"Laughable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fashionable beauties and celebrated characters of the hour have all passed and repassed through the magic lantern. A fresh showman might make his figures a little more correct, or a little more in laughable caricature, but he could produce nothing new. Alas! there is nothing new under the sun. Nothing remains for the moderns, but to practise the oldest follies the newest ways. Would you, for the sake of your female friends, know the fashionable dress of a Parisian elegante, see Seneca on ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... little less laughable, is that of a Boston girl with a neat little fortune of her own, who, when married to the young Viennese of her choice, found that he expected her to live with his family on the third floor of their "palace" (the two lower floors being rented to foreigners), and ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... remarkable and novel circumstance that the natives, who have been now for fourteen or fifteen years in close intercourse and carrying on traffic with Europeans, should not, in the course of that period, understand the nature and value of money; a laughable instance of which occurred to us a few days since. A native came to our house with a serious countenance and business-like manner, and said he wished to purchase a musket: we asked to see what he had brought in exchange for ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... who had been drawn into the house by the disturbance. The sudden and inexplicable change of conduct on the part of the soldiers petrifies Bartolo; he is literally "astonied," and Figaro makes him the victim of several laughable pranks before he recovers ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... his wig and trampled upon it, and Bentley choked himself purple again. I will admit that Jack's round bullet head, with its close-cropped, grizzled hair standing on end, would have been a whimsical, not to say laughable sight in any other (Bentley for instance)—but Jack in a rage ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... ludicrous. Able, experienced and accomplished as he was, he sometimes, under the influence of this mental disease, descended to the level of Moliere's Jourdain, and entertained malicious observers with scenes almost as laughable as that in which the honest draper was made a Mamamouchi, [169] It would have been well if this had been the worst. But it is not too much to say that of the difference between right and wrong Avaux had no more notion than a brute. One sentiment was to him in the place of religion and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... intend interes, interest interesante, interesting interin (en el), in the meantime interino, interim interior, interior, inland intervista, interview interpretar, to interpret invertir, to invest (money) invierno, winter ir, to go, to lead to irrisorio, laughable, absurd, ridiculously low (of prices) irse, to go ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... exert himself; yet when you get him in the field of your glass and see him throw back his head, expand his throat and chest, and open his mandibles as wide as he can, you quickly decide that he is not the apathetic creature his desultory song would lead you to infer. It really is laughable, and almost pathetic, too, to note how much energy he expends in the production of his ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... into laughter, beyond the limits of decorum, and of doing so without reasonable cause, merely from an inclination to laugh. Never laugh at the misfortunes of others, although they seem in some sort laughable ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... it were a sudden clap of thunder. But it was worse. It was laughable, yes, but oh, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... about the size of a tan-terrier, and so full of play, that he got himself into all sorts of shapes, and performed all the antics imaginable. But the most laughable thing was to see him as a tight-rope performer. I am sure he outdid any ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... very difficult to remember a number of good and laughable ones, so we will give a list of some, which will be quite sufficient to puzzle a roomful of ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... and learn the language by ear, which proved in my case, and I believe, it is in every case, to be the best school for learning the correct pronunciation of any language you might desire to speak, and be not laughable when you address the ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... the swollen, split lips that could not hide where once had been a tongue. He passed his hand along the shroud and lightly touched the ugly hump where the spine had been pressed and snapped, and the slanted shoulders and the twisted hips and legs. "Thou wast so laughable to all the court," he cried. "Thy bones were so comically broken. And now, another must be made for the court's delight, just so comical as thou. Aye, aye," and he sighed heavily, "Jesu have pity on the child's face of some young ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... abroad, and Gunther puffed his cheeks over it. A six-foot-two man, a monstrous leisurely merchant, who rose not to the lord of a castle and town, who did not wait for his lordship's humour, but found laughable matter in his own; who was taller than the Archduke and thought his Grace a dull dog; who made a Danae of his landlord! Was this man Jove? Who could think the Archduke a dull dog except an Emperor, or, perhaps, a great king? A king: stay now. There were wandering kings abroad. How if Richard of ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... seeds of rancour against Marie Antoinette, which Madame de Noailles carried with her to the grave. It will be seen that she declared against her at a crisis of great importance. The laughable title of Madame Etiquette, which the Dauphine gave her, clung to her through life; though conferred only in merriment, it never ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... rest satisfied, or rather unsatisfied, with this answer. But the mystery was more and more inexplicable. Either some laughable mistake or some deep-laid villany was intended. Sir John dared not pursue the subject to this extremity. He felt assured of her purity and honour. Her manners, so confiding and unsuspicious, showed a heart unacquainted ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... you think so," said Lucile, dryly, in response to Jessie's question. "If I look the way I feel I must be a very laughable object!" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... THE RUSSIANS.] Having landed at Buyukdere, with many of the Inglesi, we went to the hotel, a clean, comfortable well-fitted house, with a good cook and good wines. It was very laughable to hear the landlord execrating the Russians. "They never," said he, "spend a penny; stingy close fellows, who would eat a tallow candle down to the very end, and leave not a drop for the waiter!" He wished to God they were at the bottom of the Black Sea, with ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... his more or less unrestrained moods. At all events, the excuse of gaiety of heart—the plea of that vieil esprit Gaulois which is so often, and very rarely without need, invoked in an exculpatory capacity by modern French criticism—is the best defence ever made for Chaucer's laughable irregularities, either by his apologists or by himself. "Men should not," he says, and says very truly, "make earnest of game." But when he audaciously defends himself against the charge of impropriety by declaring that ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... somehow, vaguely impelled to action, yet for the life of him, he admitted after a moment, he could see no single direction in which action with regard to his wife would not savor of the indiscreet, if not of the ridiculous. The attitude of an aggrieved husband had always showed to him as something laughable, and an explosion of jealousy had never appeared more vulgar than it did while he sat patiently conjecturing if such a domestic cyclone might be counted upon to shake Connie to her senses. In the end he gave it up as a farce which he felt it would be beyond the power of his gravity ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... of Scarron's burlesques had always shocked his severe and pure taste. "Your father was weak enough to read Virgile travesti, and laugh over it," he would, say to Louis Racine, "but he kept it dark from me." In the Lutrin, Boileau sought the gay and the laughable under noble and polished forms; the gay lost by it, the laughable remained stamped with an ineffaceable seal. "M. Despreaux," wrote Racine to his son, "has not only received from heaven a marvellous ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Whenever mamma flew over he followed her movement with his eyes, turning his head, and showing an eager, almost painful interest, till some one took pity on him and fed him. As he saw food approaching his voice ran up several tones higher, in laughable imitation of a human baby cry. This note is of course the promise of a "caw," but the a is flattened to the sound of a in bar, which makes it a ludicrous caricature of our ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... he replied in a tone of such coaxing and significant confidence, as would have been irresistibly laughable had she understood why he used it, "I am alone, Miss Julia, and you needn't be either ashamed or daunted in sayin' whatever you like to me—maybe I could guess what you're goin' to say, but I declare to you, and that my bed may be in heaven, but, say what ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... it. He carried behind him a collection of pans and camp paraphanalia that rattled and banged about him as he rode forward. He had stuck some feathers in his coarse black hair and he was a somewhat laughable mixture of an American and ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... wailing out, if I lay cold and drowned at th' bottom o' th' canal, there—why, man, I cannot laugh at aught. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make game on what they've never knowed; as can make such laughable pictures on men, whose very hearts within 'em are so raw and sore as ours were and are, God ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Mrs. Polk, "my chief difficulty is laughable in a sense, but from another point of view it is really a stupendous problem! One old mountaineer said to me last summer, 'Them schools is the courtin'est places in the world.' I begin to think he was right, and it is not always the superficial flirting and love-making ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... every one knows it. Our possessions were diminished; but it is for that very reason that I insist on our illustrious blood being recognized. Pontius sends to command the presence of Keraunus! If it were not infuriating it would be laughable—for who is this man, who? I have told you his father was a freedman of the former prefect Claudius Balbillus, and by the favor of the Roman his father rose and grew rich. He is the descendant of slaves, and you expect ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... d'Urfe to make the countess understand how she came to be her niece. I was agreeably surprised to see the polite and dignified air with which the Italian wench listened to all this; she did not even smile, though the scene must have struck her as extremely laughable. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 'Proof, my zealous friend, proof,' he said. 'Give me proof this side of the grave for what you believe, and then you will have converted the heathen. And can your Catholic friend—or, shall I say enemy?—prove his laughable doctrine of purgatory? The dead in purgatory dependent upon the living! Why, I tell him, that smacks of Shintoism, wherein the living feed the dead! Then he points in holy indignation to the Bible. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... this stylish pastime. Indeed, in many of our larger metropolises, the popular enthusiasm has reached such heights that free "public" courses have been provided for the citizens with, I may say, somewhat laughable results, as witness the fact that I myself have often seen persons playing on these "public" courses in ordinary shirts and trousers, ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... one act a part of the chorus, squealing in some strange falsetto, produced very much the effect of our orchestra; in another, the dancers, leaping like jumping-jacks, with arms extended, passed through and through each other's ranks with extraordinary speed, neatness, and humour. A more laughable effect I never saw; in any European theatre it would have brought the house down, and the island audience roared with laughter and applause. This filled up the measure for the rival company, and they forgot themselves and decency. After each act or figure of the ballet, the performers pause ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... locomotive engineer, but went to make a great master of the new motive power. "Steam is half an Englishman," said Emerson. The temptation is strong to say that workaday electricity is half an American. Edison's own account of the incident is very laughable: "The engine was one of a number leased to the Grand Trunk by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. It had bright brass bands all over, the woodwork beautifully painted, and everything highly polished, which was the custom up to the time old Commodore Vanderbilt stopped it on his roads. After ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... most laughable book that ever was written. Certainly nobody is to be envied who does not laugh over the epistles of Winifred Jenkins. The book is too well known for analysis. The family of Matthew Bramble, Esq., are on their travels, with his nephew and niece, young Melford and ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... whoever was well acquainted with the manners, habits, and anecdotes of Paris at the time of the first appearance of Figaro, will always admire in it a combination of keen and pointed satire, easy wit, and laughable incident.-B. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... gone since they came to camp. He rowed and swam and fished and tramped with fully as much enthusiasm as did Jimmy himself, and with almost as much vigor. Around the camp fire at night he quite rivaled Jamie with his story-telling of adventures, both laughable and thrilling, that had befallen him in ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... Many laughable incidents occurred while we were skirmishing with the enemy at Laurel Hill. We received a newspaper containing the message of President Lincoln. One of the Indiana boys, thinking it might do the secesh good to ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... understand many things that may be vexatious to us; and we were very uncomfortable for a while. I don't think Fanny was so much to blame; but her mother seemed to fancy that the new mistress of the house was not to be allowed to have her place without a struggle. Arthur saw nothing wrong. It was laughable, and irritating, too, sometimes, to see how blind he was. But it was far better he did not. ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... describe the state of Frederic's mind, if we left out of view the laughable peculiarities which contrasted so singularly with the gravity, energy, and harshness of his character. It is difficult to say whether the tragic or the comic predominated in the strange scene which was then acting. In the midst of all the great King's calamities, his passion ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... my dear; it is all very lamentable and laughable, but we must submit till the world learns better. There are often excellent young persons among the 'grasshoppers,' and if you cared to look you might find a pleasant friend here and there," said Mr. Yule, leaning a little toward his ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... than this had it not been that Mr. Green, of the Maryland Gazette, could not refrain from printing the story in his paper. That gentleman, being a stout Whig, took great delight in pointing out that a grandson of Mr. Carvel was a ringleader in the affair. The story was indeed laughable enough, and many a barrister's wig nodded over it at the Coffee House that day. When I came home from school I found Scipio beside my grandfather's empty seat in the dining-room, and I learned that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... It was laughable to see how the eyes of some of the scouts seemed to almost stick out of their heads when they listened to how Paul first discovered the moving object up in the big oak. They turned their heads, and looked up eagerly, as though half expecting to see another ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... and finally left it with Mrs. Thrale, as a member of her family, to reside in her house at Brighton, as her guest, for six weeks.[1] To talk of conscious ill-treatment or wounded dignity, in the teeth of facts like these, is laughable. ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... a trivial game. But it is not trivial; and there is no spot where man acts, there is nothing that he does, that is insignificant. Perhaps you have a quick eye for the foibles of people, and can detect their vanities, and meannesses, and laughable conceits. If you employ this gift to correct a bad habit, or expose a falsehood, it is well enough. But if it induces you to look upon things merely with the skill of a satirist, then let me say, there is no "ludicrous side" to life; ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... diligently all day. Of course many things were strange to them, and they made some laughable blunders; but they invariably took things so pleasantly that none of the customers ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... from animal and plant life for the teleological argument is very laughable; take, for ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... public is very much more interested in matter than in form, and it is for this very reason that it is behindhand in any high degree of culture. It is most laughable the way the public reveals its liking for matter in poetic works; it carefully investigates the real events or personal circumstances of the poet's life which served to give the motif of his works; nay, finally, it finds these more interesting than the works ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... there a piece of goods among these costly gifts, things given as great treasures, which faintly upheld the ancient fame of the cradle of the industrial arts. Nay, in some cases, it would have been laughable, if it had not been so sad, to see the piteous simplicity with which the conquered race had copied the blank vulgarity of their lords. And this deterioration we are now, as I have said, actively engaged in forwarding. I have read a little book, {3} a handbook ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... we have agreed upon as the great central fact of human life is the golden thread that runs through all religions. When we make it the paramount fact in our lives we will find that minor differences, narrow prejudices, and all these laughable absurdities will so fall away by virtue of their very insignificance, that a Jew can worship equally as well in a Catholic cathedral, a Catholic in a Jewish synagogue, a Buddhist in a Christian church, a Christian in a Buddhist temple. Or all can worship equally well about ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... in silence that he made as haughty as he could, but not so haughty that Trannel did not find it laughable, and he laughed in a teasing way that made Breckon more and more serious. He was aware of becoming even solemn with the question of his likeness to Trannel. He was of Trannel's quality, and their difference ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... there were not many laughable accidents. The capers both boys and girls involuntarily cut led to shouts of laughter, and sometimes to a little pain. For the frozen crust underneath the light surface snow offered a rather hard foundation ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... would have been laughable but for its element of peril. Darting to the side of the stump opposite to that of the bear, Herbert would drop his head, and then instantly pop up again, like a jack-in-the-box, to see what the brute was doing. The latter, it may ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... white-fish of about six pounds weight at the first dip, and scarcely had he thrown it on the ice when Maximus gave a galvanic start, hauled up his line a few yards with laughable eagerness, then stopped suddenly, under the impression, apparently, that it was a false alarm; but another tug set him again in motion, and in three seconds he pulled a fine lake-trout of about ten pounds weight out of the ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... deliberately the most laughable blunders, at some of which Miss Davis herself had to smile. Even Phyllis had to give way on one occasion, and in the midst of a chorus of laughter Hetty stood making a piteous face, pretending not to know what they ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... circulated and believed that he was a mere fool in conversation; but, in truth, this has been greatly exaggerated. He had, no doubt, a more than common share of that hurry of ideas which we often find in his countrymen, and which sometimes produces a laughable confusion in expressing them. He was very much what the French call un etourdi, and from vanity and an eager desire of being conspicuous wherever he was, he frequently talked carelessly without knowledge of the subject, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... the audience, who were beginning to be restless. At first it was only a tremor; but soon Christophe was left without a doubt; they were laughing. The musicians of the orchestra had given the signal; some of them did not conceal their hilarity. The audience, certain then that the music was laughable, rocked with laughter. This merriment became general; it increased at the return of a very rhythmical motif which the double-basses accentuated in a burlesque fashion. Only the Kapellmeister went on through ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... painter wishes to see beautiful things which will enchant him he is able to beget them; if he wishes to see monstrous things which terrify, or grotesque and laughable things, or truly piteous things, he can dispose of all these; if he wishes to evoke places and deserts, shady or dark retreats in the hot season, he represents them, and likewise warm places in the cold ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... Some that will ever more peep through their eyes, And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper; And others of such vinegar aspect, That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable." ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... is the basal element in the laughable? What common ground can we find between the grimace of a merry-andrew, a play upon words, an equivocal situation in a burlesque and a scene of high comedy? What method of distillation will yield us invariably the ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... partner from among his subjects, the administration could not even tell him the number of white lambs from whom he could make his choice. It would be obliged to resort to some competition which awards the rose of good conduct, and that would be a laughable event. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... most laughable effect the raising of a whole host of phantoms, and when a State is so far gone that civic Fear is quite normal to the citizens, then you will find them blenching with terror at a piece of print, a whispered accusation. Bankruptcy, though they be possessed of nothing, and even the ill-will ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... we have said, and judging from that natural tendency of his mind to look at even serious things on the ridiculous, laughable side, would it be correct to infer that Lord Byron was always gay, and never melancholy? Those maintaining such an opinion, would have to bear too many contradictions. Physiology, psychology, and history, would together ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... upon the ground; griffins claw after antelopes, or antelopes toy with winged lions; even in the hunting scenes, which are less simply ludicrous, there seems to be an occasional striving after strange and laughable attitudes, as when a stricken bull tumbles upon his head, with his tail tossed straight in the air [PLATE LXV., Fig. 31], or when a lion receives his death-wound with arms outspread, and mouth wildly ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... Michel, threats of damage suits for fright and delay, laughable stories of the mistakes of the volunteer crew of the Noa-Noa; discussions of the price of copra, mingled with the chants of the native feasters and ribald tales. The Tiare girls, all color and sparkle, exchanged ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... so quickly establishes the condition of comradeship as the sharing of a laughable incident. Certain reserves went down on both sides. Spurlock discussed the affairs of the island and Ruth gave him in exchange her adventures with the native girl who was to ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... that we are even of more importance in Baton Rouge than we thought we were. It is laughable to hear the things a certain set of people, who know they can't visit us, say about the whole family.... When father was alive, they dared not talk about us aloud, beyond calling us the "Proud Morgans" and the "Aristocracy of Baton Rouge".... But now father ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... laughable to see the way Howard would tremble and shake while Gen. Connor was talking to him, and he was anxious to get out of the country and wanted me to go with him, it being the wrong time of year to catch a train going East. He thought if he could get to Fort ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... the drama to which they devoted themselves had produced, in these ladies, some effects doubtless more interesting than profitable to observe. One of them, whose unhappiness it was to take the part of soubrette in the Laughable Commedietta preceding the burlesque, was so ill at ease in drapery, so full of awkward jerks and twitches, that she seemed quite another being when she came on later as a radiant young gentleman in pink silk hose, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... is a laughable tradition, still generally current in Lancashire, that our knight-making monarch, finding, it is presumed, no undubbed man worthy of the chivalric order, knighted at the banquet in Hoghton Tower, in the warmth of his honour-bestowing liberality, a loin of beef, the part ever since called the sirloin. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... first camp. The clothing could be freed of them by boiling in salt water or by going carefully over the seams and picking them off. The latter operation was a frequent occupation with the men on any day which was warm enough to permit them to disrobe for the purpose. One of the most laughable sights I ever beheld was the whole brigade, halted for a couple of hours' rest one hot day, with clothing off, "skirmishing," as the boys called it, for "graybacks." This was one of the many unpoetical features of army ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... count screwed his chubby features into a laughable mask of gravity. "Now one remembers quite well. He passed as a collector of objets d'art, especially of fine paintings, in Paris, for years before the War—this Monsieur Michael Lanyard. Then he disappeared. It was rumoured that he was of good service to the Allies as a spy, acting ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... remaining debt contracted for the said saint, in erecting this handsome edifice dedicated to his name—let us hope not to his service. Yet the idea of erecting a temple for the worship of God, and calling it the church of a saint of very doubtful sanctity, is one of those laughable absurdities that we would gladly see banished in this enlightened age. Truly, there are many things in which our wisdom does not exceed the wisdom of our forefathers. The weather during the two first days of the exhibition was very unpropitious; a succession of drenching thunder showers, ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the whole of his stock of instruments for extinguishing flame were at one fell swoop destroyed. "'Tis rare to see the engineer hoist with his own petard," says the poet; and certainly it was a most laughable contre-temps to see the fire-engines arrive at the manufactory just in time to witness the fire-annihilators annihilated by the fire. A similar mishap occurred to these unfortunate implements at Paris. In juxtaposition with this case we are tempted to put another, in which the attempt ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... with all the elegance he could command, and obeyed Mademoiselle La Blache's summons, building all sorts of castles in the air as he arranged his toilet and while he was climbing the staircase. His affected airs were so laughable, she told him in a mock-heroic manner what she wished of him, and probably with something of that paternal talent which had shaken so many opera-houses with applause:—"I have sent for you to teach me the song I hear you sing every day." This downfall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... vulgarized any one else but a general. He made himself very pleasant, accepted a cup of tea, praised Mary's French, said that he intended to dine with us at the Commandant's to-morrow, and told us some laughable stories about the Arabs. I noticed that the Lieutenant seemed quite overawed by the presence of the General, and sat flute in hand, like a statue. Mary tried to put him at his ease, but to no purpose. It did not mend matters when the General ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... on about his own affairs, my heart began to warm towards Farnham. He was not a particularly brilliant fellow, though a good business man; but he had such a whimsical face, with its bright eyes, its good-natured mouth, and its laughable, upturned nose! He was so frankly interested in life, so enthusiastic, so outspoken, so boyish in many of his ways, despite his forty years! I found myself almost inclined to be sorry that he was ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... has assumed his disguise, and comes forth tricked up with false hair and the dress of a Bacchanal; but still with some misgivings at the thought of going thus attired through the streets of Thebes, and with many laughable readjustments of the unwonted articles of clothing. And with the woman's dress, his madness is closing faster round him; just before, in the palace, terrified at the noise of the earthquake, he had drawn sword upon ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... philosophy as any ploughman, the Prince of Bohemia was not without a taste for ways of life more adventurous and eccentric than that to which he was destined by his birth. Now and then, when he fell into a low humour, when there was no laughable play to witness in any of the London theatres, and when the season of the year was unsuitable to those field sports in which he excelled all competitors, he would summon his confidant and Master of the Horse, Colonel Geraldine, and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Brandt would consequently get only fifteen gold-pieces. Ah, you look at me in surprise. You wonder that I should be aware of that, too? I am no magician, however, and have acquired my knowledge of this laughable incident in a very simple manner. Look here, this is the written agreement you ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Laughable as the matter was in one sense, there was—and the fair widow had noticed as well as myself—a serious, menacing expression in the man's eye not to be trifled with; and at her earnest request, we accompanied her ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... without any intimation. Then, erratically, it turned to Vigne, to Vigne and young Sandby with his fresh cheeks and impending penniless years acquiring a comprehension of the bond market. She said, "I wonder if she really likes Bailey?" Arnaud's energy of dismay was laughable, "What criminal folly! They haven't finished ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... laughable presentation of some Americans at home and abroad, on their vacations, and during their ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... her head, but Mercedes, elated at the opportunity of singing the praises of her idol, regaled them with a laughable description of Tabitha's mishap. This led to other boarding school reminiscences,—the christening of the vessel, when Cassandra took her memorable plunge into the ocean; the night of the opera and their experiences with the runaway ostriches; ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... conceited young gentleman. He was good-natured, and loved his cousin; but he loved better to tease and hoax her. Having lived all her little life in India, Meggie was exceedingly ignorant of customs and things in her new home, and was continually making laughable mistakes, and asking the most absurd questions. This "greenness," as he called it, gave Archie immense delight, and he was never tired of mystifying and hoaxing the sweet-tempered little girl, who never resented his quizzings ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... of the school of conceit; but he has some few scattered thoughts that meet the eye amidst his harsh pages, like wild flowers on a barren heath.' Surely this is rather 'harsh' judgment. At the same time, it is not a little laughable to find that Campbell has himself appropriated one of these 'wild flowers.' In his beautiful 'Rainbow,' ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... there glowed with stronger radiance the charm of his quaint genius and his magnetic personality—tragic, homely, gentle, humorous, honest, merciful, wise, laughable and lovable. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... She Stoops to Conquer are Goldsmith's two comedies. The former, a comedy of character, though it has some laughable scenes and one laughable character, Croaker, met with failure on the stage, and has never been revived with any success. The latter, a comedy of intrigue, is one of the few plays that has never lost its popularity. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... and the first speech young Lincoln ever made was made there. He used to call the exercising "practicing polemics." As these clubs were composed principally of men of no education whatever, some of their "polemics" are remembered as the most laughable of farces. Lincoln's favorite newspaper at this time was the "Louisville Journal." He received it regularly by mail, and paid for it during a number of years when he had not money enough to dress decently. He liked its politics, and was particularly delighted with its wit and humor, of which ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... which oppressed me, I could not help smiling at the playful imagination of Agnes: She had perfectly preserved Dame Cunegonda's resemblance, but had so much exaggerated every fault, and rendered every feature so irresistibly laughable, that I could easily conceive the ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... to correctly state the number of copies of this laughable book that have been sold, but it would reach into the millions. We propose to continue its popularity by making a low-priced cloth edition. Price, 30 ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... analysis brings the searcher for the truth face to face with the very witnesses who have left behind them, in the attested records, the ludicrous or solemn, the pitiable or laughable memorials of their own folly, delusion, or deviltry, which marked them then and now ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... red-coats flocked up to the door, and it was laughable to see the knowledge of character displayed by the gossoons in the selection of their customers. One or two, who were known to be "bad pays," were allowed to dismount without molestation of any kind, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... such miscarried mysticism appear as rather extraordinary saints. So, for instance, Count von Zinzendorf's warm love of the Savior has so much of the sensual flavor, with furthermore such decided perversities, that the outpourings of his rapture are positively laughable. Thus the pious man indulges his phantasy with a marked predilection for voluptuousness in the "Seitenhoelchen" (Wound in the Side) in Jesus' body and with an unmistakable identification of ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... most monstrous to the most puerile, from that which is hideous to that which is laughable, are stamped with this twofold scheme. For instance, national solemnities bore him. The 24th of February and the 4th of May: these are disagreeable or dangerous reminders, which obstinately return at fixed periods. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... family will laugh over this deliciously humorous novel, that pictures the sunny side of small-town life, and contains love-making, a dash of mystery, an epidemic of spook-chasing—and laughable, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... strange something known as magnetism. He must have a flexible, musical voice, capable of expressing the pathetic, the humorous, the heroic. His body must move in unison with his thought. He must be a reasoner, a logician. He must have a keen sense of humor —of the laughable. He must have wit, sharp and quick. He must have sympathy. His smiles should be the neighbors of his tears. He must have imagination. He should give eagles to the air, and painted moths ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of the later and more human processes of industry. Because they see life in this way they imagine that skill and practice in the art of fighting, especially in collective fighting, is so valuable in our modern life. This is an archaism which would be laughable if it were not ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... instance, Ictinus confides to the reporter that he was born in the shadow of the Parthenon. This mixing up of one's peculiarities, habits, and nationality with those of the illustrious individual whose name he bears, is capable of being given many laughable twists and has been taken advantage ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 10, October 1895. - French Farmhouses. • Various
... the most laughable we ever witnessed. In the first scene one of those marble statues, so peculiar to John T.'s mismanagement, that resemble granite in a bad state ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... Only he that is lord of the years is obdurate. If a man prayed for life to a furious, merciless Sultan well might the Sultan's slaves laugh. Yet it is not laughable to pray ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... these black people were, afterall. I was relieved from further ramblings by the arrival of the bus which was as laughable as the chief dispatcher's philosophizing. The dented and rusty vehicle had been disencumbered of its motor and was hitched to four mules who seemed less than enthusiastic over their lot. I got in and seated myself gingerly on one of the dilapidated seats, noting that the warning signs "For ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... years and five months old, And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks; 'Tis writ so in the church's register, Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names At length, so many names for one poor child, —Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela Pompilia Comparini—laughable!" ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... woman in the veil! Who could she be? The more he thought of her the more convinced he was that she stood high in the service of any one but Leopold of Osia. And Fitzgerald! That sober old soldier concerned with crowns and millions! It was incredible; it was almost laughable. They had met up-country in India, and had hunted, and Maurice had saved the Englishman's life. Occasionally they ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... shown by the old man's laughter at the distress of his fellowmen roused Jon's ire. He could see nothing laughable about the desperate ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... her those services which the English tyrant exacts from his consort. One may often hear an American matron commiserate a friend who has married in Europe, while the daughters declare in chorus that they will never follow the example. Laughable as all this may seem to English women, it is perfectly true that the theory as well as the practice of conjugal life is not the same in America as in England. There are overbearing husbands in America, but they are more condemned by the opinion of the neighborhood ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... all my old comrades, the better men, are dead, and I, the least of them all, remain, having even outlived the cause. What praise shall I take for this? None—from all decent fellows of the earth, none at all. It is merely laughable that I should be left, the monument of a sacred loyalty greater than the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... certainly lost your senses," she said, and slipped her hand into his arm. "Come down into the garden: I like it in the twilight—and that pile of stones over there will not weigh upon our eyes; the trees hide it. Come, my Ange: tell me all your news, serious and laughable. I am glad you were helping your uncle; but I do not like you to be ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... Ollapodiana will be remembered with admiration and pleasure, by readers in every section of the United States. Their rich variety of subject; their alternate humor and pathos; the one natural, quiet, and irresistibly laughable; the other warm from the heart, and touching in its tenderness and beauty; won for them the cordial and unanimous praise of the press throughout the Union, and frequent laudatory notices from the English journals. Reminiscences of early days; expositions of the Ludicrous and the Burlesque, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... 'Laughable, ridiculous, comical, and absurd, as I always thought and believed Lieutenant Puddock to be, I yet believe the asking such a question of me to be a stretch of absurdity, from which his breeding, for he is a gentleman, will restrain him. Besides, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... increases it, that it strengthens its effects? All our sentiments are without doubt in a sense revealed to us by others. How many, as Rochefoucauld says, would be ignorant of love if they had never read novels! How many in the same way would never have discovered by themselves the laughable side of people and things. Yet even the feelings which one experiences by contagion one can experience only of one's own accord, in one's own way, and according to one's disposition. This fact alone of their contagion proves that from one's birth one carries the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... was what made the mistake in names so laughable. Fairbain gave me your message, but as coming from Christie. I was, of course, greatly surprised, yet responded. The lady very promptly denied having sent for me, but as I was anxious to interview her myself, we managed to drift into conversation, and I must have passed ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... on the top, and, in these garlands, spoons, and other little valuables, are placed. The high smooth round pole is then well greased; and now he who can climb up to the top may have what he can get,—a very laughable scene as you may suppose, of awkwardness and agility, and failures on the very brink of success. Now began a dance. The women danced very well, and, in general, I have observed throughout Germany that the women in the ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... an officer in your American army at home. To be a corporal must seem laughable to you. And yet, the stripe is more than just a mere ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... of an encounter between a bear and a bull, which is also rather laughable, although there is a good deal of the tragic in it. A bull was attacked in the forest by a rather small bear, when, striking his horns into his assailant, he pinned him against a tree. In this situation ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... the press. All green-room and tap-room—drams and the drama—brandy, whisky-punch, and, latterly, toddy, overflow every page. Two things are rather marvellous,—first, that a man should live so long drunk, and, next, that he should have found a sober biographer. There are some very laughable things in it, nevertheless;—but the pints he swallowed, and the parts he ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... for that prejudice. The father of Samuel J. Mills was a very eccentric man and anecdotes of him have been repeatedly told. I attended his church the summer I was in Torringford. He was the strangest man I ever saw, and would say so many laughable things in his sermon that it was next to impossible for me to keep from laughing out loud. His congregation was composed mostly of farmers, and in hot weather they appeared to be very sleepy. The boys would sometimes ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... something very pitiable in these humors, Mr. EDITOR; indeed very laughable, if your mouth is shaped to that effect; but as it happens with me to-night, my mouth refuses to twitch except in one direction. Its corners have what Prof. P—— used to call the 'downward tendencies.' Perhaps it is because this is with me the anniversary ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... France was seized with a shiver at their sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful acclamation of the army and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable in it, and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of the Bishop of D——, ought not perhaps to have failed to recognize the august and touching features presented ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... display of sackcloth and ashes; but I know not. I can understand the weeping-willow taste among people, who have too little wit or too little Christianity to be cheerful, but it is a wonder to find the luxury of gloom united to the keenest perception of the laughable in such a man as ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... consists of words deliberately introduced by writers at a late period. Thus 'adorable' began as a penman's word. Following 'in['e]xorable' and the like it should have been '['a]dorable'. Actually it was formed by adding -able to 'ad['o]re', like 'laughable'. It is now too stiff in the joints to think of a change, and must continue to figure with the other sins ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... with a sob which I turn away to conceal. I don't wish to excite his mirth. Of course he would only see something laughable in my grief, and he couldn't dream what I ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... volume Miss Ailie knew that her sister's hold on life was loosening. "How bright the world suddenly seems," Mr. McLean read, "when there is the tiniest improvement in the health of an invalid one loves." Is it laughable that such a note as this is appended to a recipe for beef-tea? "It is surely not very wicked to pretend to Kitty that I keep some of it for myself; she would not take it all if she knew I dined on the beef it was made from." ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... English exercises, and his verses, will not easily be forgotten. And it will be remembered also, in a laughable way, that he was as mischievous as a gentleman need be; the mobbing a vulgar, the hoaxing a quiz, all the dialect of the Thames below Chelsea-reach, and the whole reach of every thing, pleasant but wrong, which the school statutes put out of reach, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of blank amazement was so genuine and laughable that the missionary could hardly repress a smile. He felt that his last remark was hardly fair. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... approached him. At first he was nonplussed, and next thing, taking it as a joke on my part, was highly amused. Miss Grosvenor, on her side, thought he was joking, with the result that there was the liveliest and most laughable conversation between them. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... not proved profitable. Few of us gathered any eggs; one who was more successful, and had secured enough to make it extremely difficult for him to scale the rocks, slipped, fell on his face, and scrambled all his store. His plight was laughable, but he was scarcely in the mood to relish it, as he washed his sack and blouse in cold water, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... met seem to me merely parasitic or secondary personalities (to use Maxwell's term), drawn from the psychic or from myself. Nearly every one of the mediums I have studied has had at least one guide, whose voice and habit of thought were perilously similar to her own. This, in some cases, has been laughable, as when 'Rolling Thunder,' a Sioux chief (Indians are all chiefs in the spirit world), appears and says: 'Goot efening, friends; id iss a nice night alretty.' And yet I have seen a whole roomful of people receive communications from a spirit of this kind ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... no more any heat in our bodies, the non-conducting quality of a substance was no appreciable advantage. To avoid the greater cold near the floor, several of our number got upon the tables, presenting, with their feet tucked under them, an aspect that would have been sufficiently laughable under other circumstances. But, as a rule, fun does not survive the freezing point. Every few moments the beams of the house snapped like the timbers of a straining ship, and at intervals the frozen ground cracked with a ...
— The Cold Snap - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... affording him an example of successful fraud, which he will generally at least endeavour to imitate. On Sunday, the inhabitants of Wahu make their appearance at church in full dress to be admired; and if the spectacle on these occasions is not so thoroughly laughable as at O Tahaiti, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... to take Anita in," said Mrs. Ellersly. With a laughable sense that I was doing myself proud, I crossed the room easily and took my stand in front of her. She shook hands with me politely enough. Langdon was sitting beside her; I ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... her daughters had a good word, a soft word from you, till you found out their beards. No mercy with them after that with you—the cowardly disguise—pike for pike was the cry. It was laughable to see you, and to hear you, as you brought a battery that could never reach them—fired upon them the reproach of Diogenes to an effeminate—"If he was offended with nature for making him a man, and not a woman;" and the affirmation of the Pedasians, from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... description of the boy's beauty, assisted in recalling them. The other is, that the idiocy of the boy is so evenly balanced by the folly of the mother, as to present to the general reader rather a laughable burlesque on the blindness of anile dotage, than an analytic display of maternal ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... frequent intervals with his chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts.' Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in his favourite character of Mr. William Button, of Tooley Street, in 'the highly novel and laughable hippo- comedietta of The ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... the effect of the fine old building. He visited the most frequented places, carrying always with him his sketch-book, in which to note down his observations; he followed criminals to execution in order to witness the pangs of despair; he invited peasants to his house and told them laughable stories, that he might pick up from their faces the essence of comic expression.[4] A mania for truth—alike in great and ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... entertained with great civility by Toobou, the chief, who gave us much amusement by a sort of pantomime, in which some prizefighters displayed their feats of arms, and this part of the drama concluded with the presentation of some laughable story which produced among the chiefs and their attendants the most immoderate mirth. This friendly reception was also repeated in the island of Hapaee, where Captain Cook ordered an exhibition of fireworks, and in return the king, Feenou, gave us an exhibition of dances in which ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... delightful, in fact!" cried Elizabeth, clapping her little hands. "How will Munnich curse himself for cruelty which now comes home to himself! That is very witty in you, Herr Lestocq; very laughable, is it not, Alexis? But, Alexis, you do not laugh at all; you look sad. What is the matter with you? Who has disobliged, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... nobles ridiculous, they were obliged to fasten on the political actions of their opponents; while the intermediate party, composed of officials and others who paid court to the higher powers, kept the nobles informed of all that was done and said in the Liberal camp, and much of it was abundantly laughable. Du Croisier's adherents smarted under a sense of inferiority, which increased their thirst ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... skin, integument sleep-walking, somnambulism hide, epidermis bird, ornithology fleshly, carnal bird, aviary hearer, auditor bee, apiary snake, serpent bending, flexible heap, aggregation wrinkle, corrugation laugh, cachinnation slow, dilatory laughable, risible lime, calcimine fear, trepidation coal, lignite live, exist man, anthropology bridal, nuptial winter, hibernate wed, marry gap, hiatus husband/wife, spouse right, ethical shore, littoral showy, ostentatious forswear, perjure spelling, orthography ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... you've 'ad a article printed by this 'ere Punch, Sir," he said. "Somethink laughable it'd ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... to furnish laughable amusement," said Detective Gubb seriously. "What did Mrs. Canterby say when she asked for ink and you didn't ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... most laughable things that one sees in the Orient are the Japanese signs translated into English by some Japanese merchant who has picked up a dash of ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... is not by me; and, if it were, its defilement is such that I could not be tempted to give it at length. Laughable and lamentable as the article is in the main, I still thank Hibbard for some portions of it, and especially for that one which substantiates the charge which I have brought against the "respectable men of Fulton." Thus ends ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... condition. We have many good farces; and an unending source of material for amusing plays is found in the relationship between the spirit world and earth, and the eccentric conditions growing out of that relationship. For instance, there is a laughable comedy being enacted at my theatre, depicting the adventures of a pious merchant, who, after the toils and cares of life, becomes a resident ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... It was laughable—the look of indignant astonishment with which the widow regarded her housekeeper, as in the simple honesty of her ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Georges; the first reading had only three auditors, the second not one; so Thackeray went away. Bellew is uncertain; sometimes having empty benches, sometimes overflowing ones, according to the programme, whether serious or laughable. Tom Hood gave a lecture on Humour, which was so dull that the audience left him. Miss Glyn Dallas often reads 'Cleopatra,' magnificently too, to empty benches. Sims Reeves draws a vast audience, but sometimes at the last moment refuses to sing (probably paying forfeit) because he is always ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... first occasions on which he attempted to put my lessons into practice, it was even more alarming than laughable to watch the Emperor (for such he was then); as in spite of the lessons that I had given him with repeated illustrations, he did not yet know how to hold his razor. He would seize it by the handle, and apply it perpendicularly ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... us are poets of one sort or another when we love. Do you not understand? To-day I do not love you any more than I do Hecuba. Is it not strange that I should tell you this and not be moved at all? Is it not laughable that we should stand here at the last, two feet apart as things physical go, and be as profoundly severed as if ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... adj. lu'dicrus, sportive, laughable); allude', literally, to play at, to refer ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... to our great joy, an unclouded sun rose upon the prairie. We presented rather a laughable appearance, for the cold and clammy buckskin, saturated with water, clung fast to our limbs; the light wind and warm sunshine soon dried them again, and then we were all incased in armor of intolerable rigidity. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... gaze upon us for some time; but, seeing that we remained immovable, he began to throw himself into the most extravagant attitudes, shaking his foot from time to time. When he found that all his violence had no effect, he turned his rear to us in a most laughable manner, and absolutely groaned in spirit when he found that this last insult failed ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... disturb or look into it, though, as the accompanying photograph shows, it is sometimes found on rocks near the ground. The young hawks have a way of their own of defending themselves from any climbing creature, and to investigators of the nest the results are disastrously disagreeable as well as laughable. As the intruder climbs near, the baby birds put their heads over the sides of the nest and empty their stomachs upon him. This is vouched for by a well-known writer who claims to have ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... professor was so excited that he could scarcely hold the binocular firmly enough to look through it, and it was really laughable—to his companions—to hear his "Ach's" and "Pish's" of impatience as he vainly strove to steady his trembling hands and get another good look at the herd of hitherto believed extinct monsters, which were quietly ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Miss Phoebe," he would say cheerfully, when he had broken down for the twentieth time, "play on and I'll catch you up." He had thus a series of trysting places in every page or two, which might have been very laughable to an indifferent spectator, but which aggravated the Mays, father and son, to an intolerable extent. They were the two who suffered. As for Horace Northcote, who was not a great talker, it was a not disagreeable shield ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... machicolated parapets to seem a fortress, or an encircling wall to seem a frowning monastery where cowled figures met each other only to whisper sepulchrally, "Brother, we must die," it was yet the scene of not a few laughable experiences. And perhaps even in this respect it may not have differed so widely as one might think from cloistered shades of other days, when out of sad, earth-colored raiment and the habit of dismal speech human sentiment painted pictures while yet the fagots grew apace for their destruction ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... not the slightest divergence of opinion in the British ranks as to the German infantry fire. "Their shooting is laughable," "they couldn't hit a haystack in an entry," and "asses with the rifle," are how our men dispose of it. The Germans fire recklessly with their rifles planted against their hips, while Tommy Atkins takes cool and steady ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... hussar-jacket buttons, and warmly ornamented with a little fur collar of fox's skin. Great-coats, formerly of bottle-green, rendered by time invisible, edged with a black cord, and brightened by a lining of plaid, blue and yellow, which had a most laughable effect. Coats, formerly styled the "swallow-tails," of a reddish-brown, with a handsome collar of plush, ornamented with buttons, once gilt, but now of a copper color. There were also to be seen Polish cloaks, with collars ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... wished to be saluted as the son of Jupiter, not from motives of pride but of policy, as he showed by his answer to the invective of Hermolaus: "It is almost laughable," said he, that Hermolaus asked me to contradict Jupiter, by whose oracle I am recognized. (33) Am I responsible for the answers of the gods? (34) It offered me the name of son; acquiescence was by no means foreign to my present designs. (35) Would that the ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... was so profound that it struck Babette, she must press his hand. They walked along almost like old acquaintances; she was so amusing, the darling little creature, it became her so prettily Rudy thought, when she described what was laughable and overdone in the dress of the ladies, and ridiculed their manners and walk. She did not do this in order to mock them, for no doubt they were very good people, yes! kind and amiable. Babette knew ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen |
