"Humourist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nervous, fussy fingers which indicate a nature sensitive to the little pricks of daily life. Sometimes I recognize with foreboding the kindly but stupid hand of one who tells with many words news that is no news. I have met a bishop with a jocose hand, a humourist with a hand of leaden gravity, a man of pretentious valour with a timorous hand, and a quiet, apologetic man with a fist of iron. When I was a little girl I was taken to see[A] a woman who was blind and paralysed. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... parasol for cacao in Java, we see that the proportion of shade trees to cacao is high. Leguminous trees are preferred because they conserve the nitrogen in the soil. Hence in Trinidad the favourite shade tree is Erythrina or Bois Immortel (so called, a humourist suggests, because it is short-lived). It is also rather prettily named, "Mother of Cacao." Usually the shade trees are planted about 40 feet apart, but there are cacao plantations which might cause a stranger to enquire, "Is this an ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... hopeless his adventure is, Who seeks for 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 Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the end of Charles II. He is indeed all this; and what he has more than all this peculiar to himself, I seem to convey to my own mind in some measure by saying,—that he is a quiet and sublime enthusiast with a strong tinge of the fantast,—the humourist constantly mingling with, and flashing across, the philosopher, as the darting colours in shot silk play upon the main dye. In short, he has brains in his head which is all the more interesting for a little twist in ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... moment John came into the room. "Talking about the 'Merry Maggots'?" he said. "Splendid idea of Cecilia's, isn't it? I've just been thinking it over, and what we must decide on first of all is who is to be the—the humourist. He's the really important man; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... if he didn't try so hard, feels that he must be at top pressure all the while with his face and his body and his words. Yet he could well afford to keep some of his strength in reserve, for he is a born humourist (in what one might perhaps call the Golliwog vein). But, whether it is that he underrates his own powers or that he can't contain himself, he keeps nothing in reserve; and the others, less gifted, follow his lead. They persist in "pressing," as if they had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... with the quarrel in question. Lord Irnham, in opposing ministers, made a good use of the weapons of ridicule. He remarked:—"I shall say little as to the feelings of those princes who can sell their subjects for such purposes. We have read of the humourist Sancho's wish,—'that, if he were a prince, all his subjects should be blackamoors, as he could, by the sale of them, easily turn them into ready money;' but that wish, however it may appear ridiculous ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... revolutionary movements; their misfortune, and perhaps their good luck. For dramatic material they have never been at a loss, though their art has suffered, and depth of feeling has been gained at a sad waste of other qualities. That grand old humourist Gogol has had no successors. Humour in Russia is a suspected thing. Even if there were a second Gogol he would never be allowed to put on the boards a second Revizor. We do not mean to assert that humour ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Catholic faith," she says to them, "Nature has called you before all things to unite for the salvation of your native land, and for the defence of that lordship under which God has caused you to be born and to live."[135] And these are not the mere maxims of a humourist versed in the virtues of antiquity. On the hearts of humble Frenchmen it was laid to serve the country of their birth. "Must the King be driven from his kingdom, and must we become English?" cried a man-at-arms of Lorraine in 1428.[136] The subjects of the Lilies, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... came into the room. "John," said I, "this is a truly remarkable world, and only hypercriticism would venture to suggest that it is probably conducted by an inveterate humourist. So lend me that pocket-piece of yours, and we will permit chance to settle the entire matter. That is the one intelligent way of treating anything which is really serious. You probably believe I am Robert Etheridge Townsend, but as a matter of fact, I am Hercules in the allegory. So! the beautiful ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... faintheartedness were in the house; that Caleb's scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey, before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, cold, exacting, and uninterested—never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton in short; but lived in the belief of an eccentric humourist who loved to have his jest with them, and who, while he was the Guardian Angel of their lives, disdained to hear ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... for his hero (I dare say rightly) that he was the first English writer to give a 'lengthy and appreciative notice' of 'Don Quixote.' But when he infers that Godwin was also the first English writer who recognised in Cervantes a great humourist, satirist, moralist, and artist, he seems to me to overlook Fielding and others. So Warton in his essay on 'Pope' calls 'Don Quixote' the 'most original and unrivalled work of modern times.' The book must have been popular in England ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... press agent, advance man, had a genius for things theatrical. It was inborn. Dramatic, sensitive, artistic, intuitive, he was often rendered inarticulate by the very force and variety of his feelings. A little, rotund, ugly man, with the eyes of a dreamer, the wide, mobile mouth of a humourist, the ears of a comic ol' clo'es man. His generosity was proverbial, and ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... Rev. Dr. Spencer and John Carles, who had now arrived. In fact, the clergyman with an oath praised a lad who said that Priestley ought to be ducked; Carles also promised the rabble drink; and when a local humourist asked for permission to knock the dust out of Priestley's wig, the champions of order burst out laughing. A witness at the trial averred that he saw an attorney, John Brook, go among the mob and point towards Priestley's chapel. However that may be, the rabble moved off ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose |
