"Comic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enough money to buy cigarettes. I say, 'Let me take a profession. Let me be a soldier.' Every one rises up and protests against the idea of a Saracinesca serving in the Italian army. Why? Remember that your father was a volunteer officer under Pope Pius Ninth.' It is comic. He spent an afternoon on the Pincio for his convictions, and then retired into private life. 'Let me serve in a foreign army—France, Austria, Russia, I do not care.' They are more horrified than ever. 'You have not a spark of patriotism! To serve a foreign ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... "I have a court chaplain charged with these affairs. Rather tell me about the latest comic opera." ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... lance, by which otherwise they must have been severely wounded. The dramatic pieces were performed by both sexes, and sometimes by persons of the highest quality. They were of a mixed character, serious, and comic, but for want of a thorough acquaintance with the language, they have been very imperfectly described to us. Thus, oppressed by no care, burdened by no toil, tormented by no passion, seldom visited by sickness, their wants easily satisfied, and their pleasures ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... attention was arrested by a small shop at the corner, a vivid contrast to its neighbours. It was the typical shop of the poor quarter, a shop entirely English. Here were vended tobacco and sweets, cheap pipes of clay and cherry wood; penny exercise-books and penholders jostled for precedence with comic songs, and story papers with appalling cuts showed that romance claimed its place beside the actualities of the evening paper, the bills of which fluttered at the doorway. Dyson glanced up at the name above the door, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... two stay sleepily there, looking at the stars like two cats, when I am trying to lure you indoors with the latest comic-opera music! Meinheer van Hert, Mister Pym says, ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... all with the chase, should give any heed to me. The idea that a French officer might be riding with them was too absurd to enter their minds. I laughed as I rode, for, indeed, amid all the danger, there was something of comic in ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you have been to his church?" he cried. "Not one male bach or one female fach. Go there the next Sabbath, and the black muless will not say to you: 'Welcome you are, persons Capel. But there's glad am I to see you.' A comic sermon you will hear. A sermon got with half-a-crown postal order. Ask Postman. Laugh highly you will and stamp on the floor. Funny is the Parson in the white frock. Ach y fy, why for he doesn't have a coat preacher like Respecteds? Ask me that. From where ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... battlefield—half battleship, half caterpillar—which have given the Germans the surprise of their lives, a surprise all the more effective for being sudden and complete. The Germans, no doubt, have their surprise packets in store for us, but we can safely predict that they are not likely to be at once so comic and so efficient as these unlovely but painstaking monsters. As an officer at the front writes to a friend: "These animals look so dreadfully competent, I am quite sure they can swim. Thus, any day now, as you go to your business in the City, you may meet ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... perpetual and unfathomable mystery to her. Where the flesh leg left off and the wooden leg began, and if, when the wooden leg stumped so loud and hard on the floor, it did not hurt the flesh leg at the other end, puzzled little Hetty's head for many a long hour. Her grandfather's frequent and comic references to the honest old wooden pin did not diminish her perplexities. He was something of a wag, the old Squire; and nothing came handier to him, in the way of a joke, than a joke at his own expense. When he was ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... Equestrians, contortionists, mimes, singers, were readily found in the city, where a brave or an honest man had become rare indeed. What a performance lacked in art, he supplied by shamelessness; and nowhere was laughter so hearty, or the crowd so dense, as in that part of the circus where comic singers and dancers vied with the grossest traditions ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... they cried agean, for nawther on em felt at all inclin'd for readin noa comic stooaries, or thowt at they'd find much comfort i'th Yorksher dialect that neet; soa Louisa put em back into th' box an nivver oppen'd em—but as th' box wor rayther thin, shoo had to slide em in one at a time, an as shoo wor puttin in th' second one, th' remainin almanac slipt off her ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... two kinds of critics of such work as ours. First there is the wide public for whom we work and by whom we are paid; "who lives to please must please to live"; and who lives by drawing for a comic periodical must manage to please the greater number. The judgment of this critic, though often sound, is not infallible; but his verdict for the time being is final, and by it we, who live by our wits and from hand to mouth, must either stand ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... there were two very good theatres, at one of which I saw Mr. Barrie's Little Mary given better than in New York (that was easy), and at the other a comic opera, with a bit of comedy or tragedy in a stage-box, not announced in the bills. The audience was otherwise decorous enough to be composed of Welsh Baptist elders and their visiting friends, but in this box there were two young men in evening dress, scuffling with ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... microscope to tell the difference between them and a well-rehearsed society scene on the stage of the Francais! That's their model, of course. It is positively touching to see old Colonel Patterson subduing his twang and shutting the lid down on his box of comic stories. I should think Mrs. Patterson might allow him at least that one about the cowboy and the tenderfoot who wanted to take ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the smith, in a species of serio-comic desperation, when they had all assembled below, "let's ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Brian come in, afoot, to fight out "round the sixth, and last." There is refreshing novelty in Mr. COPLAND's impersonation of Isaac of York, who might be taken for Shylock's younger brother who has been experimenting on his beard with some curious kind of hair-dye. This comic little Isaac will no doubt grow older during the run of the piece, but on the first night he neither looked nor behaved like Rebecca's aged and venerable sire, nor did Miss MACINTYRE—who, by the way, is charming as Rebecca, and who is so nimble in skipping about the stage when ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... Lance was allowed to bring his friend Harewood to a concert of the choral society; and on the following evening Alice Knevett came to tea, and there was a series of wonderful charades, chiefly got up by Clement and Robina, and of comic songs by Lance and Bill Harewood—all with such success, that Alice declared that she had never seen anything so delightful in all her experience ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Chillingly who has, in any way, distinguished himself above his fellows. That name has been a dead weight on my intellectual energies. In the catalogue of illustrious Englishmen there is, I think, no immortal Sir Peter, except Sir Peter Teazle, and he only exists on the comic stage." ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... human life is; how childish its ambitions, how ridiculous its pomps, how trivial its dignities, how cheap its heroisms, how capricious its course, how brief its flight, how stingy in happinesses, how opulent in miseries, how few its prides, how multitudinous its humiliations, how comic its tragedies, how tragic its comedies, how wearisome and monotonous its repetition of its stupid history through the ages, with never the introduction of a new detail; how hard it has tried, from the Creation down, to play itself ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... woman's use of dress and ornaments as bait for entrapping lovers, and many a squib expressing this theory appeared in the newspapers. These cynical notes no more represented the general opinion of the people than do similar satires in the comic sheets of to-day; but they are interesting at least, as showing a long prevailing weakness among men. The following sarcastic advertisement, for instance, was ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... of those unseen comedies, played in the secret regions of the consciousness between two beings of whom one will be the dupe of the other, though it keeps on this side of wickedness; one of those dark and comic dramas to which that of Tartuffe is mere child's play,—dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which may be characterized as not vice, only the other ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... had once been quite a nice lobby. But now the rug was worn to strings and the wallpaper had acquired a glaze of dirt that made it look like ancient newspapers. Behind the scarred ruin of an oak counter stood a clerk so fat Rick wondered how the floor could support him. He was reading a comic book, and he didn't even look up ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... of Soapers the King On Tuesdays at Tom's does appear, And when he does talk or does sing, To him ne'er a one can come near. For he talks with such ease and such grace, That all charm'd to attention we sit, And he sings with so comic a face That our sides are just ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... Civil War period, which pictures the "darky" on the old plantation, devoted to "young Massa" or "old Miss,"—the Negro of slavery. Then there are stories of recent times in which the Negro is used purely for comic effect, a sort of minstrel-show character. Neither of these is the Negro of to-day. A truer picture is found in the stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar. The following story is from his ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... sleepless drew him alertly to his feet, and showed him all his companions standing about the lawn in similar attitudes of expectancy. There was no need to ask what they were expecting. They were waiting to hear the nocturnal experiences, comic or commonplace or whatever they might prove to be, of that eccentric friend, whose experiment (whether from some subconscious fear or some fancy of honor) they had not ventured to interrupt. Hour followed hour, and still nothing stirred in the wood save an occasional bird. ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... it, child. You've retained from your old life certain conceptions of what's the thing which are—you'll forgive me for saying it—just a little like those of the comic papers. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Nathan, "I ask myself sometimes whether du Bruel is really deceived. Truly there is nothing more comic, nothing stranger than the sight of a careless young fellow ruling a married couple, his slightest whims received as law, the weightiest decisions revoked at a word from him. That dinner incident, as you can see, is repeated ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... many miles at a speed which will tax a good horse to keep up with. The first bullock-cart was driven by Hans, who sat upon the top of a heap of baggage, his head covered with a very old and battered Panama hat, through several broad holes in which his red hair bristled out in a most comic fashion, and over his blue flannel shirt a large red beard flowed almost to his waist. Terence was walking by the side of the second cart in corduroy breeches and gaiters and blue coat, with a high black hat, battered and bruised out ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... probably wreathed with golden vines and bunches of grapes made of amethysts, as we know of a Persian tent so adorned, and the whole idea of the erection was evidently fresh from the East.[448] A frieze eight cubits high was composed of niches containing groups of tragic, comic, and Satyric figures "in their natural garb;" and nymphs and golden tripods from Delphi. The tent was separated from the outer peristyle by scarlet hangings, covered with choice skins of wild beasts. Upon these were hung the celebrated Sikyonian ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... determined efforts at restoring the natural and spontaneous good cheer which the party appeared to have lost, but her exertions were only partially successful, and although Agatha Fearwell and Cleopatra sang other songs, the recollection of that tragico-comic Les Epouseuses du Berry had evidently sunk too deeply ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... in a tone of comic good-temper, but pointing to a very real grievance and point of dispute; and helping the reader to realise the long friction which went on, and finally resulted in the unanimity with which publishers and editors turned ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... faith of the audience. To all foreigners the show is at first shocking and then tedious; to the good people of Madrid it is a sermon, full of absolute truth and vivid reality. The class of persons who attend these spectacles is very different from that which you find at the Royal Theatre or the Comic Opera. They are sober, serious bourgeois, who mind their shops and go to mass regularly, and who come to the theatre only in Lent, when the gay world stays away. They would not dream of such an indiscretion ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Make as much fun as you like about it; but tell me what it is. You won't? Then I'll find out all about it from Madonna. She knows, of course; and she'll tell me. Look here, Mrs. Blyth; I'm not going to get up till she's told me everything." And Zack, with a comic gesture of entreaty, dropped on his knees by Madonna's chair; preventing her from leaving it, which she tried to do, by taking immediate possession of the slate that ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Three days before her death, he writes in his diary of "her heart beating its funeral march," and diverts his mind from the awful finale by an accurate description of his two children playing a serio-comic game of doctor and patient, in ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... replied, "but I get more fun from you than from anybody, and when you are in a serious mood you are the most comic man I know. He's delicious, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... for the Francais. He has written one hundred and fifty vaudevilles for the Gymnase. As a lyrical poet he stands unequalled for the number of his libretti, having written the poetry of forty grand operas and of one hundred comic operas. His works, exclusive of novels, are three hundred and forty ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... ridicule should be poured upon the head (or handle) of the devoted Umbrella, it is hard to say. What is there comic in an Umbrella? Plain, useful, and unpretending, if any of man's inventions ever deserved sincere regard, the Umbrella is, we maintain, that invention. Only a few years back those who carried Umbrellas were held to be legitimate butts. They were old fogies, careful of their health, ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... he made, 'Tis now for better reasons—to be paid. Believe him, he has known the world too long, And seen the death of much immortal song. 20 He says, poor poets lost, while players won, As pimps grow rich, while gallants are undone. Though Tom the poet writ with ease and pleasure, The comic Tom abounds in other treasure. Fame is at best an unperforming cheat; But 'tis substantial happiness to eat. Let ease, his last request, be of your giving, Nor force him to be damn'd to get ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... there formerly was movement and life is now lethargy and death. An act of love becomes a transaction long discussed and almost, as it were, settled by notarial seal. But we have in another place shown that we never refuse to seize upon the comic element in a matrimonial crisis, although here we may be permitted to disdain the diversion which the muse of Verville and of Marshall have found in the treachery of feminine manoeuvres, the insulting audacity of their talk, amid the cold-blooded cynicism which they exhibit ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... showing a diction altogether remarkable, two well-known gymnasts doing wonderful stunts on horizontal bars, a prize pupil from the Conservatory at Nantes acting, as only the French can, in a well- known little comedy, two clever, comic monologists of the La Scala sort, and as good as I ever heard even there, and a regimental band which plays good music remarkably. There is even a Prix de Rome in the regiment, but he is en conge, so I 've not heard him yet. I wonder if you take it in? Do you realize ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... its origin, there has, nevertheless, remained an association with the dance that will continue for all time. Especially is this true of the lighter branch of the drama, comedy, and the modern combination known as musical comedy or comic opera. In the popular stage entertainments of the day dancing forms an important feature of a large percentage of all productions that appear in the leading theatres. In many of the classical plays, by great dramatists, that are annually chosen for revivals, the dance appears, and the actor or ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... enough, she had felt sore and angry about it, and the comments in the newspapers had not been consolatory. She had learned to dread even the comic papers; but there was nothing spiteful in the one which Tom produced that evening. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Aristophanes has not spared the Dionysiac festivals. But the raillery and sarcasm of a comic writer must always be received with many grains of allowance. He has, at least, been candid enough to confess that no one could be initiated who had been guilty of any crime against his country or the public security.—Ranae, v. 360-365.—Euripides makes ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... energy, or on the fruits of these same powers in their forefathers. No excuse is needed for treating this subject in some detail; for, as the German philosopher Schopenhauer remarks, "the final aim of all love intrigues, be they comic or tragic, is really of more importance than all other ends in human life. What it all turns upon is nothing less than the composition of the next generation...It is not the weal or woe of any one individual, but that of the human race to come, which is here at ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... summer; how in winter time to skate; How to hold the deadly rifle; how a yacht to navigate; How to make the winning hazard with an effort sure and strong; How to play the maddening comet, how to sing a comic song; How to 'utilize' Professors; how to purify the Cam; How to brew a sherry cobbler, and to make red-currant jam. All the arts which now we practise in a desultory way Shall be taught us to perfection, when we own the Ladies' sway." Thus ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... to write a comic description of the duel. His father-in-law would read it and laugh. A good story, told or written, was more than meat and drink ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... pattens and a part of a red cloak; "Old Nib" in his greasy smock-frock, little Gamaliel in mended leather breeches, and he of the one arm who gave no end of trouble by stealing down to the "Red Lion" to beg of the passengers on the coaches—a limping, shambling, half-serious, half-comic, procession, worthy of a Frith! But what were the Cambs. officials to do? They had no promised land, no house in which to accommodate the immigrants! I think it is doubtful whether they accepted them, and whether that momentous event ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... literature, as I think may be found by examining my notes to my translation of Heine's works, and went with Field several times to Frankfort, to attend the theatre, and otherwise amuse ourselves. There I once made the acquaintance of the very famous comic actor Hasselt. He was a grave, almost melancholy man when off the stage, very ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... every hand had been against him. In many cities he had stood before sarcastic judges, and been sent on to serve his little time. Adown highways unnumbered he had sawed wood, when necessary; received handouts, worn hand-me-downs; furnished infinite material for the wags of the comic press. Long he had slept under hedges and in ricks, carried his Lares in a bandana kerchief, been forcibly bathed at free lodging-houses in icy winters. Dogs had chased him, and his fellow man: he had been ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... leant out of the smoking-room window. He seemed in high spirits. "I was hoping you'd come. I heard you all bear-gardening, but there's better fun up here. I, even I, have won a great victory for the Comic Muse. George Meredith's right—the cause of Comedy and the cause of Truth are really the same; and I, even I, have found tenants for the distressful Cissie Villa. Don't be angry! Don't be angry! You'll forgive me when ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... father a rich, strong, musical, and sympathetic voice, which made him a pleasant speaker and afterward a successful public reader. He very naturally excelled in conversation at table and in getting up little comic almanacs, satirizing the boys, but always in good-humor, never descending to anything bitter or vulgar. Indeed, in all his fun, he showed ever a certain purity and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... graver character than usually associated with comic opera is naturally afforded by Mr. HAYDYN COFFIN. Miss PHYLLIS BROUGHTON is introduced not only to sing but to dance, and performs the latter accomplishment with a grace not to be surpassed, and only to be equalled by Miss KATE VAUGHAN. Mr. ASHLEY, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... more peculiar, sir,' replied Mr Wopples, restoring the bulky packet of tickets to his pocket, 'dealing as it does with the adventures of a youth who hides his father's will in a cruet stand, which is afterwards annexed by a comic bailiff.