may. I will own that I have been vexed for the last two days,—have been in a humour unbecoming your departure to-morrow. I throw all that behind me. You and I ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... him with overmuch meat, thus producing a humour, which Nature tries to get rid of by throwing it out on the surface of the body; the safest place she could fix on for the purpose; hence the folly and danger of giving medicines and applying external applications to drive the eruption ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... to him.] Don't you love me enough to humour me a little—to put up with my vexing ways? I so want to help, to feel I am doing just a little, to make the world kinder. I know you can do it better, but I want so to be "in it." [She laughs.] Let us forget all this. Wake up to-morrow ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... not escape the quick perception of the Indian; and, along with the good-humour manifest in the stranger's speech, made ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... She deals with a Man in whom consummate Patience is one of the Mysteries of his Trade; and whatever Trouble she creates, she is sure to hear nothing but the most obliging Language; and has always before her a chearful Countenance, where Joy and Respect seem to be blended with Good-Humour, and all together make up an artificial Serenity, more ingaging than untaught Nature is ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... Black Hole all night, you do not know how vitiated the atmosphere is. You have to come out into the fresh air to find out that. We look at the errors of others through a microscope; we look at our own through the wrong end of the telescope; and the one set, when we are in a cynical humour, seem bigger than they are; and the other ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and assisted the poor man, who is called the Governor, to institute a bank, and to print and issue small bills of the value of a few halfpence, in imitation of the notes of the country bankers, but drawn and signed with a reference of humour to the fort, the flag, the hill, and the cannon. These notes, the nobility and gentry, who during the Harrowgate season crowd to visit this remarkable place, take in exchange for their silver, and by these means the governor, who is a man of gentle ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... the "Mermaid," or going with them to the Globe Theatre to see two Warwickshire brothers, Edmund and Will Shakspeare, who are on the boards there,—the latter taking the part of Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's play of "Every Man in his Humour." His friends say that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... elephant does actually often travel towards the marksman, but much slower than the marksman travels. Mr. Scott probably would not like to contemplate the fact that the elephant, properly speaking, swings round and hits the bullet. To us it appears full of a rich cosmic humour. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... us at his heels, muttering indignantly, till the humour of the thing struck and doubled him up with laughter at the foot ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... the young lieutenant-governor, with good humour; "but I hope, as I said, that I have made no trouble for this stout boy ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... so stolid and impassive in their general demeanour, are easily moved to laughter, having a quick perception of fun and drollery, and sometimes show themselves capable of much humour, and even of wit. ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... smiled, but June saw none of his humour—the married people she knew clung till the finger of death unclasped them. She pointed to a bunch of tall tropical-looking plants with great spreading leaves and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... was not really a bad man, he decided to humour the old woman in her strange plea. Turning to the assistants in the court room he asked which of them would be willing to go in search of the tiger. One of these men, named Li-neng, had been leaning against the wall, half asleep. He ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... commenting on his contemporaries and friends. George Ticknor was greatly impressed by the "right-mindedness" of the young Sophia Scott,[486] and we may fairly adopt the word to describe the father whom she so much resembled. There was in him, as Carlyle said, "such a sunny current of true humour and humanity, a free joyful sympathy with so many things; what of fire he had all lying so beautifully latent, as radical latent heat, as fruitful internal warmth of life;—a ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... to be in a good humour. The boys drew back somewhat in awe, and sat down to rest on the stones by the wall. Still Antonino's eyes followed them, though he did not move. Sebastiano looked up at him uneasily from time to time, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... were in the minority, and the Lower School boys and the 'Remove'—that bodyguard of strong limbs and thick heads which it seemed hopeless to remove any higher—were quite capable of supplying unaided all the noise that might be considered necessary; and, as there was no ill-humour and little roughness in their japes, they were very wisely allowed to let their steam off without interference. It did not last very long, though it died out gradually enough: first the songs and whistles became more isolated and distinct, and the hallooing ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... proportions, as was the reveller of Hap House; but nevertheless, and perhaps not the less, was he pleasant to look on. He was smaller and darker than his cousin; but his eyes were bright and full of good humour. He was clean looking and clean made; pleasant and courteous in all his habits; attached to books in a moderate, easy way, but no bookworm; he had a gentle affection for bindings and title-pages; was fond of pictures, of which it might be probable ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... looked grave, and would not rise to Denise's lighter humour. It almost seemed, indeed, as if she were afraid—she who had never known fear through all the years of pinch and struggle, who had faced a world that had no use for her, that would not buy the poor services she had to sell. For to know the worst is always a relief, and to exchange it for something ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... born with nothing less than genius—genius to observe, to narrate, and to judge. Even had he written as a mere recluse and critic, looking out upon his world from a monk's cell or from the corner of a housetop, the vividness, the tenderness, the sarcasm and the humour would still have been there. But Knox's genius was predominantly practical; and the difference between the transformation which befell him, and that which changed so many other men in his time, was that in Knox's case it ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... manner, as opposed to his matter, he is more the Teuton, for he shows all of the racial patience and pertinacity and all of the racial lack of humour. Writing a novel is as solemn a business to him as trimming a beard is to a German barber. He blasts his way through his interminable stories by something not unlike main strength; his writing, one feels, often takes on ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... unabashed, returned my gaze—a funny little ruffian! On the end of his spinal column he teetered, all four feet in the air, the cock of his head irresistibly suggesting the tilt of a gamin's cap. His tongue hung waggishly out of his mouth, and a sort of loose, dissipated, tough, cynical humour pervaded his person, from the squint of his little eyes to the absurd post of his hind legs. There was less of the immature bear about him than of the miniature bear. I suppose a young wild animal is like a street Arab, in ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... allusions to wild events that had happened long ago in desert places, and to the lives of priests of his old religion, of fanatics, and girls who rode on camels caparisoned in red to the dancing-houses of Sahara cities—all these things cradled her humour at this moment and seemed to plant her, like a mimosa tree, deep down in this sand ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... that there was no such thing in nature as a weed, and that it was his design to let his garden produce what it pleased; so that, you may be sure, it makes a very pleasant show as it now lies. About the same time he took a humour to ramble up and down the country, and would often bring home with him his pockets full of moss and pebbles. This, you may be sure, gave me a heavy heart; though, at the same time, I must needs say, he had the character ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... poison or assassination: her greatest fear, however, was that of being supplanted by a rival. I never saw her in a greater agitation than, one evening, on her return from the drawing-room at Marly. She threw down her cloak and muff, the instant she came in, with an air of ill-humour, and undressed herself in a hurried manner. Having dismissed her other women, she said to me, "I think I never saw anybody so insolent as Madame de Coaslin. I was seated at the same table with her this evening, at a game of brelan, and you cannot imagine what I ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... the world is too proud to be fond of a serious tutor; and when an author is in a passion, the laugh, generally, as in conversation, turns against him. This kind of satire only has any delicacy in it. Of this delicacy Horace is the best master: he appears in good humour while he censures; and therefore his censure has the more weight, as supposed to proceed from judgment, not from passion. Juvenal is ever in a passion; he has little valuable but his eloquence and morality: the last of which I have had in my eye: but rather for emulation, than ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... been above all, democratic, and has reenforced the feeling of good fellowship, of community, of intimacy, of unity. Like the popular games which melt all social groups together by a common joyful interest, and like humour which breaks all social barriers, the love for dancing removes mutual distrust and ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... is in no humour to stand half-hearted work; it will bow its proud head only to the man who pours out sweat; and Bourdaloue's standard of excellence will hold for all time. His answer to the question "What was your best sermon?" is: "The one I took ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... demanded Payment for the Victuals that our Captain and his Men did eat at his House. These things startled Captain Swan, yet how to help himself he knew not. But all this, with other inward troubles, lay hard on our Captain's Spirits, and put him very much out of Humour; for his own Company also were pressing him every Day to be gone, because, now was the heighth of the Easterly Monsoon, the only Wind to carry us farther ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... exercised his profession, though litigation languished in North Dormer and its outlying hamlets; and for once he had had an opportunity that he could not afford to refuse. He spent three days in Nettleton, won his case, and came back in high good-humour. It was a rare mood with him, and manifested itself on this occasion by his talking impressively at the supper-table of the "rousing welcome" his old friends had given him. He wound up confidentially: ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... o' me," returned the boy, relapsing into the mother-tongue, which, except it be spoken in good humour, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... hollow eyes, the meagre arms covered with a silk shirt, contrasting strangely with the rest of the dress. In all thy privation and poverty, thou didst never forego thy silk shirt. I remember the paradoxes and the aphorisms, if not the exact words, the glamour and the sentiment of a humour that was all thy own. Never didst thou laugh; no, not even when in discussing how silence might be rendered in music, thou didst say, with thy extraordinary Pyrenean accent, "Pour rendre le silence en music il me faudrait trois orchestres militaires." ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... upstairs, and was at last put to bed, Janet assisting; nor did the doctor leave the room till his guest was asleep. Then he went into the drawing-room to Mary. It may easily be conceived that he was hardly in a humour to talk much ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... of musicians mounted on horses or mules surrounded the two-wheeled cart in which sat Hernbeize of Ghent, the treasurer of the orchestra, and his fat wife. The corpulent couple, squeezed closely together, silent and out of humour, had taken no notice of each other or their surrounding since Frau Olympia had presumed to drag her husband by force out of the first wagon, where he was paying a visit to a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... such a subject for a novel! If I were in a tolerable humour I could begin it on the first of November and finish it on the first of December. I would make five signatures of print. And I long to write as I did at Bogimovo—i.e., from morning till night ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... behind; the goodly show of fat flitches and briskets around me and above, and that merry and wise old fellow, glass in hand, with endless store of good stories, pithy sayings, and choice points of humour, by my side; yet with all I sat melancholy and ill at ease. In vain did the rare old man tell me his best marvels; how he once fought with Tom Hughes, a wild Welshman, whom he met in a perilous journey through the forests of Cheshire; how Tom would not let go ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... days as his were in themselves a trial of good humour. Idleness was very pleasant in the holidays, but his was too active a spirit to bear it for long together, especially when it left room for such anticipations as those for which his hopes of a Bush life were exchanged, Yet he treated offers of reading to him as insults, and far less ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... had gone to bed in a high state of indignation were not likely to wake in much better humour, when suddenly aroused in their first nap, to listen to such a message as this. It seemed only one piece of trifling the more. The deputies had offered satisfactory opinions of divines and jurisconsults, as to the two points specified which concerned the Ghent treaty. It was natural, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... heels. And all these people seemed to be diverting themselves hugely, chaffering with the hucksters, watching the antics of trained dogs and monkeys, distributing doles to maimed beggars or having their pockets picked by slippery-looking fellows in black—the whole with such an air of ease and good-humour that one felt the cut-purses to be as much a part of the show as the tumbling acrobats ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... jabbered, would have it. You see, Archie, one great advantage of being Irish—and it's not your fault that you're not, man, I don't blame you—one great advantage is that you can speak all languages with equal ease. Now a Scotchman's tongue is like his sense of humour and his brains—a bit ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... spasmodic touches of humour, even for these jaded men. "One of the Staff plunged into the river and caught some geese, but someone else ate them; a pig ran the gauntlet through the camp—amidst roars of laughter, even from the serious General—of ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... the Stamp Act continued and was enforced, do you imagine that ill-humour will induce the Americans to give as much for worse manufactures of their own, and use them preferably ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Campanians, who marched to Hamae three miles from Cumae with a view to surprise the Cumaeans, were thoroughly defeated by Gracchus; Hannibal, who had appeared before Cumae to wipe out the stain, was himself worsted in a combat, and when the pitched battle offered by him was declined, retreated in ill humour to Capua. While the Romans in Campania thus not only maintained what they possessed, but also recovered Compulteria and other smaller places, loud complaints were heard from the eastern allies of Hannibal. A Roman ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh, that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... Helier the hermit once chiselled his lofty home. He breathed deep and strong, and the carriage of his body was light, for he had a healthy enjoyment of all physical sensations and all the obvious drolleries of life. A broad sort of humour was written upon every feature; in the full, quizzical eye, in the width of cheek- bone, in the broad mouth, and in the depth of the laugh, which, however, often ended in a sort of chuckle not entirely pleasant. It suggested a selfish enjoyment of the odd ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is," Richford said, with a certain good humour that caused Beatrice to turn suspicious at once. "You can do a great deal for me if you only will. I am going to leave you a desolate and disconsolate widow. A grass widow, if you like; but you will have your freedom. I am going to leave my country for my country's good; I shall never come ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... in his wrath, was towering over the prostrate prisoner, forgetful of the mock trial, dead even to the humour which he himself had infused into a sufficiently lurid situation, but quite terribly alive to the act of treachery and violence which had brought that situation about. And I must say that Levy looked no less alive to his own enormity; he quailed in his bonds with a guilty fearfulness ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... nice that is! Oh no, that's no matter. And then it will do very well, won't it? Now, if I can only catch Gilbert in a good humour he isn't my cousin he's Marianne's cousin that big boy you saw down-stairs he's so big he won't have anything to say to me, sometimes, but I guess I'll get him to do this. Don't you want to make ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... you."—"Never! that is a strong expression; the French have another Sovereign, and they are commanded both by their duty and their tranquillity to think on him alone." This answer did not please me: the Emperor, thought I to myself, is out of humour because I have not brought him any letters; he mistrusts me: it was not worth while to come so far for the sake of such an ungracious reception.—Napoleon, continuing, "What do they think about me in France?"—"There, your Majesty is universally ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... him the hidden charm of their intercourse lay less in what she said or sang, than in the vibrations of her voice; in the quick response of lips and eyes to her April changes of mood; and more than all in her unfailing spirit of humour, which broke up the monotone of days spent in a long chair as a prism breaks white light into a band of brilliant colours. For Quita's genius was not of the highly specialised order. It did not inhabit ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... tough, dense, outer coat, the sclerotic (sc.), within which is a highly vascular and internally pigmented layer, the choroid, upon which the percipient nervous layer, the retina (r.) rests. The chief chamber of the eye is filled with a transparent jelly, the vitreous humour (v.h.). In front of the eye, the white sclerotic passes into the transparent cornea (c.). The epidermis is continued over the outer face of this as a thin, transparent epithelium. The choroid coat is continued in front by a ring-shaped muscle, the iris (ir.) the coloured portion of the eyes. This ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... mood, and turned them out quite innocent of the idiomatic quaintnesses of the French tongue. But dis aliter visum. The gods always saw wrong-headedly otherwise in the case of Aristide. A weak-minded governess—and in a governess a sense of humour and of novelty is always a sign of a weak mind—played dragon during Aristide's lessons. She appreciated his method, which was colloquial. The colloquial Aristide was jocular. His lessons therefore were a giggling joy from beginning to end. He imparted to his pupils delicious knowledge. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... put the pennies in, some person standing by with a sense of humour, who knew the letters that people write to the Times and the kind, serious, grave way English people read them. He put the pennies grimly in at one end, then he waited grimly for the letter in the Times to come ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to return to Milan—these ill-starred troubles being in some degree abated—but I was refused membership by the College of Physicians there, I was unable to settle my lawsuit with the Barbiani, and I found my mother in a very ill humour, so I went back to my village home, having suffered greatly in health during my absence. For what with cruel vexations, and struggles, and cares which I saw impending, and a troublesome cough and pleurisy aggravated by a copious discharge of humour, I was brought into a condition such as few ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... spent his life on horseback in the boundless sultry deserts of Western Africa! The temperature of the place is exceedingly damp and chill. Jugurtha himself, when stripped of his clothes by the executioners, and let down into it from the hole in the roof, exclaimed with grim humour, "By Hercules, how cold your bath is!" A more hideous and heart-breaking dungeon it is impossible to imagine. Not a ray of light can penetrate the profound darkness of this living tomb. Sallust spoke of the appearance of it in his ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... kind of small ratlike quadrupeds. They are distinguished by having upon each flank, under the ordinary skin, a little band of stiff and close hairs, from which an odoriferous humour is distilled. They dig holes in the earth, which they seldom come out of until towards evening; and their food consists of insects and worms. A species that inhabits the Pyrenees, and also the mountains of Russia, are called Desmans, and differ somewhat ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... however, he had forgotten his ill-humour and was at the station fully ten minutes before six o'clock. As it happened, only one woman was among the passengers who left the train at ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Societe, where a boudoir decorum is, or ought always to be, preserved; where sentiment never surges into passion, and where humour never overflows into boisterous merriment."—Frederick Locker's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... had met before, who were mostly her relations, were asked to the wedding, and among the rest her clownish admirer, who, I understood, was her cousin. He was rather sulky at first, but seeing everyone around him in good humour, he came up to me and offered his hand, which I took and shook heartily. The farmhouse not being more than three miles from Chatham, we hired two coaches from that place, and with the addition of two chay-carts belonging to the farmers, we made a numerous (for there were ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... written down as if it were a special revelation, and to insist with equal earnestness on his most trifling as on his most important pieces—on Goody Blake and The Idiot Boy as on The Cuckoo or The Daffodils. The sense of humour is apt to be the first grace which is lost under persecution; and much of Wordsworth's heaviness and stiff exposition of commonplaces is to be traced to a feeling, which he could scarcely avoid, that "all day long he had lifted up his voice ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... jocularities that haven't yet been said; The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries, And every joke that's possible has long ago been made. I started as a humourist with lots of mental fizziness, But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse; For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures and the good-will of the business No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse. And if anybody choose He may circulate the news That no reasonable offer I ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... here?' Alas, they are homespuns from the factory, machine-made in uncostly quantities. Obviously, power needs to make use of no such storage. The property of power is to use phrases, whether strange or familiar, as though it created them. But even more than lack of power is lack of humour the cause of all the rankness and the staleness, of all the Anglo-Saxon of commerce, of all the weary 'quaintness'—that quaintness of which one is moved to exclaim with Cassio: 'Hither comes the bauble!' Lack of ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... alone is a conversion. His wife and children are cared for, it is true; but he himself, for a shilling a day, sells to his country his life, his health, his pleasures, and his hopes for the future. To make good measure he throws in cheerfulness, devotion, philosophy, humour, and an unfailing kindness. One man, for instance, sells up three grocery businesses in the heart of Lancashire, an ambition which it has taken him ten years to accomplish. Without a trace of bitterness he divorces himself from the routine of a lifetime, and goes out ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... important qualities for a teacher are a sympathetic understanding of human nature, a keen sense of justice, and a sense of humour. These are great qualities, but the girl who means to teach should notice that they may be both acquired and developed. Any one who gives all her energies and gifts to teaching will find that the work is a strain. The teacher should not allow her work to become set ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... of the strife. Life to them was a battle to be ended as soon as possible. That was another point I could not understand, for as I reasoned, life is not a battle except with our own tendency to sag with the downpull of "getting settled." If to petrify is success all one has to do is to humour the lazy side of the mind but if to grow is success, then one must wake up anew every morning and keep awake all day. I saw great businesses become but the ghost of a name because someone thought they could be managed just as they were always managed, ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... same charm as the writings of Charles Lamb. There was the same kind of playfulness, the same lightness of touch, the same tenderness, perhaps the same limitations. On another side of his nature, I have often been reminded of him by the quaint, delicate humour, the superficial intolerance, the deep springs of pity, the peculiar mixture of something pathetic with a sort of gay scorn, entirely remote from contempt, which distinguish the Ellesmere of Sir ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater wealth of humour or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor in any other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave life and speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. The Republic is the centre around which the other Dialogues may be grouped; here philosophy reaches the highest point ...
— The Republic • Plato
... in his soft, murmuring purr ("Just the voice a jaguar would talk in, if it could speak and were in a good humour," Gemma said to herself with ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... Thomas Browne was the founder of chemical embryology or, indeed, to contend that he made a great impress upon the progress of embryology is to humour our fancy. As Browne himself reminds us, "a good cause needs not to be patron'd by a passion."[31] His work and interpretations of generation are most important for our purposes as an indication of the rising mood of the times and an emerging awareness of the physiochemical analysis of biological ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... changes of the weather in my principles or opinions. I purpose, therefore, in these historical sketches, at least to watch, and I hope partly to correct myself in this fault of promise breaking, and at whatever sacrifice of my variously fluent or re-fluent humour, to tell in each successive chapter in some measure what the reader justifiably ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... misery around it as easily in an African village as in an English city. Had the cortege submitted to extortion and insult, they felt that their night by the river would have been a precarious one—even if they had been in a humour to sleep in a swamp when a town was at hand. These things gave occasion to them to resort to force. The desperate nature of their whole enterprise in starting for Zanzibar perhaps had accumulated its own stock of determination, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... expose him. The mechanician nevertheless proceeded gravely to explain and defend his "profession of faith," which was altogether unnecessary. On this Huntington returned to the charge, and directed against the mechanic a fresh volley of Scripture texts and phraseology, not without humour, if profanity be allowable in controversy, as where he says, "Poor man! he makes a good patent lock, but cuts a sad figure with the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven!" "What Mr. Bramah is," says S.S., "In respect to his character or conduct in life, as a man, a tradesman, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Irish life is expressed in Irish humour. Two Irish stories commonly related to-day in the south really throw some light on the change of feeling in Ireland. One is that of a Protestant parson in the south who found that the Bishop was about to visit his parish ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... this name I breathe. Perhaps you have imagined that ill-humour or caprice had till now guided my pen; but, could I praise the talent of MOLE as he deserves, you ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... in humour. The Irishman's shillelagh was for years a conspicuous feature of the comic press. And there will instantly come to every one's mind that immortal passage in "Tristram Shandy." Trim is discoursing upon ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... cannot rave in your own manner. If ye will have unintelligible systems, if ye cannot be contented without marvellous doctrines, if the infirmities of your nature require an invisible crutch, adopt such as may best suit with your humour; select those which you may think most calculated to support your tottering frame; if ye can, let your own imagination give birth to them; but do not insist on your neighbours making the same choice with yourself: do not suffer these imaginary ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... an unusually thoughtful humour, and inclined to weigh things in the balance with a doubtfulness as to their value which was new to him. The complete idleness and emptiness of his life in the country had made him meditative. Was it worth living, that monotonous business life of his? Would not the time ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... by one, beneath derisive skies, The victims bare, bewildered heads arise: Tales of the passing of the spirit, graced With humour blinding as the doom it faced: Stark tales of ribaldry that broke aside To tears, by laughter swallowed ere they dried: Tales to which neither grace nor gain accrue, But only (Allah be exalted!) true, And only, as the Seraph showed that night, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... the wetness oozes about your moccasins from the soggy earth with every step you take; when you look about you and realize that somehow, before you can get a mouthful to banish that before-breakfast ill-humour, you must brave cold water in an attempt to find enough fuel to cook with, then your philosophy and early religious training avail you little. The first ninety-nine times you are forced to do this ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... water: it was cold, but not too cold. Yet in a fortnight's time it would not be pleasant to bathe. However, people had their whims, and he mused on the scheme of the universe which ordained that certain people should have whims, and that others should humour those whims whether they liked it or not. Many people—many of his fellow-workers—talked of the day when the universal levelling would take place and when all men could be equal. Petrushka did not much believe ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... short, or a cheek sunken, I fancy that you do not succeed well in giving the impression of the person,—not so well as when you interpret at once to the heart the essential moral qualities of the face—its humour, gravity, sadness, spirituality. If I should tell you in physical terms how a hand feels, you would be no wiser for my account than a blind man to whom you describe a face in detail. Remember that when a blind man recovers his sight, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... school-teacher had gone and the southwest room was vacant, she begged to have it in exchange for her own. Sophia hesitated a moment; she eyed the widow sharply. There was something about the large, roseate face worn in firm lines of humour ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... no nearer to the object of his visit, and, perhaps thinking it would be well to humour me, he fetched a horn and tried our Hanyards ale. This gave me a chance of taking stock ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... difficult to know the temper of speaker and audience from a printed report, it is due alike to Dr. R., to the whole Assembly, and the galleries, to say, that he, in reading these resolutions, and throughout his speech, evinced great good-humour and kindness of feeling, which was equally manifested by the Assembly and spectators, repeatedly, while he was ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... passed three or four headlands before the girl halted and waited for her attendant, who came up muttering to herself and grumbling; compliments from Jean and caresses from Hilda restored her good humour, and the work of the evening commenced. "Follow me closely," said the girl; "let your eye be keen and your step firm: the descent is no child's sport." Jean looked at the cliff, fitted for the flight of gull ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... you've heard through common rumour, The Princess Turandot's ferocious humour Has many princes caused to lose their life In seeking to obtain her as a wife. Her beauty is so wonderful, that all As willing victims to her mandate fall; In vain do various painters daily vie To limn her rosy cheek, her flashing eye, Her perfect ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... soon made themselves as comfortable as they could in their new quarters, and suffered patiently the disagreeables of French lodgings. They repaired their boats, often broken by the transit from London, and behaved with good humour in proportion to their good sense. Even the grumblers were satisfied, because they were provided with a new set of grievances; and so things passed off better than was expected by those who knew the real circumstances of the venture. It was the first regatta of the kind, and doubtless ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... of chess. It is the same in conversation. I never know, or, if my sub-consciousness knows, I never remember, who anybody is. I speak to people about scandals with which they are connected. I frankly give my mind about Mr. DULL's poems to Mr. DULL's sister-in-law. I give free play to my humour about the Royal Academy in talk with the wife of an Academician of whom I never heard. I am like Jeanie Deans, at her interview with Queen CAROLINE, when, as the MACALLUM MORE said, she first brought down the Queen, and then Lady SUFFOLK, right and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... Tourville had also taken some exceptions at the freedoms of my pen; and Mr. Lovelace, after his way, took upon him to reconcile us; and did it at the expense of all three; and with such an infinite run of humour and raillery, that we had nothing to do but to laugh at what he said, and at one another. I can deal tolerably with him at my pen; but in conversation he has no equal. In short, it was his day. He was glad, he said, to find himself alive; and his two friends, clapping and rubbing their hands ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... different from yourself, could exist in Europe in the nineteenth century. It is said that those who can converse with Irish peasants in their own native tongue, form far higher opinions of their appreciation of the beautiful, and of the elements of humour and pathos in their hearts, than do those who know their thoughts only through the medium of English. I know from my own observation that this is quite the case with the Indians of North America, and it is unquestionably so with the Gipsy. When ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... greatest miracle of all," broke in Emlyn, with grim humour. "Still we thank you from our hearts and will wear the relics if they do not take them from us. Hark! they are calling you. Farewell, and all blessings be on ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... The humour and high spirits of Friendship's Garland were, however, but the gilding of a pill, the artificial sweetening of a nauseous draught. In reality, and joking apart, the book is an indictment at the bar of Geist of the English people as represented ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... a couple of matches and tumbled down-stairs twice before breakfast, so that after that hurried meal Bell tied him to one of the verandah posts, that he might not commit any act vicious enough to keep them at home. As he had a huge pocket full of apricots he was in perfect good-humour, not taking his confinement at all to heart, inasmuch as it commanded a full view of the scene of action. His amiability was further increased, moreover, by the possession of a bright new policeman's whistle, which was carefully tied to his button-hole by a neat little silk cord, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... eyes there was never the light of love and humour—no amiable jollity. He would come fawning, industriously wagging his hinder parts, like puppies of more favoured degree; but all the while his black eyes were alert, hard, infinitely suspicious and avaricious. Not once, I am sure, did ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... two hours in the house, before it was evident that both parties were on an excellent footing together. The old lady was seen to come from the best—the parlour we mean to say—of the Mermaid, with very unusual symptoms of good humour on her countenance, considering (as Betsy the "maid of all work" whispered to "Jack Ostler,") that her visage had generally a "vinegar cruet" association; though we would not take upon ourselves to assert that brandy had not a greater share in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... humour of the explanation by a laugh, intended to be respectful to the establishment in its control, which spread along their line, and ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... Jasmin composed at this period of his life was that which he entitled Mous Soubenis, or 'My Recollections.' In none of his poems did he display more of the characteristic qualities of his mind, his candour, his pathos, and his humour, than in these verses. He used the rustic dialect, from which he never afterwards departed. He showed that the Gascon was not yet a dead language; and he lifted it to the level of the most serious themes. His ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... number of camels. I gave him great hopes that his request might be complied with, even if he asked for an hundred camels, as I alleged he was entitled to the privilege as being a Mameluke. Then finding him in excellent good humour, I again urged my desire of being concealed in his house; and having entirely gained his confidence, he gave me many instructions for the prosecution of my intended journey, and counselled me to repair to the court of the king of Decham, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... would cast it into the fire and burn it." "Never," comments a modern writer,[684] "had the King spoken a truer word, or described himself more accurately. Few would have thought that, under so careless and splendid an exterior—the very ideal of bluff, open-hearted good-humour and frankness—there lay a watchful and secret eye, that marked what was going on, without appearing to mark it; kept its own counsel until it was time to strike, and then struck, as suddenly and remorselessly as a beast of prey. It was strange to witness so much ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... Credit Household Superstitions Opera Lions Women and Wives The Italian Opera Lampoons True and False Humour Sa Ga Yean Qua Rash Tow's Impressions of London The Vision of Marraton Six Papers on Wit Friendship Chevy-Chase (Two Papers) A Dream of the Painters Spare Time (Two Papers) Censure The English Language The Vision of Mirza Genius Theodosius and Constantia ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... rejoiced thereat that she would have kissed his hand, but he snatched it from her and breathed upon it thrice, whereby we could easily see that he himself was nowise in earnest with his defensio. Soon after he took leave in an ill-humour, after commending her to the care of the Most High, and begged that I would make my farewell as short as might be, seeing that he purposed to return home that very day, the which, alas! I ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... in real life, it is possible—probable, in fact—that we were in no way edified or amused. Not the veriest ghost of a smile, it is likely, flickered across our faces. But reproduced by the subtle humour of the artist, the inherent comedy of the situation stands revealed, and we chuckle. And our enjoyment is the greater for the skill with which the means are concealed by which this magical transformation is effected. We feel that ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... sarcastically enjoying the scene. Among the audience, however, was another gifted woman, who might far more legitimately have been shocked at the utter wreck of every musical means of expression in the singer—who might have been more naturally forgiven, if some humour of self-glorification had made her severely just—not worse—to an old prima donna;—I mean Madame Viardot.—Then, and not till then, she was hearing Madame Pasta.—But Truth will always answer to the appeal ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... a bad people!" he said over and over again. Then he smiled, with some sense of the humour of ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the Maid be delivered, or if she sends you sure and certain tidings under her own hand that she wills you to put off this humour, will you then be persuaded, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... his keys; he did not like being "rubbed down," but he submitted to the process with great good-humour. It was the cosiest old kitchen; the table was the whitest, and the pots and pans the brightest, that could be imagined; and Jane, the cook, groomed him down as though brushing a damp jacket with a dry glass-cloth was the most enjoyable pastime in life. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... with distinguished economy of means. He dispenses with all superfluous gesture, as does the great French illustrator. Grock is entirely right about clownery. You are either funny or you are not. No amount of study will produce the gift for humour. It is there, or it isn't. Grock's gift for musicianship is a singular combination to find with the rest of his artistry. It goes with the remarkably refined look in his face, however, as he sits upon the back of the seatless chair, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... the letterpress is not unworthy of the humour and fidelity of the illustrations. The various Weasels, Rabbits, and Foxes, are brought into one little tale; the Wonderful Hare-Hunt into another; the Tea-Party of Kittens, and the Marten and Tabby, ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... plain sailing—and fighting. I have read no more thrilling account of the Battle of Jutland than is to be found here. The author does it so well because he tells his story with great simplicity and without what I believe he would call "windiness." Best of all, he has a nice sense of humour, and would even, I believe, have discovered the funny side of Scapa, if there had been one. "ETIENNE," whose short stories of naval life were amusing, makes a distinct advance in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... I not bid thee be sparing of speech? Hold thy peace and follow me. Thou must know that the young lady, to whom I shall carry thee, loves to have her own way and hates to be crossed, so if thou fall in with her humour, thou shalt come to thy desire of her." And my brother said, "I will not thwart her in aught." Then she went on and he followed her, eager to enjoy what she had promised him, till she brought him to a fine large house, richly furnished and full ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... the patience of Job, and a conscience made of stretching leather to deal with the Kruboy in the African climate, and live. In his better manifestations he reminds me of that charming personality, the Irish peasant, for though he lacks the sparkle, he is full of humour, and is the laziest and the most industrious of mankind. He lies and tells the truth in such a hopelessly uncertain manner that you cannot rely on him for either. He is ungrateful and faithful to the death, honest and thievish, all in one ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... far I will humour you, Mr. Lindsay; though from what I hear, in the Carnatic and Bengal the British officers, civil and military, do not hesitate to accept large sums from ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... him, but nothing would do but that she should get the mysterious paper. At last, to humour him, she dived under the bunk and found an iron camp-oven, and in it a single envelope. Just to see what was exciting him she opened the envelope, and found a crumpled piece of paper which she read over to herself. It was the original certificate ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... stirs the fire with the poker to test the humour of a lover. If the fire blaze brightly, the lover is good-humoured; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... golden-brown hair to frame a face full of varying expression. Her eyes were never for two consecutive hours of the same shade, but were more often blue than grey. People who envied her smile said that she cultivated a sense of humour in order to show her teeth. Perhaps they were right; but there was no doubt that her habit of talking with gesticulation would never have grown upon her unless she had known that her hands were not ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams |
