"Buffoon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been a buffoon, and his dress still bore many tokens of his former profession. His big head swayed upon his thin neck; his droll, though emaciated features constantly changed their expression, and even when he was not coughing, his mouth was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... alterations in the original rude form of this poem, and as Thespis was the first that made any improvement in it, he was generally esteemed its inventor. Before him, tragedy was no more than a jumble of buffoon tales in the comic style, intermixed with the singing of a chorus in praise of Bacchus; for it is to the feasts of that god, celebrated at the time of the vintage, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... and wiles, but often at a loss for a meal of victuals; ever itching to try his arts magic on great beasts and often meeting ludicrous failures therein; envious of the powers of others, and constantly striving to outdo them in what they do best; in short, little more than a malicious buffoon delighting in practical jokes, and abusing his superhuman powers for selfish and ignoble ends. But this is a low, modern, and corrupt version of the character of Michabo, bearing no more resemblance to his real and ancient one than the language and acts ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... to say? What explanation have you to offer for your conduct? You have behaved like a buffoon, ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... the idea which these repeated and exhausted words throw into relief. Rhetoric is content to borrow force from simpler methods; a good orator will often bring his hammer down, at the end of successive periods, on the same phrase; and the mirthless refrain of a comic song, or the catchword of a buffoon, will raise laughter at last by its brazen importunity. Some modem writers, admiring the easy power of the device, have indulged themselves with too free a use of it; Matthew Arnold particularly, in his prose essays, falls to crying his text like ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... were two serious old men; one was a model, a native of Frascati, with the face of a venerable apostle; the other, for contrast, looked like a buffoon and was the possessor of a grotesque nose, long, thin at the end and adorned ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... falls in the unequal contest. Still his pride, or his gravity, (call it which you will) is inherent, and native to the man, not mock or affected, which latter only are the fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is at the best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible. His bearing is lofty, a little above his station, but probably not much above his deserts. We see no reason why he should not have been brave, honourable, accomplished. His careless committal ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... was the reincarnation of a mythical character, half buffoon, half magician. He was cunning, crafty, humorous, and evil, all in one, and no doings of the animal folk ever progressed very far without the entrance of the "coyote doctor" on the scene. He was the doer of tricks and caster of spells, but still he himself met with ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... fantastical; something which comes upon a man by fits which he can neither command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly consistent with true politeness. Humour, it has been said, is often more diverting than wit; yet a man of wit is as much above a man of humour as a gentleman is above a buffoon; a buffoon, however, will often divert more ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... shrugged their shoulders. Jonathas, opening wide his little eyes, gave a forced, buffoon-like laugh. Nothing could be more absurd, said he, than the idea that a human body could have eternal life; and he declaimed, for the benefit of the proconsul, this line from a ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... the part of a clown or buffoon, acting in a very silly and stupid manner, while the others looked on laughing and pointing their fingers at ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... boys. Foster, it is true, had got on well according to his lights, and was on more than friendly terms with Evans, the school slow bowler. But he was not much liked by his equals. Rudd was looked on quite rightly as an absolute buffoon; Collins got on fairly well, but was generally admitted to be a bit eccentric. Gordon was, without doubt, the pick of the crew. His position in form was a great help. Mansell's friends thought him a cheerful, amusing and respectable-looking ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... opera ends for us; but originally, after the catastrophe the persons of the play, all but the reprobate whom divine justice has visited, returned to the scene to hear a description of the awful happenings he had witnessed from the buffoon who had hidden under the table, to dispose their plans for the future (for Ottavio and Anna, marriage in a year; for Masetto and Zerlina, a wedding instanter; for Elvira, a nunnery), and platitudinously to moralize that, the perfidious ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... hunchback in question was the favourite buffoon of the Sultan, who could not bear him out of his sight: so when he got drunk and did not make his appearance that night or next day, the Sultan asked the courtiers about him and they replied, 'O our lord, the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... repeated, with glistening eyes, "you have forgotten the iron railing. Without his protection the poor Goose Man is to be sure your buffoon, your zany, your clown." ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... gross jests, which are found in the comedies of our time, and which are their meat rather than the spice, are the reasons why he who says 'Comedy' seems to speak of a buffoon's pastime. They wrong themselves who give to such gracious poesy a sense so unworthy. True comedy, properly regarded, has for its object the representation in divers personages of almost all the actions of familiar life. To hold the mirror ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... Theophrastus, who made a grimace as behoved a well-bred man like him. The old man called to him, "Hi! tell me then what you have to be proud of? Not so much mouthing, you, who so well know how to play the buffoon and to lick-spittle the rich!" 'Twas thus he insulted each in turn with the grossest of jests, and he reeled off a thousand of the most absurd and ridiculous speeches. At last, when he was thoroughly drunk, he started ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... themselves, by losing that peculiar and distinctive Character in which they excel. This is most palpable in those Authors, whose Character consists in Humour. Let any one read Terence, as he is translated by Mr. Echard, and he will take him to have been a Buffoon: Whereas Terence never dealt in such a Kind of low Mirth. His true Character is, to have afforded to his Spectators and Readers the gravest, and, at the same Time, the most agreeable, most polite Entertainment of any antient ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... curious coincidence that Maitland should within a few years have had two sovereigns as passengers,—one the central figure of modern European history, the other the good-natured elderly buffoon who in this country is chiefly remembered as the husband of the friend of Lady Hamilton. ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... I am demeaning myself. I am allowing myself to be a mere buffoon. It's ghastly. I can't endure it ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... An immense stage, an enormous pit all thrown into one vast room, surrounded by innumerable boxes, all rising, tier above tier—myriads of dancers, myriads of masks, myriads of spectators—so the scene appeared. Moreover, the Neapolitan is a born buffoon. Nowhere is he so natural as at a masquerade. The music, the crowd, the brilliant lights, the incessant motion are all intoxication ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... additions to the Appendix to General Preface. I am in the sentiments towards the public that the buffoon player expresses towards ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... story fitting the case in point, and they called him a trifler. He would round off a logical argument with a familiar example, hitting the nail squarely on the head and driving it home, and they called him a buffoon. Big wigs and little wigs were agreed that he lowered the dignity of debate; as if debates were intended to mystify, and not to clarify truth. Yet he went on and on, and never backward, until his time was come, when his genius, fully ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... buffoon," he replied quietly. "You are an artist. There is no comparison possible, Miss Norvell. The play itself is utterly unworthy of your talent, yet you succeed in dignifying it in a way I can ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... which came down, closely shorn, about half an inch below his ear. "A very common sort of individual," he said of himself, as he looked in the glass when Mary Lawrie had been already twelve months in the house; "but then a man ought to be common. A man who is uncommon is either a dandy or a buffoon." ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... day at seeing a paragraph headed "Sibthorpe's conversion." Our nose grew pale with terror; our hump heaved with agitation. We thought there existed a greater genius than ourselves and that some one had discovered that Sibthorp could be converted into anything but a Member for Lincoln, and buffoon-in-waiting to the House of Commons. We found, however, that it alluded to a Reverend, and not to OUR Colonel. Really the newspaper people should be more careful. Such startling announcements ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... pleasure and vice, after the Restoration, the actors, long starved and crestfallen, brushed up their plumes and burnished their tinsel. Killigrew, that clever buffoon of the Court, opened a new theatre in Drury Lane in 1663, with a play of Beaumont and Fletcher's; and Davenant (supposed to be Shakespeare's illegitimate son) opened the little theatre, long disused, in Salisbury Court, the rebuilding of which was commenced in 1660, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... was one of those persons whom, according to your character, you cannot think of without derisive laughter or an embarrassed shrug of the shoulders. Nature had made him a buffoon. He was a painter, but a very bad one, whom I had met in Rome, and I still remembered his pictures. He had a genuine enthusiasm for the commonplace. His soul palpitating with love of art, he painted the models who hung about the stairway of Bernini in the Piazza de Spagna, undaunted by ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... bill to talk with a city accent! Ah, you wish to bite off bits of slang? My friend, they are green! Every grape you pick breaks in your jaws, for city grapes are glass bubbles! Having taken from the sparrow only his make-up and grimace, you are just a clumsy understudy, a sort of vice-buffoon! And you serve up stale old cynicisms picked up with crumbs in fashionable club-rooms, poor little bird, and think to astonish us with your budget ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... was puzzled, as if this laughter disclosed something that he had never suspected in her. But then Cassandra's face caught his eye, gazing with astonishment at the buffoon, not laughing, too deeply intent and surprised to laugh at what she saw, and for some moments he watched her as if she ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... jesting," continued Porphyrius, more and more at his ease, without ceasing to indulge in his little laugh, whilst continuing his perambulation about the room. "You may be right. God has given me a face which only arouses comical thoughts in others. I'm a buffoon. But excuse an old man's cackle. You, Rodion Romanovitch, you are in your prime, and, like all young people, you appreciate, above all things, human intelligence. Intellectual smartness and abstract rational ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... walk which led to the rear. Up the winding steps to the front entrance, where swung the marvelous bronze doors which had stirred the imaginations of two continents, streamed the favored of the fashionable world. Among them Carmen saw many whom she recognized. The buffoon, Larry Beers, was there, swinging jauntily along with the bejeweled wife of Samson, the multimillionaire packer. Kane and his wife, and Weston followed. Outside the gates there was incessant chugging of automobiles, mingled with the shouted orders of the three policemen ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... her words lays down True cause of action? Yet should one complain, Riper in years and elder, and lament, Poor devil, his death more sorely than is fit, Then would she not, with greater right, on him Cry out, inveighing with a voice more shrill: "Off with thy tears, and choke thy whines, buffoon! Thou wrinklest—after thou hast had the sum Of the guerdons of life; yet, since thou cravest ever What's not at hand, contemning present good, That life has slipped away, unperfected And unavailing unto thee. And now, Or ere thou guessed it, death beside ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... old to Jove, The same a Harlequin is now; The former was buffoon above, The latter is a ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... August. p. 135. I have softened some of the most improbable circumstances of this wretched biographer. From his ill-worded narration, it should seem that the prince's buffoon having accidentally entered the tent, and awakened the slumbering monarch, the fear of punishment urged him to persuade the disaffected ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... only person who could do any good at this moment either to the Royal or the judicial Courts. The present political situation is utterly unsuitable for the purposes of a great poet. But it is particularly suitable for the purposes of a great buffoon. The old jester was under certain privileges: you could not resent the jokes of a fool, just as you cannot resent the sermons of a curate. Now, what the present Government of England wants is neither serious praise nor serious denunciation; ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... buffoon this morning, I think," was the punning sneer with which M. de Lesdiguieres replied. But that he conceived himself witty, it is probable he would not have condescended to reply at all. "I don't understand ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... years exposed, the paintings on the walls and the vases are remarkably well preserved. This tomb contains the ashes of the dependents of Tiberius, the contemporary of our Lord. One pigeon-hole is filled with the calcined bones of the court buffoon, a poor deaf and dumb slave who had wonderful powers of mimicry, and used to amuse his morose master by imitating the gesticulations of the advocates pleading in the Forum. Another pigeon-hole contains the remains ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... was but a half-converted pagan), by name Mugain and Muireann. Muireann had the misfortune to be bald, and Mugain, who, as is usual in polygamous households, was filled with envy of her, bribed a female buffoon to remove her golden headgear in public at the great assembly of Tailltiu (Telltown, Co. Meath), so as to expose the poor queen's defect to the eyes of the mob. The messenger accomplished her purpose, but Muireann ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... kings of Scanderoon, A royal jester, Had in his train, a gross buffoon, Who used to pester The Court with tricks inopportune, Venting on the highest of folks his Scurvy pleasantries and hoaxes. It needs some sense to play the fool, Which wholesome rule Occurred not to our jackanapes, Who consequently found his freaks Lead to innumerable scrapes, And quite ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... somewhat melancholy of late and says that he is studying the phenomena of "Unconscious Cerebration," which Milburd explains is only a name for thinking of nothing without knowing it. Boodels, in consequence, thinks Milburd a mere buffoon.] ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... of Punch with a good deal more than ordinary loyal sentiment and esprit de corps. It is interesting to observe the different views the artists have severally taken of it, for most of them in turn have attempted his portrayal. Brine regarded him as a mere buffoon, devoid of either dignity or breeding; Crowquill, as a grinning, drum-beating Showman; Doyle, Thackeray, and others adhered to the idea of the Merry, but certainly not uproarious, Hunchback; Sir John Tenniel showed him as a vivified puppet, all that was earnest, responsible, and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... from a most clear conscience, affirm that I have ever trembled to think toward the least profaneness.' Though—he says—he cannot wholly escape 'from some the imputation of sharpness,' he does not feel guilty of having offered insult to anyone, 'except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, or buffoon.' But—'I would ask of these supercilious politics, what nation, society, or general order of state I have provoked? ... What public person? Whether I have not, in all these, preserved their dignity, as mine own person, safe? ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Doom, being an Answer to, etc., 1672; An Answer to two Letters of T.B., etc., 1673. The occasional references to it in the theological literature of these times are indeed innumerable. Many affected to treat him as a mere buffoon—the concoctor, as one bitterly put it, of 'a pretty fardle of tales bundled together, and they have had the hap to fall into such hands as had rather lose a friend, not to say their country, than a jest.' Anthony Wood, writing at the time of its appearance, classes ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... opened up for him a new view of Chaucer and his works. Before a perusal of these hundred pages, will melt away for ever the lingering tradition or prejudice that Chaucer was only, or characteristically, a coarse buffoon, who pandered to a base and licentious appetite by painting and exaggerating the lowest vices of his time. In these selections — made without a thought of taking only what is to the poet's credit from a wide range of poems in which hardly a word is to his discredit — we behold Chaucer as ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... reading,' his mind muttered, as it were, to itself, 'is no better than an old woman; and that knave and buffoon, Mr. Apothecary Toole, looked queer, the spiteful dog, just to disquiet me. I wonder at Dr. Walsingham though. A sensible man would have laughed me into spirits. On my soul, I think he believes in dreams.' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... over the gunwale, "that the experiences of the past year have not been all an excursion into the 'Arabian Nights'? If it were not for that fine marble relief in my trunk which I bought of that miserable buffoon in the Via Sistina, I should easily persuade myself that the actual world were bounded on the east by the Atlantic and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. I was just considering whether I should try to smuggle it through the custom-house, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... all that's good, I'm mad, stark raving mad, To have a Woman young, rich, beautiful, Just on the point of yielding to my Love, Snatcht from my Arms by such a Beast as this; An old ridiculous Buffoon, past Pleasure, Past Love, or any thing that tends that way; Ill-favour'd, ill-bred, and ill-qualify'd, With more Diseases than a Horse past Service; And only blest with Fortune and my Julia; For him, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... honoured jest that Eve—type of eternal womanhood—sacrificed the peace of Eden for the pleasures of dress. We see this jest reflected in the satire of the Middle Ages, in the bitter gibes of mummer and buffoon. We can hear its echoes in the invectives of the reformer,—"I doubt," said a good fifteenth-century bishop to the ladies of England in their horned caps,—"I doubt the Devil sit not between those horns." We find it illustrated ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the mind would set a just value upon themselves, they would think no man's acquaintance whatsoever a condescension, nor accept it from the greatest upon unworthy or ignominious terms. I know a certain lord that has often invited a set of people, and proposed for their diversion a buffoon player, and an eminent poet, to be of the party; and which was yet worse, thought them both sufficiently recompensed by the dinner, and the honour of his company. This kind of insolence is risen to such a height, that I my self ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... each day within the Hippodrome I, a buffoon in absurd clothes, Strive to make the thousands laugh; And when my act is done There comes the tread of camels' feet, Followed by Slayman Ali and his Arab troupe, Who tumble, jump and build pyramids Before a canvas Sphinx upon a painted desert.... When I saw Slayman last He was a boy Chasing ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... recalled from the army, and replaced by officers chosen by the soldiers themselves, [Under the rank of field-officers.] whose affections are often conciliated by qualities not essentially military, though sometimes professional. A buffoon, or a pot-companion, is, of course, often more popular than a disciplinarian; and the brightest talents lose their influence when put in competition with a head that can bear ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... who had curried favour with Nero. Polyclitus was sent to inquire into Suetonius Paulinus' administration of Britain after the revolt of Boadicea in A.D. 61. Vatinius was a deformed cobbler from Beneventum who became a sort of court buffoon, and acquired great wealth and ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Hebrew, and English qualities—the faith of the Jew, the firmness of the Roman, and the homespun simplicity of the Englishman of his own age—in purpose and in powers "an armed angel on a battle-day;" in manners a plain blunt corporal; and in language always a stammerer, and sometimes a buffoon; the middle-class man of his time, with the merits and the defects of his order, but touched with an inspiration as from heaven, lifting him far above all the aristocracy, and all the royalty, and all the literature of his ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... be the climax: that I should show my long beard and white hairs amid that throng of women and lunatics; and clap and yell in unseemly rapture over the vile contortions of an abandoned buffoon. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... smartness, and animal spirits; hence arose a vivacity and fluency that were often amusing, and passed for very clever. Reserve she had none; would talk about strangers, or friends, herself, her mother, her God, and the last buffoon-singer, in a breath. At a hint from Rosa, she told her who the lady in the pink dress was, and the lady in the violet velvet, and so on; for each lady was defined by her dress, and, more or less, quizzed by this show-woman, not exactly out of malice, but because ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... intervention of a beadle's hand as heavy and a sceptral cudgel as knotty as ever the son of Laertes applied to the shoulders of the first of the type or the tribe of Thersites. For this brutal and brutish buffoon—I am speaking of Shakespeare's Thersites—has no touch of humour in all his currish composition: Shakespeare had none as nature has none to spare for such dirty dogs as those of his kind or generation. ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the little man sank his voice into a whisper; "he is the sublimest buffoon that ever existed. I will tell you an instance—Do you like these Hungary wines, by the by?—On the 9th of last June, the Czar carried me, and half-a-dozen more of the foreign ministers, to his pleasure-house (Peterhoff). ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... appear to be remarkable for the number of their dramatis personae. In most there is a prince, a confidant, a buffoon or two, and a due proportion of female characters, represented by boys dressed in female attire. The dresses are handsome; and in one which I attended, the dialogue appeared to be lively and well supported, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... glanced at him. 'Ah, I see you're as soft as silk! Your wife will have an easy time of it with you. That buffoon,' she went on, pointing with her fan towards the howling actor (he was acting the part of a tutor), 'reminded me of my young days; I, too, was in love with a teacher. It was my first ... no, my second passion. The first time I fell in love with a young monk of the ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... hero. To Count Gregory Erdey she extended a smiling salutation from afar, which he requited by saluting her with his hat in one hand and his wig in another, which provoked a roar of Homeric laughter from the assembled guests. The young buffoon had had his head clean shaved in order that his hair might grow all the stronger, so that his bald pate quite scared the weak-nerved members of the company. The young housewife curtsied low in humble silence before the Foispan Count Sarosdy and his wife, whereby she greatly ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... been regarded by some critics as a grave moral censor, veiling his high purpose behind the grinning mask of comedy; by others as a buffoon of genius, whose only object was to raise a laugh. Both sides of the question are ingeniously and copiously argued in Browning's 'Aristophanes' Apology'; and there is a judicious summing up of the case of Aristophanes ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Jackal, 'you have certainly made me laugh, but I doubt if you could make me cry. It is easy enough to be a buffoon; it is more difficult to excite the ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... inexhaustible succession of circumstance, fantasy, and incident. Nor is it always solemn and high-pitched. Its gravity is relieved from time to time with the ridiculous figure or character, the ludicrous incident, the jests and antics of the buffoon. It has been said that Spenser never smiles. He not only smiles, with amusement or sly irony; he wrote what he must have laughed at as he wrote, and meant us to laugh at. He did not describe with a grave face the terrors and misadventures of the boaster Braggadochio and his Squire, whether or not ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... innovations. Of all the laudable motives of human life, none has suffered so much in this kind as love; under which revered name, a brutal desire called lust is frequently concealed and admitted; though they differ as much as a matron from a prostitute, or a companion from a buffoon. Philander[463] the other day was bewailing this misfortune with much indignation, and upbraided me for having some time since quoted those excellent lines of ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... in him; the larger circle ruthlessly put him in his place as a good fellow and nothing more. The truth was that in the Washington of the 'forties, neither the inner nor the outer Lincoln could by itself find lodgment. Neither the lonely mystical thinker nor the captivating buffoon could do more than ripple its surface. As superficial as Springfield, it lacked Springfield's impulsive generosity. To the long record of its obtuseness it had added another item. The gods had sent it a great ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... melodramatic deathbeds disgusted him, while the assaults upon the governing classes generally stirred his wrath. The satire upon individuals may be all very well in its place, but a man, he said, has no business to set up as the 'regenerator of society' because he is its most 'distinguished buffoon.' He was not picking his words, and 'buffoon' is certainly an injudicious phrase; but the sentiment which it expressed was so characteristic and deeply rooted that I must dwell a little upon its manifestation ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... he will never be other than the man who intoxicated his soldiers, not with glory, like the first Napoleon, but with wine; he will never be other than the pygmy tyrant of a great people. Grandeur, even in infamy, is utterly inconsistent with the calibre of the man. As dictator, he is a buffoon; let him make himself emperor, he will be grotesque. That will finish him. His destiny is to make mankind shrug their shoulders. Will he be less severely punished for that reason? Not at all. Contempt ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... Mr. John Raikes, who according to report, had been furnished with a bed at the house, because of a discovery, made at a late period over-night, that farther the gentleman could not go. Evan found him sleeping soundly. How much the poor youth wanted a friend! Fortune had given him instead a born buffoon; and it is perhaps the greatest evil of a position like Evan's, that, with cultured feelings, you are likely to meet with none to know you. Society does not mix well in money-pecking spheres. Here, however, was John Raikes, and Evan had to make the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... priest; it may have the mountebank selling his potions, and playing his tricks, as well as the sacrificer with his axe—unless the ambition of the bloated performer should prefer to combine the offices, and be at once the butcher and the buffoon." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... mind and self, never in tune; Sad for the most part, then in such a flow Of spirits, I seem now hero, now buffoon." ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... leave out much. The address was not long, but it covered a great deal of ground. The section of it which chiefly rankled in Charteris's mind, and which had continued to rankle ever since, was that in which the use of the word 'buffoon' had occurred. Everybody who has a gift of humour and (very naturally) enjoys exercising it, hates to be called a buffoon. It was Charteris's one weak spot. Every other abusive epithet in the language ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... the window in their night-shirts, would see sleighs come galloping down, with a jangle of bells, full of laughing, singing young people, returning from some excursion far up in the hills, where there had been feasting and dancing. Here a young lawyer—newly married and something of a privileged buffoon—was sitting on the lap of somebody else's wife, playing a concertina, and singing at the top of his voice. "Some of that Loreng man's doings again," people would say. "The place has never been the same since he came here." And they would get back to bed ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... having then the diversion of the spectator, in the way of laughing, for its object, should preserve a moderately buffoon simplicity, and the dancer, aided by a natural genius, but especially by throwing as much nature as possible into his execution, may promise himself to amuse and please the spectator; even though he should not be very deep in the grounds of his art; provided he has a good ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... picture satisfied the tastes of the public of his time, and that public found nothing incongruous in a return to the scene immediately afterward of all the characters save the reprobate, who had gone to his reward, to hear a description of the catastrophe from the buffoon under the table, and platitudinously to moralize that the perfidious wretch, having been stored away safely in the realm of Pluto and Proserpine, nothing remained for them to do except to raise their voices in the words of ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... The buffoon also laid himself on a chair, and had it carried about the room, during which he threw out his limbs in imitation of the act of swimming. Haydn supplied an accompaniment so suitable that Kurz soon landed on terra firma, and congratulated the composer, assuring him that he was ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the saints in Caesar's household may teach us! Think of the abyss of lust and murder there, of the Emperor by turns a buffoon, a sensualist, and a murderer. A strange place to find saints in that sty of filth! Let no man say that it is impossible for a pure life to be lived in any circumstances, or try to bribe his conscience by insisting ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... as Puritanic as Oliver Cromwell himself. For some reason he had come to the conclusion that the less the settlers knew of pleasure the better, and therefore he laid down the law that all strolling popular entertainers should be forbidden to enter the holy city. No public buffoon ever cracked his jokes at Herrnhut. No tight-rope dancer poised on giddy height. No barrel-dancer rolled his empty barrel. No tout for lotteries swindled the simple. No juggler mystified the children. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... by his drinking bouts at all hours, his wild expenses, his gross amours, the day spent in sleeping or walking off his debauches, and the night in banquets and at theaters, and in celebrating the nuptials of some comedian or buffoon. It is related that, drinking all night at the wedding of Hippias, the comedian, on the morning, having to harangue the people, he came forward, overcharged as he was, and vomited before them all, one of his friends holding his gown for him. Sergius, the player, was one of the friends who could ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... buffoon to a scholar, A harlequin to a teacher, A jester to a statesman, An Anonyma flaring on horseback To a modest and spotless woman— Brute ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... means that she is grateful to you for being bold enough to utter a truth which she fully believes all competent people know, but which none has heretofore been brave enough to utter.) You see, the thing that gravels her is that I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that entirely covered my ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... As pet buffoon of the tories about town, Mountfort was followed, at a considerable distance of time, by Estcourt—an actor who united wit and fine humor with irresistible powers of mimicry; and who contrived to acquire the respect and affectionate regard ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... restoration, he was of course neglected by the fiddling, gambling, wenching, royal buffoon, who succeeded the royal martyr, and whose necessities he had supplied, when an outcast pauper exile in a foreign land, from the proceeds of those very estates which he had so nearly lost ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... PUBLIC PURSE, which was as stimulating a bait to the independent candidates for Garrat, as it is to the independent candidates for a certain assembly; the borough of Garrat has since remained vacant, and the populace have been without a professed political buffoon. ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... why? Because Taste (GOUT, inclination) sets no limits to its recompenses. The King of Prussia overloads men of talent with his benefits for precisely the reasons which induce a little German Prince to overload with benefits a buffoon or a dwarf." [—OEuvres de Voltaire,—xxvii. 220 n.] Could there be a phenomenon more indisputably ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... leading Buffoon of the Party). I wonder if she's got any money. If she 'as, I'll go and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... and strict silence was observed. Each man had, therefore, time to commune with the spirits of those nine thousand miles away. It was not a time for the buffoon; they were faced with all the dread perils ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... might well have been said that the gaiety of nations was eclipsed; but to his contemporaries Rabelais appeared less as the enormous humourist, the buffoon Homer, than as a great scholar and man of science, whose bright temper and mirthful conversation were in no way inconsistent with good sense, sound judgment, and even a habit of moderation. It is thus that ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... make a man noted, and have the effect of some rare and beautiful flower pinned into his buttonhole. He is the confidant of his intrigues, his guest when he gives small, special entertainments, his daily familiar table companion, and the buffoon whose sly humor one stimulates, and whose worst ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to help them for his sake. I protest I refused not one, and did for them all I could, to his great pleasure. Then, when I saw him beginning to be well, I told him we must have viols and violins, and a buffoon to make him laugh: which he did. In one month, we got him into a chair, and he had himself carried about in his garden and at the door of his chateau, to see ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... preserved their dignity, as mine own person, safe? My works are read, allowed, (I speak of those that are intirely mine,) look into them, what broad reproofs have I used? where have I been particular? where personal? except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, or buffoon, creatures, for their insolencies, worthy to be taxed? yet to which of these so pointingly, as he might not either ingenuously have confest, or wisely dissembled his disease? But it is not rumour can make ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... generations and in a considerable number of individuals at the same time. We did not know that the theory of evolution was one that had been quietly but steadily gaining ground during the last hundred years. Buffon we knew by name, but he sounded too like "buffoon" for any good to come from him. We had heard also of Lamarck, and held him to be a kind of French Lord Monboddo; but we knew nothing of his doctrine save through the caricatures promulgated by his opponents, or the misrepresentations of those who had another kind ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... that my sole attendant is a female. I allow no male servants within this house. Even when his Royal Highness honours me with his presence he is unattended. I desire that I am immediately released from the presence of this buffoon." ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... address them in Greek, but his mistakes in the language were received with peals of laughter from the thoughtless mob. Unable to obtain a hearing, much less an answer, Postumius was leaving the theatre, when a drunken buffoon rushed up to him and sullied his white robe in the most disgusting manner. The whole theatre rang with shouts of laughter and clapping of hands, which became louder and louder when Postumius held up ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... people to question the divine right of kings to do wrong. We may be sure the real Thersites, from whom the poet drew his picture, was a very different and a far more serious power in debate than the misshapen buffoon of the Iliad. But the king who had been thwarted and exposed by him in the day would, over his cups in the evening, enjoy the poet's travesty, and long for the good old times when he could put down all impertinent criticism by the stroke of his knotty sceptre. The Homeric ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... time there lived in Paris (about the year 1650) a man whose house was the centre of gay and literary people,—those who did not like the stiffness of the court or the pedantries of the Hotel de Rambouillet. His name was Scarron,—a popular and ribald poet, a comic dramatist, a buffoon, a sort of Rabelais, whose inexhaustible wit was the admiration of the city. He belonged to a good family, and originally was a man of means. His uncle had been a bishop and his father a member of the Parliament of Paris. But he had wasted his substance ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... the city. The colloquy had occupied some moments, but when Renwick came to a straight reach of road which led toward the tobacco factory buildings he was surprised to find that Herr Linke was nowhere in sight. The man was an enigma, a curious mixture of desperado and buffoon, but his sudden disappearance without a word of thanks, apology or explanation, gave Renwick something to puzzle over as he made his way to the bridge. Its possible significance escaped him until he had reached ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... be first, even aboard a rover; but my birth is every whit as good as any Scottish lord's, and I am not ashamed to confess that I stayed Crowding Pat until the end, and was not much better than the crew's buffoon. Indeed, it was no scene to bring out my merits. My health suffered from a variety of reasons; I was more at home to the last on a horse's back than a ship's deck; and, to be ingenuous, the fear of the sea was constantly in my mind, battling with the fear of my companions. I need not cry myself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... teeth, he tried to carry the eternal subtleties by violence. As a man he often bored her, for he was always saying and doing the same things. But as a philosopher he really was a joy for ever, an inexhaustible buffoon. Taking up her pen, she began to caricature him. She drew a rabbit-warren where rabbits were at play in four dimensions. Before she had introduced the principal figure, she was interrupted by the footman. He had come up from the house to answer the bell. On seeing ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... themselves, as well as epic poems, may become worthy the perusal of the greatest of men: but when no moral, no lesson, no instruction, is conveyed to the reader, where the whole design of the composition is no more than to make us laugh, the writer comes very near to the character of a buffoon; and his admirers, if an old Latin proverb be true, deserve no great compliments to ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... so it is in Polonius, who is the personified memory of wisdom no longer actually possessed. This admirable character is always misrepresented on the stage. Shakespeare never intended to exhibit him as a buffoon; for although it was natural that Hamlet—a young man of fire and genius, detesting formality, and disliking Polonius on political grounds, as imagining that he had assisted his uncle in his usurpation—should express himself satirically, yet this must not be taken ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... words each of them said to himself, "Indeed I am a dead man and 'tis the intention of this woman to peach upon me." Presently her husband asked her, "What be these four histories?" and answered she, "I saw four men each and every of whom was an antic fellow, a droll, a buffoon; furthermore, O my lord, one and all of them were garbed in gaberdine and bonnet."—And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased saying her permitted say. Then quoth her sister Dunyazad, "How sweet and tasteful is thy tale, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... proceeding from their corner of the house announced that business was over, and that chaff and fun, so dear to the heart of every Kanowit, was being carried on with great gusto. As we arrived and stood by the group, one of their number (evidently a privileged buffoon) begged to be allowed to speak to the Resident. "You remember that gun, Resident," said he, "you gave me?" (This was an old muzzle-loader for which Mr. H. had had no further use.) "Oh yes," was the reply; ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... of Bedlam? or would he not be treated as the Romans treated their Aretalogi,[Footnote: A set of beggarly philosophers who diverted great men at their table with burlesque discourses on virtue.] and considered in the light of a buffoon? But why should I mention those places of hurry and worldly pursuit? What attention do we engage even in the pulpit? Here, if a sermon be prolonged a little beyond the usual hour, doth it not set half the audience asleep? as I question not I have by this time both my children. ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... out his antecedents, that the new actor had already attained middle age,—that he had been vegetating for years in that obscurest and most miserable of all dramatic positions, the low comedian of a country-theatre,—that he had come timidly to London and accepted at a low salary the post of buffoon at a half-theatre half-saloon in the City Road, called indifferently the "Grecian" and the "Eagle," where he had danced and tumbled, and sung comic songs, and delivered the dismal waggeries set down for him, without any marked success, and almost without notice. He was a quiet, unassuming little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... be base. All the rest is at worst mere misfortune or mortality: this alone is misery, slavery, hell on earth; and the revolt against it is the only force that offers a man's work to the poor artist, whom our personally minded rich people would so willingly employ as pandar, buffoon, beauty monger, sentimentalizer and ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... sufficiently fruitful of evil, to be legitimate subjects of investigation, and he who under such circumstances is so careful of his dignity as to disregard the subject altogether, is as much mistaken as the gravest buffoon of the circus. We reviewed a week or two ago "The Phantom World," just republished by Mr. Hart; the Appletons have recently printed an original work which we believe has considerable merit, entitled "Credulity and Superstition;" and Mr. Redfield has in ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... anything at all. It seems to me that, as in his novels, so in his history of the four Georges, Thackeray made no attempt at psychology. He dealt simply with types. One George he insisted upon regarding as a buffoon, another as a yokel. The Fourth George he chose to hold up for reprobation as a drunken, vapid cad. Every action, every phase of his life that went to disprove this view, he either suppressed or distorted utterly. 'History,' he would seem to have chuckled, 'has nothing ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... a favorite with the King that the originally obscure kitchen-boy was ennobled. He was made one of the King's secretaries in spite of the loud murmurs of this pampered fraternity against receiving into their body a player and a buffoon. The musician's wit and affability, however, finally dissipated these prejudices, especially as he was wealthy ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... Hamdi Effendi an apology; for it is well that, in the midst of this buffoon tragedy I find myself playing, I should observe occasionally the decencies of conduct. But, on the other hand, was he not amply repaid for moral injury by the pure joy he must have felt while torturing me with his banter? For all the deeper suffering, I am conscious of writhing under lacerated ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... magazine, to be called the Quarterly Review. The project was a daring one, in view of Constable's great ability and resources; to make it foolhardy to madness Scott selected to manage the new business a brother of James Ballantyne, a dissipated little buffoon, with about as much business ability and general caliber of character as is connoted by the name which Scott coined for him, "Rigdumfunnidos." The selection of such a man for such a place betrays ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... through this petticoat tyranny? In this matter the man distinguishes himself from the beast, seeing that no animal ever yet lost his senses through blighted love, which proves abundantly that animals have no souls. The employment of a lover is that of a mountebank, of a soldier, of a quack, of a buffoon, of a prince, of a ninny, of a king, of an idler, of a monk, of a dupe, of a blackguard, of a liar, of a braggart, of a sycophant, of a numskull, of a frivolous fool, of a blockhead, of a know-nothing, of a knave. An employment from which Jesus abstained, in imitation of whom folks of ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... accustomed to support each other's play, that the SPRUCH-SPRECHER often condescended to follow up the jester's witticisms with an explanation, to render them more obvious to the capacity of the audience, so that his wisdom became a sort of commentary on the buffoon's folly. And sometimes, in requital, the HOFF-NARR, with a pithy jest, wound up the conclusion of the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... thought that defeat and submission were, at least, robbed of their shame, when such was the character of the conqueror; and the claim once allowed was no longer questioned. Very different was the case, when the emperor was a fidler, or a buffoon, the senators puppets, and the pro- consuls themselves ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... come into the world too early, or too late, for power. Under Louis XIV., he would have made a magnificent minister; under his successor, a splendid courtier; but under the present unfortunate king, he must be either the brawler or the buffoon, the incendiary, or the sport, of the people. Yet he is evidently a man of singular ability, and if he knows how to manage his popularity, he may yet do ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... jargon would be omitted, and that we should be blessed with only the cream of sapience; and one had more reason still to expect this from any superior genius. But, alas! my dear Sir, what a tumble is here! Your D'Alembert is a mere mortal oracle. Who but would have laughed, if, when the buffoon Aristophanes ridiculed Socrates, Plato had condemned the former, not for making sport with a great man in distress, but because Plato hated some blind old woman with ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... staff of aides-de-camp, and why he has two grooms, are things which no one seems to know. He patronises generals and admirals, doctors and commissariat officers, and they submit to be patronised by him. Half-priest, half-buffoon, something of a Friar Tuck and something of a Louis XV. abbe, he is a sort of privileged person, who by the mere force of impudence has made his way in the world. Most English girls in their teens fall in love ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... prove its truth. Disguised as a clown, he attended the fancy-dress ball, and in the character of a mountebank collected a group of ladies and gentlemen around him while he related with the inimitable skill of a buffoon a romantic narrative. To most of the people present it was simply an amusing story, but to the count and Lagors and Madame Fauvel, who were among the listeners, it seemed something much more, for Lecoq dressed out his theory of the robbery in the trappings ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... men enjoyed, in the Middle Ages, silly, teazing or puzzling answers; the questioner remaining at the end rolled up in the repartees, gasping as a fly caught in a spider's web. The Court fool or buffoon had for his principal merit his clever knack of returning witty or confusing answers; the best of them were preserved; itinerant minstrels remembered and repeated them; clerks turned them into Latin, and gave them place in their collections of exempla. ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Louvre, his feats of arms, and the esteem in which he is held by all the dames of honor in attendance upon your Queen Mother, Catherine de' Medicis—and moreover," he added, with somewhat of sarcasm, "with her fair daughter, Marguerite de Valois—you will do well to address yourself to the king's buffoon, Maitre Chicot, whom I see not far off. Few there are, methinks, who could in such short space have won so much favor, or acquired ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the new character, in which you this time appear, has been so well acted, that had it not been the afternoon you set for your third appearance, I should have never known you. I think you make a better Quaker boy than you did a crazy man last time, or buffoon and tumbler the first one. But what have you been ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... and movement was the chief object of those employed at the assemblies of the rich Egyptians; and the ridiculous gestures of the buffoon were permitted there, so long as they did not transgress the rules of decency and moderation. Music was always indispensable, whether at the festive meetings of the rich or poor; and they danced to the sound of the harp, lyre, guitar, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... shock us except among neighbours, or at most fellow-countrymen. Without knowing it, Jean found a fund of amusement in the witticisms and harangues of his old teacher, who united in himself the contradictory attributes of high-priest and buffoon. He was great at telling a story, and though his tales were beyond the child's intelligence, they did not fail to leave behind a confused impression of recklessness, irony, and cynicism. Mademoiselle ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... He, wearing his misery like a Caesar's toga, compared by this young buffoon to a kid who had been spanked! She had not noticed ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the white tablecloth their dirty hands fumbled at their shirt-studs, that constantly threatened to fall through the worn buttonholes. They were, nevertheless, received everywhere, and Pathre, as Mr. Ryan was called by his friends, was permitted the licences that are usually granted to the buffoon. ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... man so various, that he seem'd to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome; Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.[268-4] ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... the very eve of the decisive struggle between our Kings and their Parliaments, royalty should be exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and talking in the style alternately of a buffoon and of a pedagogue. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the wrong— Was everything by starts, but nothing long; Who in the course of one revolving moon Was chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon. Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking: Besides a thousand freaks that died ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... when one of his slaves came up to the table and stole some wine, his eyes were wide open enough, and he said, 'Villain, don't you know that I am asleep only for Maecenas?'[107] But this is not perhaps so strange, considering Galba was a buffoon. But at Argos Nicostratus and Phayllus were great political rivals: so when King Philip visited that city, Phayllus thought if he prostituted his wife, who was very handsome, to the King, he would get from him some ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... of sorry thought went rushing through me as I sat with an empty jug in my hand in a room that was sounding like a market-place. With a start I wakened up to find the landlord making a buffoon's attempt at a dance in the middle of the floor to the tune of the Jew-trump, a transparent trick to restore the good-humour of his roysterers, and the black man who had fetched the spae-wife was standing at my side surveying me closely out of the corners of his eyes. I stood ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... nature to derive consolation from such scenes; from theatres, whose buffoon laughter and discordant mirth awakened distempered sympathy, or where fictitious tears and wailings mocked the heart-felt grief within; from festival or crowded meeting, where hilarity sprung from the worst feelings of our nature, or such enthralment of the better ones, as impressed ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Tigellius, the flattering musical buffoon so well described by Horace, thus lashes his country in a letter to Fabius Gallus: ‘Id ego in lucris pono non ferre hominem pestilentiorem putriâ suâ.’ Again, writing to his brother: ‘Remember,’ says he, ‘though in perfect health, you are in Sardinia.’ And ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... impossible to doubt that they meant well, these soldiers of France greeting their comrades of England. One man behaved like a buffoon, or as though he had lost his wits. Grasping the hand of a young engineer he danced round him, shouting "Camarade! camarade!" in a joyous sing-song which was ridiculous, and yet touching in its simplicity ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... birth, fortune, education, opinion, interest? How hold sway over a body of spectators, who were at the same time judges? To succeed in the task he was bound to be master of all styles of diction—at one and the same time a dainty poet and a diverting buffoon. It is just this universality of genius, this combination of the most eminent and various qualities, that has won Aristophanes a place apart among satirists; and if it be true to say that well-written ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... anything, but what thou shouldst be; prithee, Major, leave off being an old Buffoon, that is, a Lover turn'd ridiculous by Age, consider thy self a mere rouling Tun of Nantz,—a walking Chimney, ever smoaking with nasty Mundungus, and then thou hast a Countenance ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... storm of Vesuvius. He was entitled the "Band in the Wreath of the Gods," because with his fate that of all the rest was bound up. His death, ominously foretold from eldest antiquity, would be the signal for the ruin of the universe. Asa Loki was the Momus Satan or Devil Buffoon of the Scandinavian mythology, the half amusing, half horrible embodiment of wit, treachery, and evil; now residing with the gods in heaven, now accompanying Thor on his frequent adventures, now visiting and plotting with his own kith and kin ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and Covent Garden and took their acting copies. These volumes, then, that catch my firelight hold the very plays that the crowds of 1774 looked upon. Herein is the Romeo, word for word, that Lydia Languish sniffled over. Herein is Shylock, not yet with pathos on him, but a buffoon still, ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... could write that was in many ways a mere buffoon, who praised his wares with the vulgar glibness of a quack. He was vain and ostentatious, intemperate and ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... but take it under your more immediate protection, as being dedicated to you, and by that tide adopted for yours, rather than to be fathered as my own. And it is a chance if there be wanting some quarrelsome persons that will shew their teeth, and pretend these fooleries are either too buffoon-like for a grave divine, or too satyrical for a meek christian, and so will exclaim against me as if I were vamping up some old farce, or acted anew the Lucian again with a peevish snarling at all things. But those who are ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... that childlike earnestness which has given those two great fakirs a posthumous vogue," Cairy remarked with a yawn. "If it were not for America,—for the Mississippi Valley of America, one might say,—Ibsen would have had a quiet grave, and Shaw might remain the Celtic buffoon. But the women of the Mississippi Valley have made a gospel out of them.... It is as interesting to hear them discuss the new dogmas on marriage as it is to see ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... murdered your wife. You are an incendiary. And not content with perpetrating these enormous atrocities, you have degraded yourself in the eyes of all Rome to the level of the lowest mountebank and buffoon, so as to make yourself the object of contempt as well as abhorrence. ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... much internal satisfaction at the hut, Wolsey bade Patch dismount, and ascertain whether Mabel was within. The buffoon obeyed, tried the door, and finding it fastened, knocked, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... deliberate—is an effect of premeditation: that Rabelais had certain home-truths to deliver to his generation, and delivered them in such terms as kept him from the fagot and the rope by bedaubing him with the renown of a common buffoon. But the argument is none of the soundest in itself, and may fairly be set aside as a piece of desperate special pleading, the work of counsel at their wits' end for matter of defence. For Rabelais clean is not Rabelais at all. His ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... found by reason of its own gravitating power. He courted notoriety in a way that would have made him, if a poorer man, the toadying Boswell of some other Johnson giant, and, if very poor, the welcome buffoon of some gossiping journal, who would never weary of contortions, and who would brutify himself at the death, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... parts of the country. At Coventry and Worcester the Roman Catholic worship was violently interrupted. [106] At Bristol the rabble, countenanced, it was said, by the magistrates, exhibited a profane and indecent pageant, in which the Virgin Mary was represented by a buffoon, and in which a mock host was carried in procession. The garrison was called out to disperse the mob. The mob, then and ever since one of the fiercest in the kingdom, resisted. Blows were exchanged, and serious hurts inflicted. [107] The agitation was great in the capital, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the theaters without charge to the people, and gave a public notice that he would handsomely reward any person who invented a new amusement for the occasion. Various public performers contended for the prize. Among them came a Buffoon well known among the populace for his jokes, and said that he had a kind of entertainment which had never been brought out on any stage before. This report being spread about made a great stir, and the theater was crowded in every part. The Buffoon appeared ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... would-be satirist, a hired buffoon, A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon. Condemned to drudge, the meanest of the mean, And furbish falsehoods for a magazine. English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Cranmer was peculiarly fitted to organise the Church of England by being "unscrupulous, indifferent, a coward, and a time-server." James I. was given to "stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears," alternating between the buffoon and the pedagogue. James II. "amused himself with hearing Covenanters shriek"; he was "a libertine, singularly slow and narrow in understanding, obstinate, harsh, and unforgiving." The country gentleman of that age talked like "the most ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... the wane, and that I could not hope to maintain it against the attractions of a French waiting-maid, a monkey, a parrot, a poodle, and a little Dwarfish boy-attendant that was half fiddler and half buffoon. So my consequence faded and faded, and I was sneered at and flouted as a young Savage and a young Irish by the English lacqueys about the House, and I sank from my Lady's keeping-room to the antechamber, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... compunction, with les Horaces or Andromaque on the bills, and a crowd at the door, to commit ourselves, a few paces farther, to the friendly arms of a stall at the Palais Royal, and the mirth-inspiring influence of Tousez and Levassor, the most comical buffoon and admirable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... and north-east of the metropolis. In London he loved to frequent those streets where the old bookshops were, Wardour Street, Princes Street, Seven Dials (where the shop has been long closed): he loved also Gray's Inn, in the garden of which he met Dodd, just before his death ("with his buffoon mask taken off"); and the Temple, into which you pass from the noise and crowd of Fleet Street,—into the quiet and "ample squares and green recesses," where the old Dial," the garden god of Christian gardens," then told of Time, and ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall |