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... dead Past bury its dead" would be a better saying if the Past ever died. The persistence of the Past is one of those tragi-comic blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure on to the stage to mouth its claim to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... asking that it might be put with Mary's other presents on her plate that morning. And she had written to thank him for it, but he did not answer the letter. He had always been by way of writing to her from time to time; letters, generally embellished with comic sketches and full of chaff and nonsense, which were shared by the family. Lately he had not felt in the mood to write such letters. He wanted to see her with an unceasing ache of longing intense and persistent; and if he wrote he wanted to write, not a love letter—Reggie ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... unconscious sleep, from which she was aroused into somnambulism and delirium. In her waking state she was a modest well-behaved girl, and spoke but little. In the somnambulic state, she appeared quite another being; evinced considerable powers of mimicry; sang comic songs; was obedient to every motion of her magnetiser; and was believed to have the power of prophesying the return of her illness — the means of cure, and even the death or recovery of other ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... are used mostly to provide a bass part for the harmony of the wood-wind group, but they are also sometimes employed (especially the bassoon) to depict comic or grotesque effects. ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... sure that I agree that that's Hardy's philosophy. It's fair enough to say that Hardy's stories, and still more his poems, paint chiefly the gloomy and hopeless situations in life, just as Mark Twain and Aristophanes painted the comic ones. But Mark Twain was very far from thinking the world was a joke, and I doubt whether Hardy regards it ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... learned, he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature, he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him—no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... subjects, he was, as we have seen, popularly termed the King of the Commons. For the purpose of seeing that justice was regularly administered, and frequently from the less justifiable motive of gallantry, he used to traverse the vicinage of his several palaces in various disguises. The two excellent comic songs entitled The Gaberlunzie Man and We'll gae nae mair a roving are said to have been founded upon the success of his amorous adventures when travelling in the disguise of a beggar. The latter is perhaps the best comic ballad ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... right," he remarked. "Now listen attentively to me. The skipper has one overpowering weakness, and that is a fondness for a comic song. Let him be ever so exasperated, a comic song—a good comic song, mind you—never fails to soothe him. Therefore, if he should happen to-night, by any chance, to refer to your unfortunate lapse of duty yesterday, listen patiently ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... MAN (with a comic gesture of despair). It's no use, dear lady: I can't make you see it from the professional point of view. (As he turns away to get back to the ottoman, the firing begins again ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... of Prussia, but the industry was not a success until Napoleon took it up and in 1810 offered a prize of a million francs for a practical process. How the French did make fun of him for this crazy notion! In a comic paper of that day you will find a cartoon of Napoleon in the nursery beside the cradle of his son and heir, the King of Rome—known to the readers of Rostand as l'Aiglon. The Emperor is squeezing the juice of a beet into his coffee and the nurse ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... Comic poets reproach Socrates with teaching how to make a bad cause good, and Plato represents Lysias and Gorgias boasting the same thing. To these may be added several examples of Greeks and Romans, and a long ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... charming fantasia on the old theme of Cinderella, both succeeded in hitting Parisian taste. No less fortunate was 'Griselidis' (1901), a quasi-mediaeval musical comedy, founded upon the legend of Patient Grizel, and touching the verge of pantomime in the characters of a comic Devil and his shrewish spouse. Of Massenet's later works none has been more successful than 'Le Jongleur de Notre Dame' (1902), which, besides winning the favour of Paris, has been performed at Covent Garden ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... But the comic always treads on the heels of the pathetic for it is not probable that Miss Stisted valued very much the photograph of what in her "True Life," she thought fit to call "an eccentric tomb" in a "shabby sectarian cemetery." [679] The removal ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... and adventures, and finally dramas of incidents and emotions. The whole thing began by pantomime, and this was of Chopin's invention; he occupied the place at the piano and improvised, while the young people gesticulated scenes and danced comic ballets. I leave you to imagine whether these now wonderful, now charming improvisations quickened the brains and made supple the legs of our performers. He led them as he pleased and made them pass, according to his fancy, from the droll to the severe, from the burlesque ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the light puff of smoke from each rifle rose at once into the air, giving Charlie a fine view of the field; and the simultaneous springing up of so many astonished savages, their queer grimaces, and the grotesque manner in which they scrambled out of range, struck the lad as irresistibly comic, especially as he considered that it was Bub's blunder that was at the bottom ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... bought, not only his three pink bottles, but his green ones, his blue ones, his pills, his pomades, and his perfumed medicinal soaps that were to soften the skin, strengthen the joints, and promote longevity. After this, he sang a comic song of innumerable verses (with horn obligato) and delivered a discourse, in which he said there had never been more than three great men in the world, Louis the Fourteenth, Alexander the Great, and ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... great indignation, have been known to say Mollath Dew warnas! God’s curse upon thee! and Carew in his Survey of Cornwall of 1602 gives a by no means nice phrase (which he spells all anyhow and translates wrong), Mollath Dew en dha ’las! The curse of God in thy belly! Another serio-comic but rather cryptic expletive, peculiar to Camborne, or at any rate to the Drama of St. Meriasek, is Mollath Dew en gegin! God’s curse in the kitchen! It does not seem to mean anything in particular, except perhaps that one’s ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... blackguards; but these men were something worse. There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all blackguardism—here there was nothing but tragedy—mute, weird tragedy. The quiet in the room was horrible. The thin, haggard, long-haired young man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the turning up ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... but it's the very devil to make him quiet. There were four at his head, and three at his tail, two at the wheel, turning, and one up aloft, hallooing like a demon in the air; and when Master Brien showed a little aversion to this comic performance, they were going to drag him into the box bon gre, mal gre, till Bottom interposed and saved the men and the horse from destroying ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... so comic in their movements as the life-sized ones in Catania, not because they were better managed, but because they attempted less and because, being so small, their defects were less obvious. A small one may, and generally does, enter like a bird alighting on a molehill, but he has ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... natural beauty, pure air, and quietude. The recreative pleasure that they crave must be of a different kind from that with which they can daily become familiar if they please. There are theatres and music-halls in town; it does not add to the wittiness of the Pierrot or the humour of the comic singer to find them exercising their functions on a hot dusty beach, densely packed with humanity, strewn with torn newspapers, burnt matches, orange skins, and banana peelings. Yet those who feel in this manner are a minority, otherwise certain ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... that it is, it leaped forth, after a long period of travail, full-fledged and panoplied, and on its lips were these words: "What fools these mortals be!" Dame Eddy gets good returns from the sacrilegio-comic tour of her progeny around the country. Intellectual Boston is at her feet, and Boston ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... how he had been struck with her word. "'Funny'?" "Oh, I don't mean a comic toy—I mean some little thing with a charm. But absolutely RIGHT, in its comparative cheapness. That's what I call funny," she had explained. "You used," she had also added, "to help me to get things cheap in Rome. You were splendid for beating ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... money could do anything: the slaves were thirsting for an upheaval, and with so elderly an emperor were naturally expecting to see one soon. The evils of the new court were those of the old, and while equally oppressive were not so easily excused. Even Galba's age seemed comic and despicable to a populace that was used to the young Nero and compared the emperors, as such people will, in point ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... with his back to the fire, and a look of concern thrown into his comic little mug, and his eyebrows raised, experienced a very pleasurable ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Hermann took his friend to the theatre, where a comic piece was being performed. In his young days Warren had been very partial to plays of that kind, and his joyous peals of laughter on such occasions still rang in the ears of his friend. But the attempt was a complete failure. Warren watched the performance ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... and most common means of enlarging a sentence is by the extension, or repetition, of the final cadence—that effect which is so frequent in the chamber and symphonic music of Haydn, and which has its comic manifestation in the so-called "crescendo" ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... party of Australians were supplying a little comic relief. Their function originally had been to prevent the escape of any Turks should the town be captured, but as the refugees failed to appear, for obvious reasons, the Australians rode forth to inquire into the matter. A mist of obscurity hangs over their doings ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... to this rule, for the author wrote it for Messrs. Guillaume, the well-known art publishers, who, wishing to popularise an improved style of illustration, offered M. Daudet 150,000 francs (L6,000) to write them a serio-comic story. Tartarin, which obtained an instant popularity, proved the author's versatility, but won him the hatred of the good people of Provence, who have never forgiven him for having made fun of their foibles. On one ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... particular pictures. One of the young men drew, with a piece of charcoal, a figure resembling a frog, on the side of the tent, and by significantly pointing at me, excited peals of merriment from his companions. The caricature was comic; but I soon fixed their attention, by producing my pocket compass, and affecting it with a knife. They have great curiosity, which might easily be directed to the attainment of useful knowledge. As the dirt accumulated about these people ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... at Lee with comic blankness. "Mrs. Redfield is hopelessly urban. As the wife of a forest supervisor, she cares more for pavements and tram-cars than for the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... his brothers and a friend, began to publish Salmagundi, a magazine containing humorous articles on the social life of New York. This became so popular that twenty numbers were issued. Having found so much of interest in the life of his native city, Irving next wrote a comic History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, dealing with the early period when the city was ruled by the Dutch. The novel way in which this work was announced would do credit to the most clever advertiser. About six weeks before the book was published, appeared this notice ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... If you hadn't, I should certainly have been nonplussed about finding the opening for what I desire to say to you. You are now referring to my seemingly unchristian treatment of Monsignore Murray? Eh, what?" It seemed to please the Bishop to lay emphasis on the English "Eh, what?" He said it with a comic ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... certain point,—the point where wit degenerates into mockery, and liberty into license: nature is never put to shame, and will commonly bear much more. Especially to the American sense did their humorous and comic strokes, their negro-minstrelsy and attempts at Yankee comedy, seem in a minor key. There was not enough irreverence and slang and coarse ribaldry, in the whole evening's entertainment, to have seasoned one line of some of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Hardham was, by night, a numberer of the pit for Garrick at Drury Lane. One day he happened to blend Dutch and rappee and poured the mixture into a drawer labelled 37. Garrick so liked the pinch of it which he chanced upon, that he introduced a reference to its merits in some of his comic parts, with the result that Hardham's little shop in Fleet Street soon became a resort, and no nose was properly furnished without No. 37. As Colton ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... secular advantage; these latter weigh doubtfully, and with less weight whichever way. In the general population, who are Protestant, he recognizes friends;—and has sent them Sixty Preachers, which by Law was their due long since. Here follow two little traits, comic or tragi-comic, with which ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... went on. The hard and ironical expression of the parrot tribe, their green coats, their red caps, their yellow boots, and finally, the hoarse, mocking words which they generally utter, give them a strange and repulsive aspect, half serious, half-comic. There is in their air an indescribable something of the stiffness of diplomats. At times they remind one of buffoons, and they always resemble those absurdly conceited people who, in their desire to appear very ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... contrivance of distraction, escape from vile affronts. The object of my expedition being explained, the Governor found on his register that poor Hathelin, aged thirty-two to thirty-four years, was an engraver by profession. The lieutenant-general of police had arrested him long ago for a comic or satirical engraving on the subject of M. le Marquis ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... those halfpenny weeklies which—with a nerve which is the only creditable thing about them—call themselves comic. He did not see the Bishop until a shadow falling across his paper caused him to ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... that night was an episode in the story of Krishna. The characters were the infant god, his mother, Jasodha, and an ancient Brahmin who has come from her own country to congratulate her on the birth of a child. He is a comic character—the sagging belly and the painted face of the pantomime. He answers Jasodha's inquiries after friends and relations at home. She offers him food. He professes to have no appetite, but, on being pressed, demands portentous measures of rice and flour. While ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the boys played a rousing trio on mouth organs, and young Willie Brown played a long piece on the violin. Tommy Holmes, Tilly's brother, who worked in Algonquin and came home week-ends, then gave a recitation, a comic selection which cheered everybody up after the wails of ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... finds the metre imperfect, but the pedant comes to its defence with a tribrachys or an anapaest, and sets it right at once by applying to one language the rules of another. If we may be allowed to change feet, like the old comic writers, it will not be easy to write a line not metrical. To hint this once, is sufficient. (see 1765, VI, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... small the homestead, linen and window curtains are generally to be found. So many comforts, coupled with the bare simplicity of the boards, the long benches for seats, and hard wooden chairs, did not lead us to expect the comic tragedy to follow. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... him as he swiftly mounted the steps to his porch. Poor old lady. He would make amends for his discourtesy when he was quite himself again. She should some day hear, perhaps, his infinitely tragic, infinitely comic experience from his own lips. He would take her some flowers, some old keepsake of his mother's. What would he not do when the old moods and brains of the stupid Arthur Lawford, whom he had appreciated so little and so ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... collector of the popular legendary ballads concerning Ruebezahl and other spirits, ghosts and witches, also deserves mention. The Silesian, Stranizki, who, A.D. 1708, founded the Leopoldstadt theatre at Vienna, which afterward became so celebrated, and gave to it the popular comic style for which it is famous at the present day, was also a poet of extreme originality. Gottsched appeared as the hero of Gallomania, which was at that time threatened with gradual extinction by the Spanish and Hamburg ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... nightmare kind of life, unrelieved by even a phantom show of success. Men in the Sierras, out on the great Western plains, knew not the sea. They could not be roused to enthusiasm. Fisher-folk and fisher-life were outside their sympathies. They preferred a comic song—a song that hit a famous person, or a political principle, or a Western foible. Miners liked to hear about "Leadville Jim." It touched their sensibilities when the "Three Fishers who Went ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... a man to be envied. If it had been eighty pound, the luxuriousness of feeling would have been increased. Every pound lost, would have been a hundredweight of happiness gained. The still small voice, Christopher,' cries Brass, smiling, and tapping himself on the bosom, 'is a-singing comic songs within me, and all is ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of Ancient History at Giggleswick University will shortly take up his duties as Editor of Chestnuts, the new comic weekly. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... little girls," Hal said, waving his hand comically, like a duke in a comic opera. "Run along, little girls, run along," he said, rolling his r's in real stage fashion, and holding the pond ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... it is not right to be impatient with them; for, in nine cases out of ten, they are no more responsible for their mental limp than the poor Chinese woman is for her feeble feet. From their infancy up to what in our comic caricature of words we call "maturity," they have been bandaged. How should their muscles be good for any thing? From the day when we give, and take, and arrange the baby's playthings for him, hour by hour, without ever setting before him to choose one of two and give up the ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... wishes to catch the public ear with the sound of his repining. Be it that he complain of the world generally, or specify the particular occasion of his dumpishness, he is in either aspect equally contemptible. What a serio-comic spectacle a man presents who imagines that everybody is in a leagued conspiracy against him to disappoint his hopes and thwart his plans for success! He thinks he is kept from rising by some untoward ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is comic imitation, comprises parody and caricature. The latter is a valuable addition to humorous narrative, as we see in the sketches of Gillray, Cruikshank and others. By itself it is not sufficiently suggestive and affords no story or conversation. Hence in the old caricatures the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... In one of these a weighted string is hung up at one end of a tent, and the children, starting from the other end, try to cut it with a pair of scissors. This would be easy enough, were it not that each player is blindfolded by a great hollow head with a grinning, ugly face, something like the comic masks we see in the shop windows. There are no holes for the eyes, and the head rests down on the shoulders of the player, like a great extinguisher, making her look like the caricatures in which little ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... don't know what to do about the matter, for I never could work up another man's ideas. Even your vivid imagination could hardly conjecture anything more ghastly than the dying man, lying by an open window overlooking the English channel, relating in a sepulchral whisper the comic situations of his humorous hero so that I might take up the thread ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... while expounding some thought which they believed to be grave and profitable; but this frivolous stupidity had not been found in any great writer since the time of Rabelais and the time of the Elizabethans. In many of the comic scenes of Shakespeare we have precisely this elephantine ingenuity, this hunting of a pun to death through three pages. In the Elizabethan dramatists and in Browning it is no doubt to a certain extent ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... cafe. The horrible brass band in the meantime had quitted the place, and now, to amuse the Ghent citizens, a couple of little boys came to the cafe and set up a small concert: one played ill on the guitar, but sang, very sweetly, plaintive French ballads; the other was the comic singer; he carried about with him a queer, long, damp-looking, mouldy white hat, with no brim. "Ecoutez," said the waiter to me, "il va faire l'Anglais; c'est tres drole!" The little rogue mounted his immense brimless hat, and, thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, began ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of war, Lincoln was keenly appreciative of anything that disclosed the comic or grotesque side of men or happenings,—largely, doubtless, for the relief afforded him. At the beginning of Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania, in June, 1863, when the Union forces under Colonel Milroy were driven out of Harper's Ferry by the Confederates, great consternation and alarm were caused ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... The comic elements of eastern and western folk-lore are closely akin, and the Lie-stories, or Luegenmaerchen, in Nos. 4, 8, and 17 of these Indian Tales find their parallels in most European collections. As an example of the close kinship which prevails among ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... must always be a laughable side, even to the grimmest events, the comic element was supplied in this case by our professors of languages, drawing, and so forth, who had not dared to go back into Paris after leaving it on the 28th, on account of the fighting. When they had made up their minds to return on the 29th, we persuaded those of them who wore moustaches that ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... some humorous and perhaps even comic passages in "The Intellectual Life"; these passages are unconsciously humorous or comic, as Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton seems to have no sense of humour. For instance, it was a great surprise to me to discover that poverty was unfavourable to the ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... thing was the records. The phonygraft in here is full of light opery and poplar music like that. Not a smell o' fugues and classic stuff. An' in at Schuyler's, as we seen to-night, there's no gay songs, no comic ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... joke is the Comic Opera you've written for us—"King Tuppence, or A Good Deal Less than Half a Sover- eign"—in which the celebrated English tenor, Mr. Wilkinson, burlesques your personal appearance and gives grotesque imitations of your Royal peculiarities. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... always the Stipulator, the person who asks the question, who is primarily alluded to. But the serviceableness of the stipulation is most vividly illustrated by referring to the actual examples in the pages of the Latin comic dramatists. If the entire scenes are read down in which these passages occur (ex. gra. Plautus, Pseudolus, Act I. sc. i; Act IV. sc. 6; Trinummus, Act V. sc. 2), it will be perceived how effectually the attention of the person meditating the promise ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... anything about it, I was sent flying by the dogs. In the confusion that ensued they stopped, luckily, so that I escaped without damage, as far as that went. To tell the truth, I was angry, but as I had sense enough to see that the situation, already sufficiently comic, would be doubly ridiculous if I allowed my annoyance to show itself, I wisely kept quiet. And, after all, whose fault was it? I was really the only one to blame; why in the world had I not got away faster? I now changed my plan entirely — there ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... that of old Mr. Cosey, a philanthropic, wealthy, and munificent stock-broker, whose cash, always at the disposal of his friends, enables Reuben to accomplish his purposes, the author seems to have dwelt con amore. The comic dialogue of the piece arises chiefly from the contrasted feelings of Mr. Cosey and Mr. Trot. Cosey admires the city, and is miserable in Wales, while Trot, a wealthy cotton-spinner, rejoices at the loss of a large share of his property because ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... Mercer, and I hurt myself directly by bursting out into a silent fit of laughter, which drew my bruised face into pain-producing puckers. But it was impossible to help it, all the same, for Mercer's phiz looked so comic. ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... story of a planet that could have been another proud and majestic sun with a solar system of its own; it ended up, instead, in the comic books and the ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... two men as to their tribal God idea has added to the gayety of nations. But when any view is laughed at, it is doomed. From the very moment that the doctrine of election, that made God love a few aristocrats and pass the non-elect by, became a matter of joke in the comic papers, that theory was dead. Not otherwise is it with this idea of a tribal God. When Barry Paine ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the saints, and now and then by acting plays; notably, that famous one which Rabelais wrote for them in 1531: "The moral comedy of the man who had a dumb wife;" which "joyous patelinage" remains unto this day in the shape of a well-known comic song. That comedy young Rondelet must have seen acted. The son of a druggist, spicer, and grocer—the three trades were then combined—in Montpellier, and born in 1507, he had been destined for the cloister, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... the king's guest, through overwhelming strength and greater momentum, had lightly plucked from his seat a stalwart adversary. Others of his following failed not in the "attaint," and horses and troopers floundered in the sand. Apart from the duke's victory, two especial incidents, one comic, stood out ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... it there issued from its gloomy depths a strange rumbling sound which induced him to stop and cock his gun. A curious feeling of serio-comic awe crept over him as the idea of a fiery dragon leaped into his mind! At the same time, the fancy that the immense abyss of darkness might be one of the volcanic vents diminished the comic and increased the serious feeling. Ere long the sound assumed the ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the enemy had been repaired and Grant's men were crossing to press them back on Vicksburg, so as to clear Grand Gulf. Grant's supply train (raised by impressing every horse, mule, ox, and wheeled thing in the neighborhood) looked more like comic opera than war. Fine private carriages, piled high with ammunition, and sometimes drawn by mules with straw collars and rope lines, went side by side with the longest plantation wagons drawn by many oxen, or with a two-wheeled cart drawn by a ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... intercede with his mother (he had no father) not to let him return. He told me that almost nightly, and especially when new fellows came, the youths in his dormitory (eleven in number) would waylay him, hold him down, and rub his parts to the tune of some comic song or dance-music. The boy who could choose the fastest time had the privilege of performing the operation, and most had to be the victim in turn unless new boys entered, when they would sometimes be subjected ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the other to be cut in glass by a diamond is part of what Johnson would have called the "Hieroglyphic" significance of this collection. In Johnson's plays, there is the odd mixture of vulgarity and sublimity, the comic and the serious, the satirical and the nonsensical. If his dramas bear a resemblance to Jarry's Ubu Roi, so The Merry-Thought resembles the kind of anthology that Jarry might have put together to illustrate the absurd anarchy of ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... situation did not seem even comic, so ignorant was the world of its humors; yet Minister Adams sailed for England, May 1, 1861, with much the same outfit as Admiral Dupont would have enjoyed if the Government had sent him to attack Port Royal with one cabin-boy in a rowboat. Luckily for the cabin-boy, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... color. columna column. columpio swinging. comandante commander, major. comarca district. combatir to fight. combustible m. fuel. comensal m. table companion, fellow-guest. comenzar to begin. comer to eat. cometer to commit. comico comic. comida dinner. comienzo beginning. comitiva suite, retinue. como how, as, like, when. compadre godfather, friend. companero companion. compania company. comparar to compare. compensar to compensate. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... ecclesiastical erections in ages too little critical to distinguish between what the workman had purposed doing and what he had done, might come to be regarded, in a less earnest but more knowing age, as precedents for the introduction of the intentionally comic and grotesque. Innocent accidental monkeys in towels may have thus served to usher into serious neighborhoods monkeys in towels that were ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... and address that it is a pleasure to take part in them. The very day on which I took from the head of my wife the wreath of orange blossoms which she wore, I understood that we were playing at a royal coronation—the first scene in a comic pantomime!—I have my gendarmes!—I have my guard royal!—I have my attorney general—that I do!" he continued enthusiastically. "Do you think that I would allow madame to go anywhere on foot unaccompanied by a ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... however, the phrase 'grotesque' is a misleading description of ugliness in art. It does not follow that either the Chinese dragons or the Gothic gargoyles or the goblinish old women of Rembrandt were in the least intended to be comic. Their extravagance was not the extravagance of satire, but simply the extravagance of vitality; and here lies the whole key of the place of ugliness in aesthetics. We like to see a crag jut out in shameless decision from the cliff, we like to see the red ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... hanging invitingly in its crotch; away high up upon its straight and graceful stem, birds of magnificent plumage are flitting from tree to tree, making the grove vocal with their notes; monkeys, mischievous, but not considered dangerous, dance overhead upon the boughs, and with comic antics provoke a smile. With gentle breezes wafting perfumes such as Gouraud never was gladdened with in his most happy ambrosial dreams, and glimpses of the blue sky, seen partially through the ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... "No! What makes you say? ... Oh, I laughed— did I? But don't you know that people laugh at absurdities that are very far from being comic? Didn't you read the latest books about laughter written by philosophers, psychologists? There is a ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... field of general news. They go to the dazzling levels of society, to scandal and crime, to sports, pictures, actresses, advice to the lovelorn, highschool notes, women's pages, buyer's pages, cooking receipts, chess, whist, gardening, comic strips, thundering partisanship, not because publishers and editors are interested in everything but news, but because they have to find some way of holding on to that alleged host of passionately interested readers, who are supposed ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... and I can tell you what he is—he's a florist, and married nineteen years, and his wife's forty—years older than me, but I've scarcely spoke to her, and no children, so I fetched it to show him, and as soon as he set eyes on it, he says—(Female "Character-Comic" on Stage, lugubriously. "Ritolderiddle, ol de ray, ritolderiddle, olde-ri-ido!") I can't tell you how old it is, but 'undreds of years, and Chinese, I shouldn't wonder, but we can't trace its 'istry—that's what he said, and if he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... is nothing so strange in a new vicinity as the different weight attached to family names. We have known districts where the word Smith itself, even without the fictitious dignity of y in the middle and e at the end, was pronounced with great veneration. Jones—elsewhere sacred to the comic muse—is of as potent syllable—unluckily it has only one—along the banks of the Usk, as Scott or Douglas on the Nith and Yarrow. And such is the effect of territorial or moral association, that we shall willingly withdraw an objection we made to a line in the tragedy of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... debauchery. The wisest, or at least the most crafty sovereign of his time, he was fond of low life, and, being himself a man of wit, enjoyed the jests and repartees of social conversation more than could have been expected from other points of his character. He even mingled in the comic adventures of obscure intrigue, with a freedom little consistent with the habitual and guarded jealousy of his character, and he was so fond of this species of humble gallantry, that he caused a number of its gay and licentious anecdotes to be enrolled in a collection well known ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... moment, to read all the laws of Nature in the one object or one combination under your eye, is of course comic to those who do not share the philosopher's perception of identity. To him there was no such thing as size. The pond was a small ocean; the Atlantic, a large Walden Pond. He referred every minute fact to cosmical ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... may be followed by a revulsion of feeling, it yet deserves a more sympathetic treatment than art and morals have known how to accord it. Erotic poets, to hide their want of ability to make the dumb passion speak, have played feebly with veiled insinuations and comic effects; while more serious sonneteers have harped exclusively on secondary and somewhat literary emotions, abstractly conjugating the verb to love. Lucretius, in spite of his didactic turns, has been on this subject, too, the most ingenuous and magnificent of poets, although he chose to confine ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Beaulieu I had had more than enough of the wild spirits of my comic postman. On entering the town he insisted upon taking me to a hotel which he said he could recommend to me with as much confidence as if I were his brother. Then he left me; but I had not seen the last of him. He presently returned, while I was enjoying the luxury of a ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker |
