"Comic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life has not yet lost its charms for me, Edward! I like my own ease, my own pleasure best, and wish to be free a short time longer," replied the young man, stretching himself on a sofa, with a comic air of nonchalance and affectation; then starting up, he added, theatrically, "I am going to be a senator, a senator; and how in the world can I think of matrimony but as a state of felicity unsuited to such a hard-working fellow as I am, or ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, set up what was practically a new religious order, with new Scriptures and elaborate new observances, and to their list of the accursed added one Jeschu, a bastard magician, whose comic rogueries brought him to a bad end like Punch or Til Eulenspiegel: an invention which cost them dear when the Christians got the upper hand of them politically. The Jew as Jesus, himself a Jew, knew him, never dreamt of such things, and could follow Jesus without ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Let this "Comic Opera," for so is it described in the bills, be cut down as ruthlessly, but not as blindly, as William cut down Crosstree; let something catching be substituted for most of the music of the First Act,—specially omitting the "Why, certainly!" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... notice as a sign of progress that Euphues has substituted a moral narrative for his usual discourse. The relations between the two friends have become distinctly amusing, and might, in abler hands, have resulted in comic situation. Euphues, having learnt the lesson of the burnt child, is now a very grave person, proud of his own experience and of its fruits in himself. ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... 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 wrote, in ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... I reely come here?" asked the "permanent." "'Cause I love Piggy's son, Oscar. Oh, he is that comic! He do make me laugh so, I never can see enough of him. Don't you love looking ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... 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 body, with a great deal of human nature in her, who wins our hearts by her comic speeches and funny ways. She complains of being bewitched by people, and the wind 'blows her out,' and she thinks if her comrade dies in the snow-storm she will be 'dreadfully 'shamed of it,' and has rather a lively ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... possibly a woman knows that a masculine spook is, after all, only a man, and therefore may be charmed into helplessness, while the feminine can be seen through by another woman and thus disarmed. The majority of the comic apparitions, curiously enough, are masculine. You don't often find women wraithed in smiles—perhaps because they resent being made ridiculous, even after they're dead. Or maybe the reason lies in the fact that men have written ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... After the more comic manifestations and the chilling of generous enthusiasm come subtler, darker deeds. Everything considered, the title to the universe claimed by White Folk is faulty. It ought, at least, to look plausible. How easy, then, by emphasis and omission to make children believe ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of characters of a lower type, not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... you a chronic disinclination to take me seriously, Louis. It is really—to an Englishman—almost painful. Is there something inherently comic about me or ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... who, with other practitioners of the day, believed in curing all maladies by copious bleeding and a dose of calomel. He was the fashionable physician of that time and especially prided himself upon his physical resemblance to Benjamin Franklin. He had much dramatic ability of a comic sort, and I have often heard the opinion expressed that if he had adopted the stage as a profession he would have rivalled the comedian William E. Burton, who at this time was delighting his audiences at Burton's Theater on Chambers Street. In my early ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... appeal of the present interest, until it becomes ungovernable and obscures ulterior interests. This tendency to promote dissoluteness is the most serious charge which Plato brings against the arts. After referring to the unseemly hilarity to which men are incited by the comic stage, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... no other time so gay, except it was Purim—the feast to celebrate Queen Esther's redemption of her people from the wicked Haman—when everybody sent presents to everybody else, and the men wore comic masks or dressed up as women and performed little plays. The child went about with a great false nose, and when the name of "Haman" came up in the reading of the Book of Esther, which was intoned in a refreshingly new way, he tapped vengefully with a little hammer or turned the handle of a little ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... dentistry, was sent out from the Cincinnati College, and she, I believe, is still in active practice in Kansas. She graduated in 1866. Mrs. Hirschfeld, before spoken of, returned to Germany and became at once a subject for the fun of the comic papers, and for the more serious work of the Bajan and Uberlana und Meer, both of them containing elaborate and illustrated notices of her. She had some friends in the higher walks of life; notable amongst these was President Lette of the Trauen-Verein, whose aid and powerful influence ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... all these worthy bourgeois, proud of their accomplishments, considered their society as far superior in attractions to that of Ville-aux-Fayes, and repeated with comic pomposity the local dictum, "Soulanges is a town of society and social pleasures," it must not be supposed that Ville-aux-Fayes accepted this supremacy. The Gaubertin salon ridiculed ("in petto") the salon Soudry. By the manner in which Gaubertin remarked, "We are a ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... good public cannot resign itself to getting along without gaiety, it goes to operetta and turns naturally to Offenbach who created it and furnished an inexhaustible supply. My phrase is not exaggerated, for Offenbach hardly dreamed of creating an art. He was endowed with a genius for the comic and an abundance of melody, but he had no thought of doing anything beyond providing material for the theatre he managed at the time. As a matter of fact he ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... scarcely died away before Clive began a conversation with a low growl, making remarks of what he apparently considered a comic nature about everything and everybody in the room, with a distinctness that made them entirely audible to those seated around them. Leslie's cheeks flamed and her eyes flashed angrily, but he only seemed to enjoy it the more, and kept on with his ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... mimicry, and are acute in the observation of anything that appears to them absurd or ludicrous, the white man often becomes the object of their jests or quizzing. I have heard songs of this kind sung at the dances in a kind of comic medley, where different speakers take up parts during the breaks in the song, and where a sentence or two of English is aptly introduced, or a quotation made from some native dialect, other than that of the performers. ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... All afternoon brass-band selections, comic songs, and variety items, blared out with ceaseless reiteration; and as the men-folk smoked and talked cattle, and the wee baby—a bonnie fair child—toddled about, smiling and contented, the women-folk spoke of their life "out-back," and listening, I knew that neither ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... great stake!" cried Charles. He arose with a serio-comic air, much pleased at the turn things ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Umbrella-handle, of silver-mounted horn; V was a comic Valentine, a little creased ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... barely time to throw a mingled look of entreaty and menace across the table, when half-a-dozen others, rightly judging from the Doctor's tone and serio-comic expression, that his malady had many more symptoms of fun than suffering about it, called ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... limitations of 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 ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... should not fight a duel with Mr. Whistler, as Mr. Whistler well knows. First, only under the very gravest circumstances, if under any at all, would an Englishman accept a challenge to a duel. The duel has been relegated to the realms of comic opera. As for inviting me to proceed to Belgium for the purpose of fighting him, he might as well ask me to strip myself naked and paint my face and stick feathers in my hair—dress myself as a Redskin, in fact, and walk down St. James's Street ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... as much gravity as he was able, considering the difficulty he had to restrain his risibility; and, supposing that the intellect of the poor lady was impaired, in a comic serious tone observed:—"Well, my master is a most wonderful man, that his murdered body should be food for the ravens of the Alpujarras, and his troubled spirit be haunting Don Alonso's garden; when at the same time I saw him ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... father, with a curt laugh, would humorously acquiesce in the theory of the sacredness of Edwin's bedroom. As for Edwin, he saw nothing extraordinary in his attitude concerning his bedroom; and he could not understand, and he somewhat resented, that the household should perceive anything comic in it. He never went near his sisters' bedroom, never wished to go near it, never ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... and half a squall from George Bernard Shaw; but the greater part of the time the ship of the stage is careering wildly under bare poles, with a man lashed to the helm (and let us hope that, like Ulysses, he has cotton wool in his ears), before a hurricane of comic opera. We need a recognised stage and a recognised school. America has become too great, and its influence abroad too large, for us to afford to have recourse to that ancient and easy method of criticism which ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... generous fairy in as many pleasant ways as they would permit. The theatre continued to be her delight, as well as her school of life, and a box-party followed nearly every dinner. She was like a child in the catholicity of her appetite, for she devoured Shakespearian bread, Ibsen roasts, and comic opera cream-puffs with almost equal gusto—and mentally thrived upon the mixture. To the outsider she seemed one of the most fortunate women ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... successfully is found in a very remote past, and that Daedalus discarded his invention because of the tragedy related below. Only a few years since, most people looked upon one who tried to work out practically the problem of flying as somewhat "short" mentally. Hence the use of such efforts for comic effect as in "Darius Green and His ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... tae see it lyin' there wes a veesitation. But he 's a weel-meanin' bit craturie, Maister Peebles, an' handy wi' a magic lantern. Sall," and then Hillocks became incapable of speech, and you knew that the thought of Dr. Davidson explaining comic slides had ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... almost every note of human feeling: home and duty, song and gaiety, daring and neighbourly kindness, love of sky and sea and air and orchards, of the good-smelling earth and wholesome animal life, and all the incidents, tragic, comic, or commonplace, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... there, smoking and declaiming, his eyes blazing, one hand playing with Watson's favourite dog, an Aberdeen terrier who was softly smelling and pushing against him. All that litany of mockery and bitterness, which the Comic Spirit kindles afresh on the lips of each rising generation, only to quench it again on the lips of those who 'arrive,' flowed from him copiously. He was the age indeed for 'arrival,' when, as so ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sport to shoot at some lazy old buzzard as he comes within range. He can see the ordinary arrow, and if you shoot close, he dodges, swoops downward, flops sidewise, twists his head round and round, and speeds up to leave the country. He presents the comic picture of a complacent old gentleman suddenly disturbed in his monotonous existence and frightened into a most unbecoming ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... Lockhart's scattered verse in Blackwood as further illustrations of his poetic gift,—a number of admirable stanzas (in the character of Wastle) in the ottava rima of Whistlecraft and Beppo (1819); the best known of his comic poems, Captain Paton's Lament; and some lines from a translation in hexameters of the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, that appeared as late as 1843, which must have sent more than one reader to the magazine, and made them echo the biographer's ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Perry saw Betty standing in front of a booth, talking to a comic policeman. She was dressed in the costume of an Egyptian snake-charmer: her tawny hair was braided and drawn through brass rings, the effect crowned with a glittering Oriental tiara. Her fair face was stained to ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the attentive stage; 320 The Monarch's stately step, and tragic pause, The Hero bleeding in his country's cause, O'er her fond child the dying Mother's tears, The Lover's ardor, and the Virgin's fears; The tittering Nymph, that tries her comic task, Bounds on the scene, and peeps behind her mask, The Punch and Harlequin, and graver throng, That shake the theatre with dance and song, With endless trains of Angers, Loves, and Mirths, Owe to the Muse ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... to be hard pushed afore I shot that feller," he said. "Ain't the black bear a comic chap when he tries to be. I declare I hev a real feller feelin' fur him. I couldn't ever feel that way toward a panther. They always look mean an' they always are mean, but I could hobnob right along with a ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... February 1, 1899, and scored as promptly as "One Night." The demand for the booklets was phenomenal, and Mr. Kountz received thousands of friendly letters applauding him for his humor. He also received flattering offers from the leading comic weeklies, the metropolitan dailies, and great advertisers throughout the Union. He declined them all, being primarily a business man, and carrying literature ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... had the Comic scene, (The flattering reflex of a sensual age) Shown prurient Folly's rank licentious mien, Refined, embellish'd on ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... exclaimed Lottie, still laughing, blushing, and affecting comic alarm; "being joined together by a minister's wife is almost as bad as by ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... in the temple [of Apollo], as contesting for the prize when Tarpa presides as judge, nor can have a run over and over again represented in the theatres. You, O Fundanius, of all men breathing are the most capable of prattling tales in a comic vein, how an artful courtesan and a Davus impose upon an old Chremes. Pollio sings the actions of kings in iambic measure; the sublime Varias composes the manly epic, in a manner that no one can equal: ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... inclination to claim for the Keswick bard any prodigious or pre-eminent powers of fun, or to give him place beside the rollicking jesters and genial merry-makers, whose humour gives English literature a distinctive character among the nations. But that he is so void of the comic faculty as certain potent authorities allege, we persistently doubt. Mr Macaulay affirms that Southey may be always read with pleasure, except when he tries to be droll; that a more insufferable jester ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... he entered into office, that he shall possess and hold until the end of his term. Next he assigns Choregi to the tragic poets, choosing three of the richest persons out of the whole body of Athenians. Formerly he used also to assign five Choregi to the comic poets, but now the tribes provide the Choregi for them. Then he receives the Choregi who have been appointed by the tribes for the men's and boys' choruses and the comic poets at the Dionysia, and for the men's and boys' choruses ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... grotesque element. We carefully studied the gargoyles round the roof, and, in spite of defacements, made out most of them—here a grinning demon with a struggling human being in its clutch—there an odd beast, part human, part pig, clothed in a kind of jacket, playing a harp—dozens of comic, hideous, heterogeneous figures ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Denham, must we e'er forget thy strains, While Cooper's Hill commands the neighbouring plains. But see where artful Dryden next appears, Grown old in rhyme, but charming even in years. Great Dryden next, whose tuneful Muse affords The sweetest numbers, and the fittest words. Whether in comic sounds or tragic airs She forms her voice, she moves our smiles or tears. If satire or heroic strains she writes, 120 Her hero pleases and her satire bites. From her no harsh unartful numbers fall, She wears all dresses, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... croyance a la loi de causalite. In 1901 Felix Alcan published in book form a work which had just previously appeared in the Revue de Paris entitled Le Rire, one of the most important of his minor productions. This essay on the meaning of the Comic was based on a lecture which he had given in his early days in the Auvergne. The study of it is essential to an understanding of Bergson's views of life, and its passages dealing with the place of the ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... hill at full speed, for, by Edwards's direction, the light had been shifted to the other tube in such a way as to dissolve the "Morning" into a hideous picture of the conventional horned and hoofed devil. The picture was originally meant to be comic, but it now set Jim to running ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... de Choiseul's drawing-room, 'How passionately M. de ——— loves his sister; he would certainly die if he had the misfortune to lose her.'" Madame related this to her brother, in my presence, adding, that she could not give it in the Duke's comic manner. M. de Marigny said, "I have had the start of them all, without making so much noise; and my dear little sister knows that I loved her tenderly before Madame de Grammont left her convent. The Duc d'Ayen, however, is not very wrong; he has made the most of it in his lively ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... hurried in. Outside the door the servants were on the watch. I caught sight of the landlady, who succeeded ill in concealing her comic chagrin. ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... purpose. Once, when the French drove in his outposts, he gave the order to fire the powder, and a part of the magazine was actually destroyed when Marmont (who above all things hated ridicule, and was severely taxing the respect of his beautiful army by these serio-comic excursions after a raw militia) withdrew his troops and retired in an abominable temper ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... seen some of his black and white posters which seemed to me robust and considerably lively. At any rate, Mr. Holliday exhibited drawings on Fifth avenue and had illustrative work published by Scribner's Magazine. He did commercial designs and comic pictures for juvenile readers. At this time he lived in a rural community of artists in Connecticut, and did his own cooking. Also, he is proud of having lived in a garret on Broome street. This phase of his career is not to be slurred over, for it is a clue to ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... old comic entrance, tripping his right toe over his left heel, and turning to shake his fist at an imaginary enemy. The boys, determined to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... were respectively the burglar and the householder, of whom the latter staked his property and the former a certain period of personal liberty; and the rules of the game were equally binding on both. It was a conception worthy of comic opera; and yet, incredible as it may seem, it is the very view of crime that is today accepted and ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... Idyl," is delicious, particularly in the chances it gives the flautist. There is a fragmentary cantilena which would make the fortune of a comic opera. The third number, "In October," is particularly welcome in our music, which is strangely and sadly lacking in humor. There is fascinating wit throughout this harvest revel. "The Shepherdess' Song" is the fourth movement. It is not precieuse, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... advertiser in the county," followed by the usual price list of the merchant's wares. There was an unprecedented demand for that issue. The reputation of the "Clarion," both as a shrewd advertising medium and a comic paper, was established at once. For a few days the editor waited with some apprehension for a remonstrance from the absent Dimmidge, but none came. Whether Mr. Dimmidge recognized that this new advertisement ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... used to convey to children the common sense truths of life, hidden beneath their comic, crudely cut coats. Good examples are "Old Man Know-All," "Learn to Count," and "Shake the Persimmons Down." All through the Rhymes will be found here and there many stanzas full of common uncommon sense, worthwhile ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... as well as male; I presume no one here will gainsay me that. But you do not know them officially. The politicians who joke about three acres and a cow, the writers who are comic about mothers-in-law, the very boot-blacks have your solicitude, but you ignore their ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... put into his chair, and, accompanied by his children and friends, was dragged through every alley, and every little meandering path. He would not spare himself a single turn—he had a tear to give to every well-known tree, an adieu to make to every painted figure. To de Lescure and the others, the comic attitudes of these uncouth ornaments was, at the present moment, any thing but interesting; but to the Marquis, each of them was an old and well-loved friend, whom even in his extremity he could hardly ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... whole action of the play. It was, therefore, to be a scene of which people did not easily tire and that remained interesting, unobtrusive and formally neat. To find such a scene it is necessary to refer back to days when the Comic and the Tragic scenes were architectural and permanent. This I did and, taking Palladio's magnificent scene at Vicenza, by a shameless process of reductio ad absurdum, evolved the scene that is now in use at Hammersmith. Palladio and ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... theatre are devoured by the Siamese with insatiable appetite, and the popular preference is awarded to those intellectual contests in which the tragic and comic poets compete for the prize. The laughter or the tears of the sympathetic groundlings are accepted as the expression of an infallible criticism, and by their verdict the play is crowned or damned. The common people, such is ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Woman," which won for you your first medal? And do you remember the breakfast at Ledoyen's on Varnishing Day? There were more than twenty-five at a table intended for ten. What follies we committed, especially that little, little—what did he call himself—I mean that little comic fellow, who was always making portraits which resembled no one? Oh, yes, Tavernier! And you took me home with you to your studio, where you had two great manikins which frightened me so, and I called ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... true. I want to write a serio-comic opera, a new sort of thing, and it struck me you were just cut out for that kind of singing. You have the face and the—you know—the refinement; sort of thing not easy to find. It's a poor chance, I'm afraid, coming out as ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... restored to the colleges.] Fifthly, having thus lessened the power of the censors, consuls, praetors, and tribunes, he by way of compensation—a serio-comic compensation it must have seemed to his shrewd yet superstitious mind—restored the right of co-optation to the sacred colleges of augurs and pontiffs, and increased their numbers, thus multiplying harmless ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... came when it was necessary to produce some more original idea, to strike a really decisive blow, and so Dowie revealed to a stupefied Chicago that he was the latest incarnation of the prophet Elijah. Then while the serious Press denounced him for blasphemy, and the comic Press launched its most highly poisoned shafts of wit against him, the whole of Sion exulted in clamorous rejoicings. For the prophet knew his Chicago. Credulity gained the upper hand, and the whole city flocked to the tabernacle of Sion, ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... is that of the last form published in Hazlitt's own lifetime, namely, that of the second edition in the case of the Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, the lectures on the poets and on the age of Elizabeth, and the Spirit of the Age, and the first edition of the Comic Writers, the Plain Speaker, and the Political Essays. A slight departure from this procedure in the case of the essay on "Elia" is explained in the notes. "My First Acquaintance with Poets," and "Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen" are ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... both true and false. I have been foolish, but it was not in despising the constrictions and falsity of the academic world. I have flouted authority, but it was not the authority of the movingpicture heroes, whose comic errors are perpetuated for generations, like those of Pasteur, or so quietly repudiated their repudiation passes unnoticed, like those of Lister, in order to protect a vested interest. The authority I have flouted, in my arrogance as you call it, is that ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... shoulders. When the laughter ceased, she picked up the book at once, and again resuming a suitable expression, began the reading seriously. Sanin could not get over his admiration; he was particularly astonished at the marvellous way in which a face so ideally beautiful assumed suddenly a comic, sometimes almost a vulgar expression. Gemma was less successful in the parts of young girls—of so-called 'jeunes premieres'; in the love-scenes in particular she failed; she was conscious of this herself, and for that reason gave them a faint shade of irony ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... and other poems take things strangely (The comic is experienced tragically. The representation is "grotesque"), to notice the unbalanced, incoherent nature of things, arbitrariness, confusion... is not, in any case, the characteristic of "style." Proof is: Lichtenstein writes poems ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... scourging inflicted upon him by angels for having loved Cicero too well; yet his repentance was but short-lived, since he caused the monks of the Mount of Olives to pass their nights in copying the Ciceronian dialogues, and did not shrink himself from expounding the comic and lyric poets to the children ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... enemy, but we secured the services of actors well trained in Wild West and "crook" parts, capably led by those two prominent comedians, Mr. Mutt and Mr. Jeff. The film ends, of course, with the second meeting at the Central Hall, Westminster, when Messrs. Mutt and Jeff again appear as comic and objectionable interrupters, and are ignominiously ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... the dignity and nobleness of the Cid—you may be another Talma: but pass the Channel—show yourself to the English, and in spite of yourself you will become as comic as Arnal. Arnal! do I say? why, he would not make them laugh so much as you do; and they would consider our inimitable comedians, Levassor and Hoffmann, as serious personages. Do not be angry. They would only laugh ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the bell and the door flew open. Sounds of laughter and comic songs issued from the abode and in a second they were in the crowded drawing room. It was packed with all the Elite and a stout duchess with a good natured face was singing a lively song and causing much merriment. The earl ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... officer had crossed the Rapidan and driven General Buford before him. The result now was that, while Stuart was pressing the enemy in his front, General Buford came down on Stuart's rear, and Fitz Lee on the rear of Buford. The scene which ensued was a grand commingling of the tragic and serio-comic. Every thing was mingled in wild confusion, but the day remained with the Southern cavalry, who, at nightfall, had pressed their opponents back toward the river, which the Federal army crossed that night, blowing up the railroad ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... Olifants River. There the song of many birds, not to be found on the Hoogeveld, can be heard, and there it was delightfully warm, in comparison with the chilly air of the Hoogeveld. Of an evening we made large fires, as there was plenty of dry wood. We sat round the fire, chatting or listening to the comic songs which one of our comrades sang. It was a happy time—away from khaki, far beyond reach of the roar of cannon—a time of rest in preparation for the evil ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... for the Allies' cause have been obliged to bow before this young hero, more noble in his defeat than all the conquerors of Europe in their victory. But the Germans have not felt it. Not only did they try to ridicule King Albert in their comic papers. Even the son of Governor von Bissing did not hesitate to fling in his face the generous epithet, "Lackland." [3] As soon as the last attempt to conciliate the King had failed the German press in Belgium began a most violent and abusive campaign against him. The Duesseldorfer ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... horses to rest, Julianillo started up, and beginning to sing a well-known comic air, sauntered out of the inn towards the stables. Don Francisco waited till he supposed his companion was on the road, and then, paying his reckoning to the landlord, begged that his horse might be brought round. Just as he was mounting, the ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... 22 the train party got off as quick as possible, and about 4 p.m. a big lorry came for our equipment. We loaded it, seven of us mounted on the top, and the rest went in two of our own cars. The scene was really intensely comic. Seven Scottish women balanced precariously on the pile of luggage; a Serbian doctor with whom Dr. Inglis is to travel standing alongside in an hysterical condition, imploring us to hurry, telling us the Bulgarians were as good as in the town already; Dr. Inglis, quite unmoved, demanding ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... stern realities 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 ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... pass naturally from absurdity to beauty, and in which all the figures could be harmonious and yet distinct, and that is the Chinese world as we know it in Chinese art. For in that there is something fantastic yet spiritual, something comic but beautiful, a mixture of the childish and the sacred, which might say to the eye what Mozart's music says to the ear. Only in Chinese art could Papageno be a saint; only in that world, which ranges from ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... of his country and countrymen. It seems hardly possible that in this narrow-minded, disagreeable, and essentially vulgar character, Cooper could have fancied he was creating anything but a contemptible boor. The contrast between what is said of him, and what is said by him, almost reaches the comic. We read constantly of his caustic satire; we find little of it in his conversation. His fine face is, according to the author, always expressing contempt and sarcasm; but the examples of these that are ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... no proposition ever had so many adherents; there was no question of hesitations, doubts, or anxieties. As to the jokes, caricatures, and comic songs that would have welcomed in Europe, and, above all, in France, the idea of sending a projectile to the moon, they would have been turned against their author; all the "life-preservers" in the world would have been powerless ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... lamentably plain; we had paid fifty thousand dollars, borne the charges of the schooner, and paid fancy interest on money; and if things went well with us, we might realise fifteen per cent of the first outlay. We were not merely bankrupt, we were comic bankrupts: a fair butt for jeering in the streets. I hope I bore the blow with a good countenance; indeed, my mind had long been quite made up, and since the day we found the opium I had known the result. But the thought of Jim and Mamie ached in ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... produced a prodigious quantity of work, and was a celebrated man before he was twenty. No one knows how many drawings he made. He "lived like an Arab," worked early and late, and with astonishing rapidity made thousands of drawings for the comic papers, besides early beginning the publication of independent books. One estimate, which Mr. Jerrold thinks excessive, credits him with having published forty thousand drawings before he was forty! Mr. Jerrold himself reckons two hundred and sixty-six drawings ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... in the book—that which Mr. Merrick calls "The Tragedy of a Comic Song"—is in my view the funniest story of this century: but I don't ask or expect the Magazine Enthusiast to share this view or to endorse that judgment. "The Tragedy of a Comic Song" is essentially one of those productions in which the reader ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... flightiness, but only made her worse; with Dermot she would only make ridiculous nonsense, and utter those heartrending laughs; and when I tried to soothe her, and speak low and quietly, she started away from me, showed me her foreign purchases, or sang snatches of comic songs. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tell you, man," said Frye, "it's going to be the greatest success of the year. I am the only man who has ever put grand-opera effects into comic opera with success. Just listen to the chords of this opening chorus." And so he inspired the singer with some of his own spirit. They went to work with a will. Silas might have been reluctant as he felt the strain upon him grow, ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... I might have joined in the merriment produced among my companions by the ludicrous spectacle which we presented. A comic spectacle indeed; nine of us squatted at intervals over the ground, the blue smoke escaping through the interstices of our robes and blankets, and rising around our heads, as though one and all of us were ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... begun following his bird before it has risen above the head of his loader. This very clumsy violation of the etiquette of sport proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he has learned to shoot from the comic papers, and that his coat-of-arms can never again be looked upon as anything ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... meetings. What strange meetings, to which patriotic deputations, volunteers and amateurs come in turn to declaim and sing; where the president, Lubin, "decorated with his scarf," shouts the Marseilles Hymn five or six times, "Ca Ira," and other songs of several stanzas, set to tunes of the Comic Opera, and always "out of time, displaying the voice, airs and songs of an exquisite Leander.. . I really believe that, at the last meeting, he sung alone in this manner three quarters of an hour at different times, the assembly repeating the last line of the verse."—"How ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... without warning. I will say they were pretty glad to see us when we bore down on them. As we neared, they began to paddle frantically, as though fearful we should be snatched away from them at the last moment. The crew were mostly Arabs and Lascars, and the first mate, a typical comic-magazine Irishman, delivered himself of the following: "Sure, toward the last, some o' thim haythen gits down on their knees and starts calling on Allah; but I sez, sez I, 'Git up afore I swat ye wid the axe-handle, ye benighted haythen; sure if this boat gits saved 't will be the ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... house in all Paris most addicted to private theatricals. This reproduction of a forgotten play, with its characters attired in the costume of the period in which the play was placed, had had great success, a success due largely to the excellence of the costumes. In the comic parts the dressing had been purposely exaggerated, but Madame de Nailles, who played the part of a great coquette, would not have been dressed in character had she not tried to make herself as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... without weapons of defense and offense. Arriving at the office next day, Roland found a scene of desolation, in the middle of which, like Marius among the ruins of Carthage, sat Jimmy, the vacant-faced office boy. Jimmy was reading an illustrated comic paper, and appeared undisturbed by ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... malachite, crystals, blood-stone, jasper, agates and chalcedony, to represent fruit-pieces and magnificent groups of game or of musical instruments; while the pilasters were decorated with masks of the tragic and comic Muses, torches, thyrsi wreathed with ivy and vine, and pan-pipes. These were wrought in silver and gold, and set with costly marbles, and they stood out from the marble background like metal work on a leather shield, or the rich ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "The Cornwalliad, an Heroic Comic Poem," was begun in March, 1779, and was continued through several numbers. It described various incidents in the British retreat to New York after the battles ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... devotion, on my poor part! Deign to think, may not this too,—in the present state of my King, of my Two Kings, and of all Europe,—be itself a kind of spheral thing?" So that the aquiline lightning was but momentary; and abated to lambent twinklings, with something even of comic in them, as we shall gather. Voltaire had his difficulties with Valori, too; "What interloping fellow is this?" gloomed Valori, "A devoted secretary of your Excellency's; on his honor, nothing more!" answered Voltaire, bowing to the ground:—and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... goes without saying, my boy. As for my part—why, I don't bother much about a blue tin heaven or a comic-supplement hell, but I'm right smart interested in right here and now. It's a right nice little old world, take it by and large, and I like to help out at whatever comes my way, if it takes fourteen innings. But, so long as you feel ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Christ." Ashurst smiled. Her anxiety about his beliefs seemed to him comic, but touching. Infectious too, perhaps, for he began to have an itch to justify himself, if not to convert her. And in the evening, when the children and Halliday were mending their ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of Bremen is a good type of humorous tale. It shows all the elements of true humor. Its philosophy is healthy; it views life as a whole and escapes tragedy by seeing the comic situation in the midst of trouble. It is full of the social good-comradeship which is a condition of humor. It possesses a suspense that is unusual, and is a series of surprises with one grand surprise ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... fifty pleasantly written and delightfully printed pages to readers who like to muse quietly on the elementary principles of love and life without risking the surprise of startling or revolutionary lines of thought. There is nothing peculiarly good or bad in the many comic illustrations by Mr. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... The Contributions to Punch, which form the sixth volume of this series, began in 1842, and lasted ten years. They provide occasion for many diverting anecdotes, and for references to his colleagues who founded the fortunes of that most successful of comic papers; but as on this plan the biographical lines cross and recross each other it is not easy for the reader to obtain a connected or comprehensive view of Thackeray's career. Nevertheless as the system fortunately affords room and reason for giving many fresh details of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... as a sort of Russian Sancho Panza, gives Gogol a magnificent opportunity to reveal his genius as a painter of Russian panorama, peopled with characteristic native types commonplace enough but drawn in comic relief. "The comic," explained the author yet at the beginning of his career, "is hidden everywhere, only living in the midst of it we are not conscious of it; but if the artist brings it into his art, on the stage say, we shall roll about with laughter and only wonder we ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... inquire the name of the guest), the slender form and comely features of Lord Mauleverer. The earl approached with the same grace which had in his earlier youth rendered him almost irresistible, but which now, from the contrast of years with manner, contained a slight mixture of the comic. He paid his compliments, and in paying them declared that he must leave it to his friend, Sir William, to explain all the danger he had dared, for the sake of satisfying himself that Miss Brandon was no less lovely than when ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hopping off in a comic sort of way till he was out of sight of her, and then never going near the spot any more. They would all have been glad to follow if he ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... had lived up to the comic papers, Morty," I said, "we would have spiflicated a red child, given a merry toot and disappeared ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... of abusive epithets nobody could surpass him. One of his droll comic sentences was often worth a speech of an hour in putting down an opponent, or in gaining supporters to his side. At Nisi Prius, he turned his mingled talent for abuse and drollery to great effect. He covered a witness with ridicule, or made ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... the same boat, you know," said a literary friend to Jerrold. This literary friend was a comic writer, and a comic writer only. Jerrold replied, "True, my good fellow, we do row in the same boat, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... than she was M. Baffo translated it in a whisper. Surprised at my knowledge, she rose from her chair to get a valuable gold watch and presented to my master, who, not knowing how to express his deep gratitude, treated us to the most comic scene. My mother, in order to save him from the difficulty of paying her a compliment, offered him her cheek. He had only to give her a couple of kisses, the easiest and the most innocent thing in good company; but the poor man was on burning coals, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... written more and written better about the American Negro than any other person during the present century. She has given laboriously and minutely wrought pictures of plantation life. She has held up to the gaze of the world portraitures comic and serio-comic, which for the gorgeousness and awfulness of their drapery will perish only with the language in which they ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... up in New Hampshire and, like the little demon of error 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
... person to write a Tragedy which he entitl'd, Christ suffering. This is mention'd to vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common Interludes; hap'ning through the Poets error of intermixing Comic stuff with Tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons, which by all judicious hath bin counted absurd; and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratifie the people. And though antient Tragedy use no Prologue, yet using sometimes, in case of self defence, or ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... upon the shining top of the counter and shoving his head forward inquiringly, "is all this that we do be hearing about your suffragette? Who is she? What is she? The newspapers are filled to the top with her, but sorra the sight of her did I ever see. If she has any existence outside of the comic supplement, gentlemen, I'd like to have ye show me where. Did ye ever hear a whisper of her till she began to send herself by registered mail and chain herself to lamp posts? Niver the one of ye! Is your wife a suffragette? She's ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... composure increased the old woman's fury, and her lips were just parting to utter a torrent of angry words, when Jason stepped as lightly as a boy between her and the betrothed lovers, cast a delighted glance at his favorites, and bowing with comic dignity to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... only good in themselves, but they give an impression of greater powers than they embody. They seem to indicate a large, broad, vigorous mind, of which poetry has been the recreation rather than the vocation. A brilliant mischievousness, in which the serious and the ludicrous, the tender and the comic, the practical and the ideal, are brought rapidly together, is the leading characteristic of his muse. In almost every poem in his volume, serious, or semi-serious, the object appears to be the production of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... of oddities, and the telling of tall stories outside the regular course of the narrative, which bubbles over with somewhat boisterous fun. And his humour is genuine and spontaneous; it is farcical without descending to buffoonery. His comic types are built up on character, and, if not subtle, are undeniably human and living. They are ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... lest I should get capsized and drowned. I believe it, for she is a sweet and gracious lady; and I quite see, as she demonstrated, that the sight of me, teetotumming about, steering in an elaborate and showy way all the time, was irresistibly comic. And she gave a most amusing account of how, when she started looking for me to give me tea, a charming habit of hers, she could not see me in among my bottles, and so asked the little black boy where I was. "There," said he, pointing to the tree hanging against the rock out in the river; ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... "Quite comic, isn't it, my dear? What foolish things mothers are, aren't they? Just as fond of their bairns as ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... with a quaver of comic regret. "Our civilization has so narrowed the times that murder is inexpressibly inconvenient. One ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 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 ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... I've recited so often in public I don't mind at all now. I've decided to give 'The Maiden's Vow.' It's so pathetic. Laura Spencer is going to give a comic recitation, but I'd rather ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... it even so? Nay, then I see our wars Will turn into a peaceful comic sport, When ladies crave to be encount'red with. You may not, my lord, ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... his sudden shift from cordiality to a look half incredulous, half embarrassed was almost comic. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... is anywhere from seventy to one hundred and fifty years old, gray, knock-kneed, bent in the back, and goes to sleep standing up—and stays asleep. He is the exact duplicate of the tramp in the comic opera of "Miss Hook of Holland"—except that the actor-sleeper occasionally topples over and has to be braced up. Bob is past-master of the art and goes it alone, without propping of any kind. He is the only man in Dordrecht, or Papendrecht, or the country round ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... invincible fatality ever brought her toward him whom she was seeking to avoid. And it was her husband who was aiding this inevitable and execrable meeting. A bitter smile played on her lips. There was something mournfully comic in this stubbornness of Cayrol's, in throwing her in the ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... of waking dreams where the spirit soars into a world of unrealities and possibilities! Nothing astonishes one, nothing shocks one; and the unbridled fancy makes no distinction between the comic and the tragic. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... working in such trousers. Note the smart liveries of the girls who have taken the places of male carriage starters, mechanics and elevator operators, at a great London shop. They are very natty, aren't they? Almost like costumes from a comic opera. Well, they are not operatic costumes. They are every-day working liveries. Girls wear them in the most mixed London crowds—wear them because the man-shortage makes it necessary for these girls to do work which skirts do not fit. All French ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... 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 bodies are represented with big heads. The ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... twenty-fifth year, and had entered on his mismanagement of Drury Lane Theatre. He had already written "The Rivals," which had not proved a success on its first appearance; "St. Patrick's Day, or the Scheming Lieutenant," a farce; "The Duenna," a comic opera; but he was yet to write "A Trip to Scarborough," and "The ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... 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 by some critics of the press to be clamoring for the ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... across the parking lot the spacemen finally made the Smith family car in safety. "Blast off immediately, Lt. Smith," ordered the captain. The rocket wavered for a minute and rose. "Wait a minute, Smith. I seen Rocky Morgan do this once in a comic book. No member of the Space Patrol lets an alien get away alive. We got to kill 'em all. Head back and we'll get the rest of 'em with the hydrogen artillery." Accordingly the ship swept low over the strange planet. ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight
... looking after its illustrations himself, and a letter to Frank Bliss, of The American Publishing Company, refers to the frontpiece, which, from time to time, has caused question as to its origin. To Bliss he says: "It is a thing which I manufactured by pasting a popular comic picture into the middle of a celebrated Biblical one—shall attribute it to Titian. It needs to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... so far from putting his mind out of tune for acts of religious worship, seemed but a happy preparation for the exercise of devotional feelings." [7] This coexistence of serious with playful elements is often found in natures of unusual depth and richness, just as tragic and comic powers sometimes co-exist in ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... will ever forget that Christmas. To begin with, after breakfast they had a concert. The khaki boy gave two recitations, sang three songs, and gave a whistling solo. Lucy Rose gave three recitations and the minister a comic reading. The pale shop girl sang two songs. It was agreed that the khaki boy's whistling solo was the best number, and Aunt Cyrilla gave him the bouquet of everlastings as a reward ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... whilst they arranged them for the dance. Wilhelm was called upon to play, and the dance commenced; a partner, however, was wanting. Just then a quiet citizen passed by. The gentleman who had no partner approached the citizen with comic respect, and besought him to take part ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... comrades gave him many comic names, And he became the victim of all sorts of naughty games; Nor did the master like him, for he felt that such a face, Mid a row of ruddy youngsters, was extremely out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... You always were a pleasant gentleman that it was a treat to have staying at Wimpole Street. Wimpole Street!—Ha, ha, ha!" said Sam, laughing softly. "My word! how comic it does seem. What would they say in Wimpole Street if ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... extensive domains, with the fret of spring alert in every sap cell. I have seen the little birds as they hopped among said leaves and commented upon the scarcity of worms. I have seen the buxom flowers as they curtsied and danced above your flower-beds like a miniature comic-opera chorus. And ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... considerable amusement in looking over the artists who are usually employed in copying or studying from the celebrated pictures in the different galleries; but I have been taught discretion on such occasions by a ridiculous incident which occurred the other day, as absurdly comic as it was unlucky and vexatious. A friend of mine observing an artist at work in the Pitti palace, whom, by his total silence and inattention to all around, she supposed to be a native Italian who did not understand a word of English, went up to him, and peeping ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... taking note of everything that 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 superior, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... from laughing. This idea of choosing a wife like a governess for her linguistic accomplishments seemed to him exceedingly comic. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... so to speak, "Lo, Ben Adhem's name led all the rest." In other words, Percy was the worst of the lot. Whatever indiscretions the rest had committed, at least they had never got the family into the comic columns of the evening papers. Lord Marshmoreton might wear corduroy trousers and refuse to entertain the County at garden parties and go to bed with a book when it was his duty to act as host at a formal ball; Maud might give her heart to an impossible person whom nobody had ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... lying soaking in the sleet, while the wretched servants were trying to pitch the tent in the high wind. They had slept out in the snow the night before, and were mentally as well as physically benumbed. Their misery had a comic side to it, and as the temperature made me feel specially well, I enjoyed bestirring myself and terrified Mando, who was feebly 'fadding' with a rag, by giving Gyalpo a vigorous rub-down with a bath-towel. Hassan Khan, with ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... sky-high over all the Parish, on a sudden! The almost-sublime of Maupertuis, which exists in large quantities, here is a new artist who knows how to treat it. The engineer of the Sublime (always painfully engineering thitherward without effect),—an engineer of the Comic steps in on him, blows him up with his own petards in a most unexampled manner. Not an owlery has that poor Maupertuis, in the struggle to be sublime (often nearly successful, but never once quite), happened to drop from him, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... missed her comic touches upon men and things, but the fever shown by her manner accounted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
